Seeds

Get your Symphony of the Soil Peaceful Valley Crimson Clover seeds!
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We will be giving away crimson clover cover crop certified organic seeds at special Symphony of the Soil screenings and events. Get yours today.

List of upcoming screenings

REASONS TO GROW COVER CROPS

  • Increases organic matter and nitrogen
  • Stabilizes soil to prevent erosion
  • Creates habitat and food for beneficial insects
  • Improves water, root and air penetration
  • Increases earthworms and microorganism
  • Brings deep-rooted mineral to surface soil

Over 100 cover crops available at GrowOrganic.com

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Soil Community Theatrical Screening Discounts

For select screenings only, members of the Soil Community can show this badge at the box office to get a discount to the screening of Symphony of the Soil. See list of participating theaters below. Discount Tickets are only available through the Box Office (not available online or via telephone sales). 

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CHICAGO: FACETS CINÉMATHÈQUE
1517 W. Fullerton Ave. in Chicago
800.331.6197

Tickets: $9 General Admission; $7 for Soil Community Members
Showtimes:

Fri., Oct. 4 at 6:30 & 9 pm
Sat.–Sun., Oct. 5–6 at 4, 6:30 & 9 pm
Mon.–Thurs., Oct. 7–10 at 7 & 9 pm

Producer/Director Deborah Koons Garcia will in person for a Q&A after all screenings on Friday – Sunday, Oct. 4 – 6.
Jim Slama of Family Farmed will be in attendance for QandA on Saturday, October 5 evening programs.

 

NEW YORK: QUAD CINEMAS
34 W 13th St  New York, NY 10011
(212) 255-2243

Tickets: $11 General Admission; $8 Soil Community Members
Showtimes: 1:00pm | 3:35pm | 6:40pm | 9:10pm

Special QandA:
Friday, October 11 (after the 6:40 and 9:10 evening program)
Deborah Koons Garcia, Producer/Director
Dr. Igancio Chapela, UC Berkeley Microbial Biologist

Saturday, October 12 (after the 6:40 and 9:10 evening program)
Deborah Koons Garcia, Producer/Director
Dr. Igancio Chapela, UC Berkeley Microbial Biologist
Dr. Michael Hansen, Senior Scientist Consumers Union

Sunday, October 13 (after the 6:40  evening program)
Deborah Koons Garcia, Producer/Director
Dr. Igancio Chapela, UC Berkeley Microbial Biologist

Contact The Quad Cinema for advance tickets
212-255-2243
34 West 13th Street | New York, New York 10011

LOS ANGELES: MUSIC HALL 3 BEVERLY HILLS
9036 Wilshire Blvd.
Beverly Hills, CA 90211
310-478-3836
Showtimes 12:00 | 2:30 | 5:00 | 7:30 | 10:00

Promoting Soil Socially

FOF-poster_2MBSymphony of the Soil is currently promoting its theatrical tour but we need your help!

For a limited time only Lily Films will be giving away DVDs to Deborah Koons Garcia’s first feature documentary, The Future of Food.

Each day we will post about a Symphony of the Soil upcoming event to promote on Twitter and Facebook and will be picking two winners, one on Facebook and one on Twitter, at random who share that event information to their friends and followers. The winners will receive a DVD copy of The Future of Food.

Winners will be announced each day at 5pm PST on Facebook and Twitter. Winners will need to email [email protected] for information to receive the Future of Food DVD.

Good luck!

How to enter the Lily Films DVD Give Away Contest on Twitter:
1.) Follow Symphony of the Soil on Twitter @soilsymphony.
2.) Each morning at 9am PST @soilsymphony will tweet the event that we will be promoting for the day with the tag #lilyfilms. You need to copy and paste that tweet into your own Twitter account and tweet it.
3.) By 5pm PST @soilsymphony will pick a winner at random to win a free DVD of The Future of Food. Please note that these DVDs are for home-use only and may not be used to screen publicly. DVDs will be mailed out no later than 5 days after the date of winning.

For more information or if you have any questions please email info[at]lilyfilms[dot]com

Twitter Contest Rules:
– US residents only.
– One tweet per day per person. Posting duplicate, or near duplicate, updates or links is a violation of the Twitter Rules. If anyone found using/making multiple accounts to enter, that person will be ineligible to win.
– Any tweet that does not include @soilsymphony and #lilyfilms will not be considered.
– Contestants can add additional tags # to the tweet for more visibility.

