What's "Organic" About Organic? -- Documentary and Outreach Project

Images

Website

http://whatsorganicmovie.org/

Topics

Economy: Consumption
Environment: Animals, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Conservation, Environmental Activism, Pollution, Rivers, Soils
Health: Nutrition/Malnutrition
Human Development: Agriculture, Education, Food, Labor, Land, Urban
Human Rights: Civil Rights
Information & Media: Communication, Culture, Internet, Media, Science
Politics: Activism, Civil Society, Codes of Conduct, Corruption & Transparency, Democracy, Ethics & Value Systems, Geopolitics, Globalization

Project Geography

US: National, Colorado, District of Columbia, Florida, Iowa, New York
International: North America

Budget

Raised to date: $96,332.00
Estimate to complete: $65,000.00
Total Estimated Budget: $161,332.00
The budget numbers above are accurate as of 06/20/2009

Status

Post Production

Media Type

Video

Project End Use

Other: Community screenings and TV

Key Personnel

Shelley Rogers
Director/Producer
Shelley Rogers is a first time filmmaker; Shelley has a Master’s degree in Media, Culture, and Communication from New York University and a Bachelor’s degree in Art History from Smith College.  She has worked as a freelance Assistant Director/Assistant Camera on several short independent film productions in New York City and has served as a production intern at the Media Education Foundation and in GOOD Magazine’s web video department.  She has also studied documentary film with George Stoney, a seasoned filmmaker of over 40 well-regarded films.

Emily Triantaphyllis
Producer
Emily Triantaphyllis has a background in social work and served as a Peace Corps volunteer before working with the producers at Arts Engine and DCTV.  She has a Master's Degree in Media Studies with a focus in documentary film from The New School.

George C. Stoney
Consulting Producer
George C. Stoney is a Professor of Film and Cinema Studies at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and has made over 40 documentary films and is considered the “father” of public access television. 

Outreach/Engagement Plan(s)

Since everyone eats every day, we believe that everyone can connect with this film.  Our distribution and outreach plans will be designed to target a wide audience. Distribution will begin at festivals where we hope to secure a national broadcast deal.  Then, we will have a quasi-theatrical release—i.e. screenings at local libraries, community centers, and art-house theaters—coupled with self-distribution of home video DVDs via our website and other appropriate venues.  We will consider our options to partner with an educational distributor as well.

This distribution plan will be launched concurrently with a three-part outreach campaign.  During this first phase of outreach, we’ll focus on connecting with “sustainable/organic agriculture ambassadors”—individuals and organizations who can integrate screenings of the film into their work.  The second component of the outreach campaign will focus on working with public officials, particularly those connected with agriculture policy, to bring sustainable/organic issues to the attention of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).  The third component of our campaign will be the construction of a website which can be used by individuals and organizations as a resource to enhance their understanding of sustainable/organic agricultural issues.

During the first component of the outreach campaign, we will collaborate with sustainable/organic agriculture and environmental organizations, or “ally
organizations” and the Appropriate Technology Transfer for Rural Areas (ATTRA), a USDA-funded information service operated by the nonprofit organization National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT).  We will work with these ally organizations throughout the country to host screenings and panel discussion events.  These panel discussions will feature local farmers and activists.  At strategic screening/panel events we will invite each of the film’s characters to attend.  We will initially aim for 30-50 U.S. screenings and focus our efforts in the four states where the film’s main characters live and work—New York, Iowa, Colorado, and Florida; the states where NCAT’s five regional offices are located—Montana, California, Iowa, Arkansas, and Pennsylvania; and the locations of major regional farming conferences, both organic/sustainable and conventional.  Our characters and our ATTRA allies have strong connections to the organizers in these areas and will help us maximize the utilization of resources for our campaign.   

