Jeremy Seifert - Presbyterian College in Clinton, SC | Tupelo, MS Link Center | Milledgeville, GA

The latest update from Jeremy Seifert, currently touring his film GMO OMG:

I've fallen behind on the Southern Tour blog! Not so hard to do with three children on the road and a new city every night.
I think it was the 8+ hour drive to Tupelo, MS, from Clinton, SC, that threw everything out of whack.

Warm and hospitable people greeted us in Clinton, and the film played to an intimate crowd in a lecture hall on campus.
We had a fantastic discussion after the film, and Molly apologized profusely for the GMO snacks offered for the reception.
It wasn't her fault....this is just the world we live in. But we'll get there with a bit more effort! Something Molly knows firsthand since she's married to an organic farmer.

After Presbyterian College, we made the long drive to Tuscaloosa, AL, where I dropped the family at our friends house and picked up my dear friend, Nate, to accompany me to Tupelo. In spite of the sprawl and chain stores that have taken the heart out of so many small towns, Tupelo still has some soul and wonderful old buildings. We enjoyed what was probably the best shrimp po boy I've ever eaten at the local gem, The Neon Pig, while the film was underway. And the Q&A afterward made for a unique and unforgettable trip to the birthplace of Elvis.

Milledgeville really went out of their way to make this leg of the journey a beautiful experience. Joe Windish interviewed me weeks back for the local station and made sure there was a huge turnout for the film this afternoon. It's a gorgeous campus, with yellow and orange leaves still on the trees this far south, tucked into the heart of a historic town that incorporated in 1803. After a lively Q&A, we headed out to a farmhouse about 15 minutes outside town for a delicious potluck dinner with a mixture of professors, artists, farmers, and homesteaders. It was the best evening of food and fellowship we've had on the tour so far! Thanks everybody for that good ol' southern hospitality combined with lives devoted to restoring what we've lost and taking back our seeds and soil.

Jeremy
www.gmofilm.com

Jeremy Seifert - Clemson University

The latest update from Jeremy Seifert, currently touring his film GMO OMG:

The small theater at Clemson University, which seats 150, was nearly full last night! Albeit, many of the students in attendance had been bribed by their teachers with extra credit or were lured by the free Chipotle meal card. But still, it was a great crowd, and I could tell from the questions that many of them had never heard of GMOs and didn't quite know what to make of this "new" world that had just been revealed. For many of them I got the feeling that, before the film, food was just food, something you judged on flavor or cost or how it made you feel, certainly not representative of a system that exists behind our food and how it effects the planet.

And for many, the thrust of culture surrounding them, the exclusive relationship the university has with ARAMARK Corporation, the general lack of other options and the inability to fully connect eating with ethics and justice and future sustainability, means that no practical change will happen in their lives....at least not immediately. But as I said to them, now you know and you can't unlearn or it, or even fully forget it. And I know for at least some of them, a seed has been planted and will grow into real change.

I think it's fitting here to give an example of how big the challenge is to get out messages that matter.
As I mentioned the small theater on campus was quite full, over 100 people. What I didn't mention is that Clemson University has a student population of 20,000, which means that less than .05% of them came. Statistically, those are probably really good numbers. But the point of this digression is a comparison to another number and event, the Clemson Tigers vs. the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets.

Today, November 14th, is game day. Morning classes are supposed to be in session, but most have been canceled anyway. From noon on, all classes on campus are officially canceled. The town turns into a bustling madhouse of football fans. The stadium, called Death Valley, will be packed with 92,000 people, who will sit and eat and cheer through nearly three hours of game time. They will pay exorbitant prices for junk food served up by ARAMARK. Students waving and cheering for a touchdown or explosive tackle are captive consumers on campus, with no choice but to lap up the biotech industry's GMOs and chemicals. That sounds dramatic or overblown, but it's a simple reality, and most of us eat it everyday unawares. It's time to pack out stadiums for our right to know and choose what we eat, for our farmers and land and water and seed. The stakes are high, much higher than a Tigers game, but can we recognize it and act?