How to enter on Facebook:
1.) LIKE Symphony of the Soil on Facebook
2.) Each morning at 9am PST Symphony of the Soil will post information about an event that we will be promoting for the day. You need to copy and paste that into your own Facebook account and post it or simply share it. Make sure your posting is public.
3.) By 5pm PST Symphony of the Soil will pick a winner at random to win a free DVD of The Future of Food. Please note that these DVDs are for home-use only and may not be used to screen publicly. DVDs will be mailed out no later than 5 days after the date of winning.

For more information or if you have any questions please email info[at]lilyfilms[dot]com

Facebook contest rules:
– US residents only.
– One update per day per person.
– All entries must tag Symphony of the Soil on Facebook by typing out @Symphony of the Soil or by Sharing the posting. Any entry that is not tagged will not be considered.
– All entries must have that particular post’s sharing settings set to Public
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Napa Screening: Community Partners

Symphony of the Soil will be screening at the Napa Valley Opera House on Wednesday, October 2.

RECEPTION 6PM
FILM SCREENING 7 PM
To purchase tickets and for more information: http://nvoh.org/napa-valley-opera-house/film-symphony-soil

SPECIAL Q&A post film with:
Producer/Director Deborah Koons Garcia
UC Berkeley Microbial Biologist Dr. Ignacio Chapela
Frog’s Leap Owner and Winemaker John Williams

Admission $10 General, $7 Students
Must be 21 years of age or older to participate in the drink tasting.

Reception featuring wine from Demeter Biodynamic® Certified Vineyards and local, GE-Free foods.

Vendors and sponsors include Demeter-certified Biodynamic® Vineyards, Label GMOs Napa County, Frog’s Leap Winery, Charbay Artisan Distillery & WineryLa Toque,  Teeeny Tiny Coffee CompanyAtlas Peak Olive Oil, St. Clair Brown Winery, Ca’ MomiSilverado Cooking School, Boca Farm, Farmstead at Long Meadow Ranch, and Foodshed Pizza and Pasta.

Reception graciously organized and sponsored by Demeter Association and Label GMOs Napa County.

demeter-med-logo

 

Demeter enables people to farm successfully, in accordance with Biodynamic® practices and principles. Demeter’s vision is to heal the planet through agriculture. Demeter US is a nonprofit certifier of Biodynamic® Farms and products in the US.

 

 

LabelGMOs

The original grassroots group that organized to get the ballot initiative going in California. A grassroots coalition of consumer, public health and environmental organizations, and food companies in California that is educating Californians about the risks of GMOs.

 

A special thanks to Slow Food Napa Valley for help promoting the event!

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UPCOMING SCREENINGS LIST

Here is a list of confirmed screenings of SYMPHONY OF THE SOIL 
More are on their way, so check back or sign up for our newsletter to keep updated.

January 24-25, 2015: Berlin, GERMANY
GreenMe Film Festival

*February 7, 2015: Sacramento, CA
California Museum – Dig It Exhibit

February 22, 2015: Meadford, Ontario, Canada
Films For Thought: Transition Meadford

*March 5, 2015: Mill Valley, CA
Outdoor Arts Club

March 12, 2015: Seattle, WA
Seattle Garden Club

March 2015: Grayslake, IL
Liberty Prarie Foundation

March 13, 2015: Maui, HI
*The Merwin Conservancy

April 23, 2015: Keene, NY
Harris Center for Conservation Education

* Director Deborah Koons Garcia will be present

Chicago community partners

As the Symphony of the Soil Chicago premiere at Facets Cinémathèque fast approaches in less than a month (Symphony of the Soil screens from October 4 – 10, 2013) we at Lily Films have been working with groups in the Chicago area. We would like to take this moment to thank all of them for helping promote this event and encourage their members and supporters to share this documentary and expand it to new audiences.