In addition to arranging panel discussions in strategic locations, each outreach screening will also feature an informational component about ATTRA, who offers the public free technical information about sustainable and organic growing.  As the organic/sustainable agriculture community strives to promote back-yard/community gardens and to recruit young farmers, the public would benefit from a greater awareness of ATTRA and its services.  Our cross-promotional campaign will begin at film screenings where ATTRA will provide informational materials to connect the public to their web resources and, where possible, an ATTRA representative or a farmer who has used ATTRA to speak about their services and how to access them. Ultimately, we hope to generate greater public support for programs, like ATTRA, that promote sustainable/organic food production and remain vulnerable to cuts throughout the USDA, Presidential and Congressional budgeting processes.  Indeed, ATTRA has survived numerous threats to its funding, including a near shutdown in 2007 when most of its federal funding was cut.  However, with support from NGOs, the sustainable and organic agriculture sectors, and individuals ATTRA was able to maintain operations.

We will collaborate with select ally organizations to host “Green & Screen” events, a volunteer activity that serves as a call to action for viewers to connect with the organizations doing food, agriculture, and environmental work in their communities.  Each event will be tailored to the needs/projects of the host organization whereby participating volunteers would receive vouchers to attend the screening/panel event for free.  For example, we have been in contact with the Executive Director of Florida Organic Growers (FOG), a character in the film, who has agreed to host a screening of the film.  The screening would be preceded by a volunteer event engaging University of Florida students and Gainesville residents to work for an afternoon in FOG’s budding Gift Garden Program for low-income families.

Although each screening/panel discussion and “Green & Screen” event will have several common components, we will work with our community allies to tailor each event to meet the needs of each community.  We have already forged alliances with members of organizations in several of our focus states, including the Northeast Organic Farming Association of NY, The Leopold Institute in Iowa, and Florida Organic Growers.  We will continue to develop relationships with more organizations in focus states in the coming months.  

Nationwide, we have already cultivated connections with approximately 30 other organizations and plan to contact them in coming months to discuss potential participation in our screening/panel tour and hosting of “Green & Screen” events.

Publicity for our outreach campaign will include both traditional and grassroots methods.  We will hire a publicist to focus on national media opportunities.  For the “Green & Screen” events, we plan to collaborate with our host organizations to garner volunteer support for more grassroots promotion.  In urban and campus environments, we will have mud stencil brigades to publicize events.  In high car traffic, urban and suburban locations, we will collaborate with reverse graffiti artists to design a suitable image for the campaign.  Both of these grassroots publicity methods are relatively inexpensive, innovatively engaging, and ecologically sound.

The second outreach phase will be an awareness campaign for the USDA.  We will work to assemble a task team for exploring options and developing action plans for the film to be used for USDA staff development.  Some examples of possible options follow. The film could be utilized in tandem with the implementation of Secretary Vilsack’s statement about promoting organic community gardens at every USDA facility world-wide as a tool for general USDA staff development. We feel it will be vital for the staff that will be tending and maintaining these gardens to have a broad understanding of the potential impact their organic gardens can have and a deeper awareness of organic ecological systems.  Another example might be that the National Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), a division of USDA that works in partnership with the American people to conserve and sustain our soil, water, and other natural resources, could utilize the film within their staff development programs.  Through their management of the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), they enable farmers and ranchers to receive federal cost share to employ conservation practices, most recently including organic farming and conversion practices. There is an ongoing need for NRCS and other employees to increase their knowledge of organic farming practices.  Other parts of USDA, such as the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE), could utilize the film in their professional development projects and programs as well.

The final component of our outreach campaign will be the construction of a website.  This website will be the thread that connects all our of outreach efforts.  We will use it as a bulletin board to announce our upcoming events, to post videos/pictures of past events, to provide downloadable leaflets and to link audiences to ATTRA and other resources.  Our community partners/ally organizations will have a page where they can describe themselves and what they do.  Citizens will be able use the website to locate resources in their region.

We plan to make select sequences of the film available for download so that community organizations can utilize in their education/outreach activities.  We will also feature short segments from various panel events featuring our characters discussing key agricultural issues.

We believe that the information on the website as well as the graphic illustration that will be used on the website can serve as the basis for the creation of a children’s book and CD-ROM.

Funders

Location