The organic farm on Clemson's campus is 1/100th the size of the practice fields devoted to the Tigers. Perhaps this gross imbalance is precisely why we have lost control of our food and given it, without a fight, to giant chemical companies. But still, there is an organic farm on campus....so there is hope.

Jeremy
www.gmofilm.com

Jeremy Seifert - Western Carolina University

The latest update from Jeremy Seifert, touring his film GMO OMG:

Tucked in the mountains of the Nantahala National Forest, just south of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, lies the tiny town of Cullowhee, NC, home of Western Carolina University. For this second screening of the Southern Tour, the whole family packed into the rental car and drove through the gray, dormant forest through wisps of icy snow. This was the second cold snap of fall and the temperature dropped to 26 degrees! Very cold for transplants from Los Angeles.

It was another fantastic screening, with many students in attendance, and a lively half hour discussion afterward. We ended up talking about the need for students to wake up to this issue and take a stand, like in the good ol' days of campus revolution again Vietnam.

Many students on campuses across the country truly do not have a choice when it comes to food. The meal programs, many of them run by companies like Aramark, serve up GMOs and preservative-packed crap to a captive student body. We need for students to take the lead on getting good, organic, local, fresh food on campuses. How amazing would it be if the college population of this country said NO to the corporate slop and YES to real food?

I heartfelt thank you to senior Jeffrey Ray for driving me around and helping with t-shirt sales. Wearing only a t-shirt in the bitter cold, without one goose bump on his smooth black skin, I learned a thing or two about being a real man, too! Thanks for that, Jeffrey!

Jeremy
www.gmofilm.com

Jeremy Seifert - ETSU

An update from Jeremy Siefert, currently touring his film GMO OMG:

I drove up to Johnson City, TN, with my son, Finn, for the screening at ETSU last night. We chatted the whole way up about our favorite kinds of trees (Coastal Redwood, Sequoia, ancient oaks, and sugar maple) and also about various wild mushrooms, mostly the ones that can kill you. The leaves have mostly fallen in the mountains that border North Carolina and Tennessee, making it easy to spot all the evergreens that dot the ridges.

The screening at the Mary B. Martin School of the Arts on campus was fantastic! There were well over two hundred people from all over the community in attendance, and Earth Fare provided an amazing spread of appetizers afterward. Finn participated in the end of the Q&A, answering a few questions about what we grew in our garden last year. He also sold GMO OMG t-shirts after the screening and chatted with people for over an hour....he's learning all about life on the road! On the way back home at 11PM, he said he was so exhausted from talking to everyone, "I mean, I talked to like a thousand people and for like 30 minutes each!"

A big THANK YOU to Anita DeAngelis and her team for making it an event to remember.

Jeremy

gmofilm.com

November Update - New Films and Filmmakers on the Southern Circuit

Happy November, friends! The weather is becoming crisp, leaves are changing colors, and we've got three new filmmakers on the Southern Circuit! Please join us in welcoming Vivienne Roumani (Out of Print), Jeremy Seifert (GMO OMG), and John Beck (Harvest).

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Vivienne Roumani is an independent producer/director based in New York City. She brings to Out of Print a unique perspective gained as a director at the Library of Congress and the UC Berkeley Library, where she led digitization projects. Vivienne's previous documentary, The Last Jews of Libya, narrated by Isabella Rossellini, had its U.S. premiere at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival and was subsequently screened at major festivals and other venues around the world as well as on the Sundance channel.

Out of Print draws us into the topsy-turvy world of the revolution that is changing everything about the printed word – and changing us. We find ourselves in the midst of the riveting debate over the future of ideas when anyone can find out almost anything about any topic, anywhere, at lightning speed. Filmmaker Vivienne Roumani weaves order as she tackles the questions confronting the modern word industry and shows that much more is at stake than how quickly we can access the latest byte.

