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Celebrate October Co-op Month with Documentary about Cross Country Cycling Trip for Co-op Activism
September/October 2014
The month of October has been designated as National Cooperative Month in the United States for over 50 years. Every year, more than 29,000 cooperatives around the country will celebrate cooperatives for their values and invite others to explore cooperatives in their communities. A documentary called To the Moon will be screening at cities nationwide in honor of Cooperative Month. The film screening is a fun opportunity to not only unite co-op minded people and bridge networks, but also to spark conversations with those who aren’t currently involved in the community. A trailer of To the Moon can be viewed here. Find out below how you can bring a screening of the film to a place near you.
To the Moon follows a cooperative cycling group called Co-Cycle on their three month cycling journey spanning 15 states, using themselves to forge a network between cooperatives of all shapes and sizes. Hailing from Hampshire College in Massachusetts and joined together by their ideals and passion, the young cyclists kick off in search of paths to a sustainable future, one that is soon theirs to bear post-graduation. In the midst of the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Arab Spring uprisings in 2012, theirs is a story of an epic quest for answers that begins from within, and the struggles they face and the conversations they start still remain relevant in 2014, where young and frustrated citizens are fervently protesting all over the world.
The filmmakers, like the cyclists, were also university students at the time of filming, sharing the same desires to take action and help remedy the volatile status quo. To the Moon is their first feature length film out of college, and the film has since screened for audiences at the Oakland International Film Festival, Hampshire College, Wheatsville Co-op in Austin, Texas, and at New York University. Eric DeLuca of the National Cooperative Business Associations praised the film as “a wellspring of inspiration.”
Wishing to seize the timely opportunity to collectively celebrate co-ops this October, the filmmakers are partnering up with Tugg.com, a self-distribution service for filmmakers that allows audiences to easily request for a film they wish to see to be screened in their city. Screenings of To the Moon are now gearing up all over the country in anticipation of Cooperative Month and will feature the filmmakers or cyclists from the film as well as panel discussions with members of the community. The filmmakers hope to help expand the reach of co-ops by using To the Moon as a way to inspire fruitful conversations and to connect more co-ops with each other.
The exact dates and locations will soon be announced on the film’s website. In the meantime, if you are interested in bringing To the Moon to a venue near you, be it at a co-op business, an educational institute, a local theater, or even your own backyard, please visit http://www.tugg.com/titles/to-the-moon or www.tothemoonfilm.com/screenings for more information.
Contact: Emma Thatcher – 925 550 9988 – www.tothemoonfilm.com – tothemoonfilm@gmail.com
