Voices of Transition

The inspirational, encouraging documentary “Voices of Transition” is a patchwork assembly that gives a voice to the main protagonists behind the agro-ecological transition. In France, the UK and Cuba, farmers and scientists, permaculture designers and Transition Town pioneers show us how to deal with the challenges posed by climate change, resource scarcity and impending famine by using radical new ways – and in such a manner that unforeseen possibilities arise. Solutions such as the integration of trees alongside crops or urban agriculture show that necessity is the mother of invention, but also that sustainability can be fun!

The Film should encourage people to think!
How are we going to increase food production to meet the requirement of the growing world population, in spite of the increased number of droughts and the extreme oil dependency of our agricultural model? Will we use nature as the source of inspiration to create efficient, humane and local systems?
“Voices of Transition” is also an “action movie”. Namely one which inspires action!
The length of the movie – 65 minutes – should be long enough to fill the hall, and short enough to offer the audience time for constructive debate after the film: that way we want transition initiatives to be created when people are still sitting in the cinema!

Just in time for the cinema release on the 16th October, “World Food Day”, we are bringing the film to German theatres and also call for many local groups to promote the film and its goals.
In a second step we want to initiate an educational school/university project, using a kit (film, lecture and planting project) to inform young people about the problems shown in the film and to inspire them about the alternatives.
Our target group is people who have already developed an awareness of the urgency of the mentioned issues and now want to take action. The film has been designed to offer some of the missing puzzle pieces, to demonstrate innovative ways and lastly, to inspire to take action and eventually to found a Transition Town initiative in one’s own local community.

The film project, “Voices of Transition”, was created entirely independently from television and institutions and has so far managed with very little means of production. It was therefore dependent on the participation of volunteers from many countries around the world and the countless volunteer hours invested. Now, after more than 5 years of intensive work, the project must be reinforced so that the film can be professionally marketed and the world can find out about the project. We want to ensure in particular that the film will also be shown in countries where the transition ideas are not very well known. For that we need money!
Also, 10% of the net revenues from the DVD sales (via the website www.voicesoftransition.org) will go to future transition initiatives in the Southern hemisphere!

Should the funding be successful, we want to do the following:
- Finance subtitles in various different languages (partly subsequently)
- Pay outstanding bills for the sound mix created in the recording studio
- Compensate volunteers, plus settle outstanding payments for copyrighted archive material
- Pay the Sinnwerkstatt for their great work on the website
- Edit a DVD in various languages
- Finance the making of posters and postcards
- Produce a so-called DCP to allow the film to be broadcasted in all cinemas in high quality!