Schedule:
Nov 7 - City of Miramar, Miramar, FL
Nov 8 - Palace Theatre, Gallatin, TN
Nov 10 - Winder Cultural Arts Center, Winder, GA
Nov 12 - Morris Museum of Arts, Augusta, GA
Nov 14 - Wallace State Community College, Hanceville, AL
Nov 15 - Serenbe Institute for Art, Culture and the Environment, Chattahoochee, GA
Nov 17 - The Clifton Center, Louisville, KY

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In 2010, Jeremy Seifert completed his debut film, DIVE!, Living off America’s Waste. Initially made with a $200 budget, a borrowed camera, and a lot of heart, DIVE! won 22 film festivals worldwide. In 2010 with the release of DIVE!, Jeremy began the production company, Compeller Pictures. He is now a filmmaker and activist, traveling the country and speaking on humanitarian and environmental issues. Jeremy’s second film, GMO OMG, tells the hidden story of the take over of our food supply by giant chemical companies, an agricultural crisis that has grown into a cultural crisis. He has once again found the heart of the project in his own journey and awakening. Jeremy and his wife, Jen, live in North Carolina with their three children, Finn (7), Scout (4), and Pearl (2).

GMO OMG director and concerned father Jeremy Seifert is in search of answers. How do GMOs affect our children, the health of our planet, and our freedom of choice? And perhaps the ultimate question, which Seifert tests himself: is it even possible to reject the food system currently in place, or have we lost something we can’t gain back? These and other questions take Seifert on a journey from his family’s table to Haiti, Paris, Norway, and the lobby of agra-giant Monsanto, from which he is unceremoniously ejected. Along the way we gain insight into a question that is of growing concern to citizens the world over: what's on your plate?

Schedule:
Nov 11 - East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, TN
Nov 12 - Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC
Nov 13 - Clemson University, Clemson, SC
Nov 14 - Presbyterian College, Clinton, SC
Nov 15 - Link Centre, Tupelo, MS
Nov 17 - Georgia College & State University, Milledgeville, GA
Nov 18 - The Arts Council, Gainesville, GA
Nov 19 - Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Arts, Auburn University, Auburn, AL
Nov 20 - Indie Memphis, Memphis, TN
Nov 21 - Haley Institute of Contemporary Art, Charleston, SC

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Bay Area filmmaker and journalist, John Beck splits his time between directing and producing documentaries, shooting promotional video and writing freelance journalism. For the past 15 years, he has worked as a journalist in Sonoma County where Harvest is set among the vineyards. It was while on assignment to capture footage of a night harvest at Foppiano Vineyards in 2010 that he stumbled upon the behind-the-scenes drama and sacrifice that go into every bottle of wine. That's when he decided to follow all walks of life - rich, poor, winemaker, grape picker - through next year's harvest of 2011. It would turn out to be the worst harvest in Sonoma County in at least 50 years. His previous films, the feature-length Worst in Show, and shorts Stringers and Drag King, have won numerous film festival awards. His print stories have won national awards from the Society for Features Journalism and the Association of Sunday and Features Editors. Beck was born in Nashville, Tennessee and now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area

Shot entirely in Sonoma County, the feature-length documentary Harvest reveals the blood, sweat and tears that go into every bottle of wine. There is no swirling, no sniffing, no sipping or quaffing. This is all about back-breaking manual labor and night picks at 2 a.m. with only tiny headlamps. Over the course of three months during Harvest 2011, the film follows five family wineries - Robledo, Rafanelli, Foppiano, Harvest Moon and Robert Hunter. This is the story behind the wine you drink.

Schedule:
Nov 12 - The City of Suwanee, Suwanee, GA
Nov 13 - Madison-Morgan Cultural Center, Madison, GA
Nov 15 - City of Hapeville, Hapeville, GA
Nov 16 - Banners at McNeese, Lake Charles, LA
Nov 18 - Vermilionville Living History Museum, Lafayette, LA
Nov 19 - Arts Council of Central Louisiana, Alexandria, LA