Watch the trailer for the new sustainable food movement documentary “Fresh” by Ana Sofia Joanes and you’d be forgiven for dismissing it as a repeat of last year’s “Food, Inc.” The themes—America’s predominant industrial agriculture model is unsustainable, small-scale farming operations are in ascendance—are pretty much the same and both films feature “lunatic farmer” Joel Salatin as well as the man who made him famous: Michael Pollan.
But “Fresh," while covering similar ground as “Food, Inc,” is decidedly more optimistic. “Food, Inc.” is a rigorous exposé that details the horrors of factory farming, and you leave it feeling either pissed off or desolate (depending on your disposition). “Fresh,” though it offers glimpses of miserably crowded cows and pigs (and the requisite image of chicks being flung, by the pallet, down on the CAFO floor), is a celebration of mavericks such as Salatin, Will Allen, and George Naylor, who are starting mini-revolutions in Virginia, Milwaukee, and Iowa, respectively. You leave “Fresh” wanting to get your hands dirty—be it raising organic hogs or starting a container garden on your fire escape.
The truth is, filming for “Fresh” began prior to “Food, Inc.”—Joanes just didn’t have as big of a budget as “Food, Inc.” director Robert Kenner did. So Joanes and her team had to employ a creative marketing strategy. Rather than push for a traditional Hollywood distributor, they chose to launch the film in communities across the country, city-by-city, week-by-week. Specialty Studios, an unconventional film distribution company, only teamed up with Joanes in February, and president Steve Michaelson sought out Joanes, not the other way around. (By then, Joanes and her team had already done the bulk of the marketing themselves and-having elicited 2,000 requests for community screenings-didn’t think they needed a distributor at all.) Specialty Studios helped cement Joanes’ relationship with Whole Foods: “Fresh” is screening across the country during the grocery store’s new film festival, “Let’s Retake our Plates.”
Last month, the first “Fresh Week” launched in New York City on the 7th with a series of lectures (by none other than Salatin himself), book signings (Anna Lappé), and panels (Will Allen, Annie Novak of Rooftop Farms, and radical gardener/artist Fritz Haeg). There were farm-to-table dinners at Mas, Lupa, and Candle 79; a canning workshop (what else?!); and a Q&A with Mario Batali. Each of these events smartly cross-promoted the film—attendees received a voucher to see “Fresh” at Quad Cinemas. After New York, “Fresh Weeks” rolled out across the country: in Nashville, Columbus, Tempe, Arizona, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Santa Cruz, Oklahoma City, and Providence.
In Portland, I attended Joel Salatin’s wickedly smart and mischievous talk on “The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer” and was given a voucher to see the film. (There were also farm-to-table dinners in PDX—at Clarklewis, Salt, Fire, and Time and Meriwether’s.)
Joanes and her team reached out to bloggers in each city, asking them to attend “Fresh Week” events (at their own expense, apparently) and write pithy reviews of them on their own blogs.
The brilliance of this strategy is that Joanes doesn’t have to lay down much cash for marketing and distributing the film: each city (and food community) self-generates its own dinners, lectures, and screenings; bloggers aren’t paid.
The down side? Grassroots marketing doesn’t always reach the right audience. In Portland, for instance, most people in the city’s dynamic food world had no inkling that Joel Salatin was in town or that “Fresh” was screening at the city’s venerable Hollywood Theatre. And this, on the eve of the International Association of Culinary Professionals (held in Portland from April 21-24), during which thousands of chefs, cookbook writers, and urban gardening advocates descended on the city in droves. What a pity.
Though the “Fresh Weeks” wind down in June with the final one in Boston, the movie will continue to have a life via community screenings. For a small fee, you can buy the DVD and host a screening at your local library, elementary school, or college. (There’s a toolkit for this purpose on the “Fresh” web site.)
“I’ve been working in film for awhile and have never seen anything quite this creative,” says Julia Pacetti, president of JMP Verdant Communications, who was hired by Specialty Studios in mid-February to help promote the film. “It’s really been fueled from the ground up.” So far, the theatrical marketing and distribution budget for this film has been less than $100,000; Joanes spent another $130,000 for grassroots outreach. (That’s a fraction of the half a million spent on marketing and distribution for most documentaries.)
Is this the future when it comes to promoting small-budget food documentaries in this country? Food docs seem to be serving as test cases for this hybrid style of marketing—part traditional, part grassroots. “What’s on Your Plate?” which follows two Manhattan teens as they track down where their food comes from (and which I wrote about for the Atlantic Monthly), debuted on the Discovery Channel, but it too, is being shown in communities across the country via a sustainable-minded chain, Chipotle.
