It’s the little co-op story heard ’round the world — coming home for National Co-op Month.
Turners Falls filmmaker Steve Alves’ documentary, “Food for Change,” will be screened in Greenfield and Leverett as part of the 50 showings in 27 states around the country this month of the film with roots at Green Fields Market.
There’s even footage of the Main Street market just 12 seconds into the film, with its “Everyone is welcome” motto atop the doorway.
After all, it was the Greenfield business, which got started across the river in 1977 as Montague Food Co-op, that first asked Alves around 2010 to make a documentary about the little co-op that grew into a mainstay of the region’s business community.
The film, too, grew and grew, just as its initial focus expanded, with showings at the UN’s International Year of Cooperatives Short Film Festival and across the country. With 300 screenings over the years, it’s reached a estimated audience of over 7,000 – in addition to those who have seen it on public television broadcasts in Maine and Vermont. And it’s been used to raise millions of dollars in capital campaigns for co-ops, including River Valley Market’s $2.4 million campaign in 2014.
This Friday at 8 p.m., the documentary will again be shown on Vermont PBS ( www.vermontpbs.org ).
Other area screenings are planned at Temple Israel in Greenfield on Oct. 24 and at Leverett Crafts and Arts on Oct. 20, both at 7 p.m. Those screenings, preceded by a 6:30 p.m. gathering, are co-sponsored by Green Fields Market and Leverett Village Co-op, respectively.
In a nationwide display of cooperative solidarity, more than 50 food co-ops in 27 states will host a screening of “Food For Change.” Five screenings are on college campuses. There are also two prime time PBS broadcasts.
“The time has never been better for co-ops to tell their story,” said Alves. “Consolidation of the food industry, compromised organic standards, and the need for community-based food systems will give co-ops an edge. Now is the time to tell the story of cooperation in America.”
The 82-minute film traces the history of co-operatives to the mid-19th century, with a renaissance in the 1930s in response to the Great Depression and then again in the 1960s and ‘70s, as the Baby Boomer generation, feeling its oats, sought to recapture control of food from corporations.
Among the start-ups of that era was the Montague Food Co-Op, started by Tom Tolg and others who describe their motivation as wanting to make healthy food available for all classes of people.
Franklin Community Coop, which operated out of someone’s apartment before moving to Avenue A and then to Greenfield in the 1980s, now operates its Main Street storefront in Greenfield, as well as McCusker’s Market in Shelburne Falls.
“I didn’t think that it was going to be that relevant, at least to the zeitgeist of our era,” Alves said of the film with an original working title of “Shopping for a Better World.”
“And then the crash happened” a decade ago, echoing the themes of wealth disparity, corruption and fraudulent credit schemes that had sent the American economy into a tailspin in the 1930s.
But if Alves sees economic cooperation as “the road to survival for humanity,” he said, his aim isn’t to treat corporate America as “the heavy. The bigger theme is human survivability.
“Whatever structure we come up with, it needs to have the elements of fairness, morality, and the interests of larger numbers of people, as well as providing education for more people and dealing with the consequences of poverty across the board for all of us.
“There’s nothing wrong with free enterprise,” Alves said. “It’s the monopolies that big businesses create that end up hammering their suppliers, benefiting a few and seemingly benefiting consumers, but in the long run actually undermining their middle class consumers’ lifestyle.”
On the Web: Foodforchange.coop