What's On Your Plate?

Images

At the Farmers Market with Bryant Terry

The Crew at the Farm

Film Still- At the Map

Planting at the Farm

Safiyah and Sadie

Film Still- At the Computer

Website

http://www.aubinpictures.com/woyp

Topics

Economy: Consumption, Corporations, Trade
Environment: Animals, Atmosphere, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Conservation, Environmental Activism, Genetics, Oceans, Pollution, Renewable Energy, Soils
Health: Disease/treatment, Nutrition/Malnutrition
Human Development: Agriculture, Children, Education, Energy, Food, Labor, Land, Population, Poverty, Social Exclusion, Transport, Urban, Volunteering, Youth
Human Rights: Civil Rights, Gender, Race Politics, Social Exclusion
Information & Media: Communication, Culture, Freedom of Expression, Internet, Knowledge, Media, Science
Peace and Conflict: Security
Politics: Activism, Civil Society, Democracy, Ethics & Value Systems, Globalization, Governance

Identity Niches

African American, Asian American, Caucasian, Children, Latino, Student, Women, Youth/Teen

Budget

Raised to date: $230,000.00
Estimate to complete: $280,000.00
Total Estimated Budget: $510,000.00
The budget numbers above are accurate as of 04/30/2009

Status

Post Production

Media Type

Video

Project End Use

Other: Festival Screenings, Television Broadcast, School and Community Screenings, Interactive Website

Key Personnel

Catherine Gund
Director/Producer

Catherine Gund, Producer/Director, the founder of Aubin Pictures, is an Emmy Award-nominated producer, director, writer and organizer. Her media work – which focuses on arts and culture, HIV/AIDS and reproductive health, and other social justice issues – has screened around the world in festivals and theaters, on PBS and the Sundance Channel, at community-based organizations, universities, and museums. As a filmmaker who has worked in all aspects of production for 20 years, her interest is in telling stories and finding the details that educate and inspire.

Gund’s productions include Motherland Afghanistan (AFI Fest Official Selection; PBS broadcast); A Touch of Greatness (Best Documentary Award, Hamptons Film Festival, Ohio Film Festival, and Denver International Film Festival; PBS broadcast; Emmy nomination); Making Grace (theatrical release); On Hostile Ground (Sundance Channel broadcast); Hallelujah! Ron Athey: A Story of Deliverance (Best Documentary Award, Chicago Underground Film Festival; theatrical release); When Democracy Works; Positive: Life with HIV (PBS broadcast); and Keep Your Laws Off My Body; as well as work with the collectives DIVA TV (co-founder) and Paper Tiger Television. She co-founded the Third Wave Foundation and was on the founding board of Working Films and Reality Dance Company. She has served on the advisory council for MediaRights.org and the NewFest, and as a consultant for the Robeson Fund.

Tanya Selvaratnam
Producer
Tanya Selvaratnam, Producer, is a producer, writer, actor, and activist based in New York. Her first feature production, ON_LINE, directed by Jed Weintrob, premiered at the Sundance and Berlin Film Festivals followed by a theatrical and DVD release. She also produced DOMINO, a short film directed by Gabri Christa for The Black Filmmakers Foundation Lab, and executive-produced THE F WORD, directed by Jed Weintrob. THE F WORD premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and aired on the Independent Film Channel. In addition to What’s On Your Plate??, she is producing Chiara Clemente’s OUR CITY DREAMS, about five decades of NY-based women artists (Nancy Spero, Marina Abramovic, Kiki Smith, Ghada Amer and Swoon). OUR CITY DREAMS is scheduled to premiere at Film Forum in Winter 2009 followed by a broadcast on the Sundance Channel in Spring 2009.
Also a respected theater artist, Tanya has toured to dozens of cities around the world as a performer with The Wooster Group, The Builders Association, and with her solo shows. In 2007, she was a resident artist at Yaddo, Blue Mountain Center and Voice & Vision Theater. She has served on the boards of the Third Wave Foundation and Groundswell Community Mural Project and has worked with the Ms. Foundation, the World Health Organization and the NGO Forum on Women.

Sadie Hope-Gund
co-producer and one of the two main characters
Sadie Rain Hope-Gund loves to read, travel and eat ice cream. She is in the 7th grade at a New York City public school and lives in Soho with her three little brothers, Kofi, Rio and Tenzin. She is a vegetarian and has genetically-linked high cholesterol which she controls through diet. Her favorite sports are fencing and figure skating.

Outreach/Engagement Plan(s)

The multi-tiered, multi-armed project is designed to give educators, community organizations, activists, community leaders and families the tools and training they need to create a sustainable food system. The three arms of the campaign, defined as non-fiction media, community engagement and educational toolkit, are combined as one youth-centric highly interactive website that represents and inspires on the ground efforts. This website will host the film, including downloads, DVD sales, podcasts, iTunes downloads, etc. It will also host independent resources that will allow youth to engage on this issue, giving them gaming tools and interactive learning opportunities, some of which would be directly connected to their community.

DISTRIBUTION
What’s On Your Plate? will be submitted to major national and international film festivals, as well as conferences and other venues that focus on health, food, and the environment. Additionally, Aubin Pictures has contacted potential broadcasters that would be ideal platforms for launching the film, such as Sundance Channel’s The Green, Discovery Channel’s Planet Green, and PBS/POV. Subsequent to the initial television broadcast, Aubin Pictures will make sections of the film available online as a free download so that individuals, organizations and schools can use the film as their own call to action.


COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT CAMPAIGN

Aubin Pictures is developing an extensive outreach campaign to work with families, children and schools in order to achieve the project’s goals. A network of partner organizations established during the production phase of the project is central to the success of the campaign. Community engagement will include festival and partner organized screenings as well as hundreds of DIY screenings around the country. Producers and partner organizations will attend key events to answer questions and guide audiences to next steps. Audiences will leave the events inspired to improve the food on their plates and in their stores and they will know the next steps they need to take in order to make that change. Nicole Betancourt, co-founder of the Food Theater Project and formerly the Executive Director of MediaRights (makers of the Outreach Toolkit), consulted on maximizing audience development and community impact. The team also includes Advisory Council Member Judith Helfand, co-founder of Working Films, a nonprofit organization dedicated to making political impact with documentary film campaigns. Additionally, Aubin Pictures is working with Advisory Council Member John Johnson and his Harmony Institute to identify ways of using behavioral sciences to increase the impact of the film and its outreach.

COMMUNITY AUDIENCE
Audience development for the project will focus on inter-generational dialogue in order to address the whole family or community. The project will plant the seeds of change in families and communities by reaching out to specific audiences including the following:

ß Children - ages 8-18
ß Parents and other caregivers
ß Teachers (K-12)
ß School Administrators (K-12)
ß Community Organizers
ß Health Practitioners
ß Local Politicians
ß Vendors/Supermarket Owners

PARTNER NETWORK
Aubin Pictures will reach these audiences by working in close collaboration with organizations they trust. These organizations will be integral to the design and implementation of the Community Engagement Campaign. Aubin Pictures is in the process of identifying groups such as parent teacher associations, community health organizations, local governments, youth groups, and others. These groups will coordinate screenings and discussions, promote events, provide guidance on content, suggest resources, and serve as ambassadors of the project on local and national levels.

Aubin Pictures is in discussions with potential strategic partners, which operate either locally in New York or nationwide, for the Community Engagement Campaign’s goals, including the following:

∑ Added Value
∑ American Farmland Trust
∑ Bioneers
∑ Chipotle
∑ Cornell Cooperative Extension
∑ Cuyahoga Valley Countryside Conservancy
∑ Edible Schoolyard
∑ Food Routes
∑ For a Better Bronx
∑ Global Academy
∑ Harmony Institute
∑ The James Beard Foundation
∑ Just Food
∑ Lower East Side Girls Club
∑ Lower Manhattan Cultural Council
∑ Lunch Lessons
∑ New Farmer Development Project
∑ New York City Department of Cultural Affairs
∑ Office of the Borough President of Manhattan Scott Stringer
∑ S’cool Food
∑ Slow Food
∑ Small Planet Institute
∑ Solar One
∑ Stone Barns Farms
∑ Sustainable South Bronx
∑ Sustainable Table
∑ Tiki One World

MATERIALS
Aubin Pictures will create a discussion guide available online as a free download so that communities can organize their own screenings and discussions with the DVD. This guide will also include tips on organizing and promoting events that have a lasting impact on the community and food systems.

To complement the guide, the project website will feature games and quizzes. In addition, the website will be developed as a carbon-neutral platform for communities to engage with each other. Partner organizations will on occasion provide content and FAQs. Furthermore, for target locations, there will be an interactive map where viewers can click on a neighborhood and explore for example how many farmers markets or CSAs or grocery stores exist in a particular area.

EDUCATIONAL TOOLKIT

The Educational Toolkit will be specifically designed for health educators, community health groups, boys/girls clubs, and after school programs. Aubin Pictures will launch the toolkit with 12 months of teacher training around the country. The toolkit and training will focus on specific themes, including the following:
∑ Diabetes
∑ High Cholesterol
∑ Organic Food
∑ Local Food
∑ School Food

This curriculum will provide teachers with a much-needed alternative to food pyramids and nutrition textbooks. Based on the principle that children learn best when they are motivated by their natural curiosity, the toolkit will provide suggestions for experiential activities. Students will learn the real price of food and how they can become change makers in their own lives, families and cities. Distribution of the toolkit will focus on communities that need it most, those with high rates of diabetes and obesity. Participants will learn how to identify their own questions and seek their own answers as they investigate their local food web. They will visit local farms, examine what is on the shelves of their local stores and in their kitchens. They will produce essays, recipes, drawings and perhaps their own food videos, which will be shared on the What’s On Your Plate? website.

The toolkit will include the following elements:
∑ Units based on the above listed themes which can be taught separately or in sequence as a course
∑ DVD with full-length film and educational modules on specific themes that are ten to twenty minutes in length for easy use in an academic setting
∑ Ability to post student work on the website
∑ List of resources on each subject
∑ Fact sheets on each subject
∑ Evaluation survey

Many of the toolkit materials and media will be available for free online. Physical toolkits will be distributed to schools, libraries and organizations that serve young people. Partner organizations will facilitate workshops and promote the toolkit amongst their networks. Toolkit promotion will be timed to maximize exposure from the broadcast of the feature-length documentary. Teachers will be encouraged to share their own additions to the curricula on a blog, allowing the toolkit to continue to be relevant as it is used over the years.

Aubin Pictures will hire an Education Director to supervise the creation and distribution of the toolkit. This person will conduct most of the trainings and collect evaluations from users. The toolkit will be created with guidance from a small panel of teachers and food activists to make sure that it serves their needs and respects their time and financial limitations.

Funders

Location