Last June, I had the good fortune to attend the Consumer Cooperative Management Association (CCMA) annual meeting in Philadelphia. It may sound like a big yawn, but it isn’t. One of the more interesting events was the screening of the completed part of a film by Steve Alves entitled Food for Change: The Twin Cities Story. Steve is a member of the Franklin Community Co-op in Greenfield, MA, and decided to research and produce this film which highlights a colorful history of the cooperative movement in the US.

This completed part of the film is centered in Minneapolis-St.Paul and feels very much like home to me. There was wonderful and funky footage about early co-op efforts, and we all know that the early days of co-ops continue, as new organizations and co-operative groceries continue to form, struggle and grow.

The completed movie is expected out this spring, but as you can imagine, it is a very expensive operation to put together a feature length film for national and international distribution. You may be aware that our Outpost contributed $8,000 to this effort, a tremendous affirmation of cooperative principles requiring concern for community and cooperation among cooperatives.

The extremely good news is that the completed portion, which we saw at CCMA, has won a United Nations International Year of the Cooperatives Short Film Festival competition. This is a tremendous boost for Steve Alves and his colleagues in the future sale and distribution of the full-length film.

There will be further publicity about the film once it is released, and if it is made available locally, I urge all of you to see it. It will remind you of what is great about co-ops in general, and our Outpost in particular. Happy New Year!

– Nancy Ettenheim, director