We are very excited to announce the first ever Co-op Film Festival, brought to you by us and the wonderful Rhizome DC. The festival is three parts, three nights, three films; each focused on a different aspect of co-operation. We want to keep you entertained while the store is under construction — use this summer to boost your co-op knowledge, and to deepen into community with your neighbors. Come out and watch some documentaries with us! We’ll feed you, and discuss the films after the screening.
Food For Change is an 82-minute documentary film focusing on food co-ops as a force for dynamic social and economic change in American culture. This is the first film to examine the important historical role played by food co-ops, their pioneering quest for organic foods, and their current efforts to create regional food systems. Additionally, the film shows how cooperatives today strengthen local economies and build food security. The goal is to educate a wide audience about the principles of cooperation with a focus on healthy food and a healthy economy. (Screening July 15th @ 7 PM)
The Co-op Wars is a one-hour documentary that tells the story of the tumultuous early years of the Twin Cities’ natural food co-op movement, the largest in the US. Inspired by their experiences in rural communes and hippie collectives, young radicals began a series of ever-expanding food retail projects that led to the creation of the Cities’ first natural food co-op. Its success sparked an explosion of food and other co-ops in the area, forming a cooperative economy unparalleled in the rest of the country. But this burgeoning alternative sphere ran afoul of the divisions in the Post-Vietnam War counterculture. While some were inspired by the potential for alternative institutions to change society by example, others looked to the Marxist revolutionaries who were advancing in the Third World. These included a secretive group who set out to forcibly take over the co-ops and re-orient them towards the recruitment of working-class revolutionaries. (Screening July 22nd @ 7 PM)
Can We Do It Ourselves? is a solid, thought provoking documentary covering a relevant economic topic in-depth. The question of capitalism’s grip on the modern world is highly relevant today and the film questions if we should be pushing for a democratic cooperative way of doing business, showing case studies of businesses who are surviving as democracies within a capitalist system. (Screening July 29th @ 7 PM)