Watch the trailer for the new sustainable food movement documentary “Fresh” by Ana Sofia Joanes and you’d be forgiven for dismissing it as a repeat of last year’s “Food, Inc.” The themes—America’s predominant industrial agriculture model is unsustainable, small-scale farming operations are in ascendance—are pretty much the same and both films feature “lunatic farmer” Joel Salatin as well as the man who made him famous: Michael Pollan.
But “Fresh,“while covering similar ground as “Food, Inc,” is decidedly more optimistic. “Food, Inc.” is a rigorous exposé that details the horrors of factory farming, and you leave it feeling either pissed off or desolate (depending on your disposition). “Fresh,” though it offers glimpses of miserably crowded cows and pigs (and the requisite image of chicks being flung, by the pallet, down on the CAFO floor), is a celebration of mavericks such as Salatin, Will Allen, and George Naylor, who are starting mini-revolutions in Virginia, Milwaukee, and Iowa, respectively. You leave “Fresh” wanting to get your hands dirty—be it raising organic hogs or starting a container garden on your fire escape.
The truth is, filming for “Fresh” began prior to “Food, Inc.”—Joanes just didn’t have as big of a budget as “Food, Inc.” director Robert Kenner did. So Joanes and her team had to employ a creative marketing strategy. Rather than push for a traditional Hollywood distributor, they chose to launch the film in communities across the country, city-by-city, week-by-week. Specialty Studios, an unconventional film distribution company, only teamed up with Joanes in February, and president Steve Michaelson sought out Joanes, not the other way around. (By then, Joanes and her team had already done the bulk of the marketing themselves and-having elicited 2,000 requests for community screenings-didn’t think they needed a distributor at all.) Specialty Studios helped cement Joanes’ relationship with Whole Foods: “Fresh” is screening across the country during the grocery store’s new film festival, “Let’s Retake our Plates.”
Last month, the first “Fresh Week” launched in New York City on the 7th with a series of lectures (by none other than Salatin himself), book signings (Anna Lappé), and panels (Will Allen, Annie Novak of Rooftop Farms, and radical gardener/artist Fritz Haeg). There were farm-to-table dinners at Mas, Lupa, and Candle 79; a canning workshop (what else?!); and a Q&A with Mario Batali. Each of these events smartly cross-promoted the film—attendees received a voucher to see “Fresh” at Quad Cinemas. After New York, “Fresh Weeks” rolled out across the country: in Nashville, Columbus, Tempe, Arizona, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Santa Cruz, Oklahoma City, and Providence.
In Portland, I attended Joel Salatin’s wickedly smart and mischievous talk on “The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer” and was given a voucher to see the film. (There were also farm-to-table dinners in PDX—at Clarklewis, Salt, Fire, and Time and Meriwether’s.)
Joanes and her team reached out to bloggers in each city, asking them to attend “Fresh Week” events (at their own expense, apparently) and write pithy reviews of them on their own blogs.
The brilliance of this strategy is that Joanes doesn’t have to lay down much cash for marketing and distributing the film: each city (and food community) self-generates its own dinners, lectures, and screenings; bloggers aren’t paid.
The down side? Grassroots marketing doesn’t always reach the right audience. In Portland, for instance, most people in the city’s dynamic food world had no inkling that Joel Salatin was in town or that “Fresh” was screening at the city’s venerable Hollywood Theatre. And this, on the eve of the International Association of Culinary Professionals (held in Portland from April 21-24), during which thousands of chefs, cookbook writers, and urban gardening advocates descended on the city in droves. What a pity.
Though the “Fresh Weeks” wind down in June with the final one in Boston, the movie will continue to have a life via community screenings. For a small fee, you can buy the DVD and host a screening at your local library, elementary school, or college. (There’s a toolkit for this purpose on the “Fresh” web site.)
“I’ve been working in film for awhile and have never seen anything quite this creative,” says Julia Pacetti, president of JMP Verdant Communications, who was hired by Specialty Studios in mid-February to help promote the film. “It’s really been fueled from the ground up.” So far, the theatrical marketing and distribution budget for this film has been less than $100,000; Joanes spent another $130,000 for grassroots outreach. (That’s a fraction of the half a million spent on marketing and distribution for most documentaries.)
Is this the future when it comes to promoting small-budget food documentaries in this country? Food docs seem to be serving as test cases for this hybrid style of marketing—part traditional, part grassroots. “What’s on Your Plate?” which follows two Manhattan teens as they track down where their food comes from (and which I wrote about for the Atlantic Monthly), debuted on the Discovery Channel, but it too, is being shown in communities across the country via a sustainable-minded chain, Chipotle.
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