About PolyCultures
PolyCultures: Food Where We Live is a feature-length documentary movie that portrays the diverse communities around Northeast Ohio coming together to grow a more sustainable and local food system. PolyCultures is firmly rooted in the idea that local/sustainable food is good for the health of individuals, communities, local economies, and the environment. To balance the advocacy perspective, it features many national and international experts who place area food production in the bigger picture of sustainability. The term “polyculture” refers to the ecologically-minded technique of growing a diversity of crops/animals on one farm, but it also represents the documentary’s participants coming from very different backgrounds to arrive at similar conclusions and take coordinated action. The aesthetic is a mix of “agrarian” camera techniques portraying postindustrial Cleveland and surrounding farmland, symbolizing the ground-level nature of this movement. PolyCultures was produced by LESS Productions in conjunction with the New Agrarian Center from 2006 to 2009. The movie officially premiered at the 2009 Cleveland International Film Festival, where the number of theaters showing it was doubled due to audience demand!
Check out our blog for clips, more info, updates, and ways to get involved.
About the Distribution of PolyCultures
At this time LESS Productions is handling the distribution of PolyCultures. Our aim is to make it readily available for home use, community screenings, theatrical showings, educational use, and library circulation.
The product we presently have available is officially known as PolyCultures: Food Where We Live - Limited First Release v1.01. The run-time is 100 minutes and it's designed to be shown in widescreen. It’s in color and in stereo, and it should work in all DVD players. The release date is 2009, as is the copyright date.
Please be aware that legally-speaking, a “community showing” is any form of public performance that occurs outside of the home, or at any other place where people are gathered who are not family members, such as in a school, library, business or group meeting. While the DVD used for a community showing may be identical to the home use DVD, it is important (and legally required, per copyright law) that you help fairly compensate the filmmakers by acquiring the proper license if you wish to show the movie publicly. If you think a home-use DVD is a better fit for you, please click here.
PolyCultures: Food Where We Live is protected by US Copyright Law. Any license you purchase does not include the right to duplicate, digitize, transfer to any other medium, transmit by television or other devices or processes in whole or in part, edit, adapt or alter the program in any way whatsoever, without prior written permission from LESS Productions. For more details on this, please see this printable agreement that applies to any purchase, rental, or screener evaluation of PolyCultures.
Ordering a DVD for Public Screening(s)
If you’re interested in coordinating a community showing, LESS will be happy to send you a “screener” free of charge. If you like the movie and think it'll work for your purposes, you should then buy the appropriate community showing license and keep the screener for your showing (or indefinitely, if you buy an ongoing public performance license). If you decide the movie is not right for your purposes, simply mail it back to us at LESS Productions, 2400 Superior Ave. Suite 213, Cleveland, OH 44114.
You can purchase a license to show the movie publicly one time. We will rent you a copy (which will be the screener, if you request one), and we'll have you mail it back to LESS by an agreed-upon date after the showing has occurred.
You can purchase an ongoing public license, which means you can show the DVD publicly as many times as you wish. Ongoing public licenses are for the lifetime of the DVD and are non-transferable.
If you represent an organization with a tax exempt certificate please contact us to order the product tax free.
Once you receive your copy of the DVD, please test it with the equipment you’ll use for your showing. In the unlikely event that it doesn't work, we will provide you with a replacement copy ASAP.
In many situations organizations provide community screenings to audiences for free or with optional donations accepted. If you charge admission to your event(s), we ask that you forward 40% of any revenue past $250 to LESS Productions (in the form of a check or money order) to help compensate us for our labor and other expenses.
The movie is broken up into 7 “plots,” each of which can each be shown independent of the others. Please let us know if this is your intention, and we can offer materials to guide you in providing any context that was provided in other plots you don’t intend to show.
The filmmakers are experienced at speaking at showings and enjoy doing it! Please let us know if that interests you.
We will be happy to provide you with home use DVDs you may sell at the screening(s) of PolyCultures. We sell these in bundles of 10 at the heavily discounted cost of $12 a copy (plus shipping and handling). Your organization is then free to mark up the cost, such as to the $20 that LESS typically charges, to cover the labor involved in making these available to your audience and to potentially raise funds for your organization. We can send you a bulk shipment, depending on the number of DVDs you think you may sell.
Arranging a Theatrical Showing
If you’re interested in doing a theatrical showing of PolyCultures, please contact us. Currently, we have the movie on Beta SP for this purpose, and we will consider transferring it to another medium if there's demand for it.
Ordering DVDs for Library Circulation or Educational Purposes
PolyCultures can be a valuable teaching tool in a classroom setting, in addition to being a popular DVD in library circulation. LESS will be happy to send you a “screener” free of charge. If you like the movie and think it'll work for your organization’s purposes, you can buy the appropriate library/education license and keep the screener as the first (and perhaps only) copy offered as part of the license. If you decide the movie is not right for your purposes, simply mail it back to us at LESS Productions, 2400 Superior Ave. Suite 213, Cleveland, OH 44114.
We offer a public library or college library/department license, with the option to attain multiple DVD copies at a discounted rate. With this license your organization may:
• Offer the DVD to be checked out for home use by anyone who has access to your library’s catalog
• Enable instructors at your college (if applicable) to use the DVD in a classroom setting
If you represent an organization with a tax exempt certificate please contact us to order the product tax free.
We offer a K-12 school library license, which comes with two DVD copies at a discounted rate. With this license your organization may:
• Offer the DVD to be checked out for home use by anyone who has access to your library’s catalog
• Enable instructors to use the DVD in a classroom setting
If you represent an organization with a tax exempt certificate please contact us to order the product tax free.
A screening event on the grounds of the school or library may be possible with a library license. Please contact us for details.
How LESS Developed the Fee Structure for Licensing & Educational Use
Approximately half the funding required for the production, promotion, and distribution of the movie was acquired through various grant sources via the non-profit New Agrarian Center. The remainder has been done by LESS Productions without compensation because we strongly believe in the product we have created. LESS is dedicated to being a sustainable company, in economic terms as well as ecological and social. We would love to widely distribute the movie at the cost of materials to fulfill our educational mission. But, it’s important that we get financial support from you in the larger community in exchange for the benefits you can reap from watching the movie and sharing it with others. This way we can be a sustainable company and realistically do work with such important ecological and social implications in the future. Also, 50% of any profits from the movie will be donated to the New Agrarian Center to further its educational mission. Thank you in advance for your support!