 angelic-organics-learning-center-logo    0bafbc92a68ac695c39d91bbcda783b8-Environmental Education Association of Illinois   thumb_38235 peggy-notebaert-nature-museum[1]    familyfarmedlogo   good-yt-ha5

                    chicagowilderness29  chicagoconservationcorpschicagoenvironmentalnetheadThank you for your support!
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Director Deborah Koons Garcia Discusses Alternatives to the Industrial Food System

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“Symphony of the Soil” director Deborah Koons Garcia

When it comes to agriculture in the 21st century, there are generally two types of farms. There’s the small, diversified and often organic operation, and then there’s the large, commercial, commodity agribusiness. While the organic farmer usually uses traditional methods of composting, planting cover crops and plenty of manual labor to keep the farm producing, the agribusiness relies on chemical fertilizers, pesticides, genetically engineered crops and heavy machinery to keep yields high. For the past several decades, most policy makers have subscribed to the philosophy that industrial farming is the only way to feed the world and view small-scale organic farms as more of a boutique trade. In recent years a new movement has challenged that wisdom.

In 2004, filmmaker (and widow of Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead) Deborah Koons Garcia delivered a blistering critique of the industrial food system with her documentary “The Future of Food.” Widely shown in environmental and local-food activist circles, the film documents the control the biotech industry has exerted over the global food system with the patenting of genetically engineered foods (GMOs) and the proliferation of large, industrial, monoculture farms. As a result, small farmers have been pushed out of business, the population has become dependent on food corporations, and the risk of an ecological calamity due to the lack of biological diversity and reliance on petroleum-based, toxic chemicals has increased exponentially. Garcia says if humans are going to survive, we’re going to have to get back to our roots.

“I’m a conservative,” said Garcia during a recent interview. “I want to conserve our seed supply. I want to conserve our culture, our small farms, and our small towns.”

Garcia’s describes her latest film, “Symphony of the Soil,” as the completion of a consciousness-raising project she began over a decade ago with “The Future of Food.” Her new documentary is a compelling study of our relationship to the soil, the “living skin of the earth.” Garcia breaks soil down into its most basic components, from glacial clay and coral fragments to wind-blown and water-dropped sediments. As the film notes, 75 percent of soil is formed by such transport. It is then enriched with millions of tiny organisms, creating the “interface between geology and biology,” a cycle that has allowed humans to find sustenance from the land since the very beginning.

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Bay Area support

We at Lily Films work with community groups to ensure that our screenings are a success. Recently the following groups have been helping us promote our San Francisco screening at the Roxie on Saturday September 28th at 7pm.

Thank You…

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example-logo-detail-CS2 farmsreachlogo-full OmOrganics wfi-logo3  rainbowgrocery_1  7786672860_cf6cd1b1f9_b

We appreciate the love, support and help promoting our event.

Symphony of the Soil at The Roxie in San Francisco
Saturday, September 28 at 7:00pm
Producer/Director Deborah Koons Garcia and UC Berkeley Microbial Biologist Dr. Ignacio Chapela in attendance for a Q and A.
http://www.roxie.com/events/details.cfm?eventid=5F37FBAC-B18B-8B3C-808DEAFED23D2C7F

‘Symphony of the Soil’ Shines Light On What’s Gone Wrong

ZesterDaily piece by:

As “Symphony of the Soil,” the latest film written by Deborah Koons Garcia, points out, “One can go down thousands of years into the soil. Soil is the water and land having a dialogue. Soil is the interface of biology and geology. Soil is an ecosystem,  a living thing. As long as the soil remains healthy, the planet will be healthy.”

The Soul of the Soil


First in a three-part series on soil used to grow food crops.

To see “Symphony of the Soil” in your area, click here for a list of theaters.


In the 1970s, Garcia became a vegetarian. She also became a fanatic about good, clean food. She doesn’t eat white sugar, white flour or anything that isn’t organic. As she became educated about real food, she began to think about a film. What resulted were a number of films and then “The Future of Food,” a documentary that, among other things, deals head on with the issue of genetically modified organisms and the world of agriculture.

Symphony of Soil” does not focus on the agriculture world. It deals with deeper issues that affect the soil. Although the film is an overlay of facts, time-lapse photography, animated water colors and beautiful soothing music, the details are deeply disturbing. Here are some:

In the last 25 years, the biology of soil all over the world has been interrupted by antibiotics, herbicides and pesticides. Whereas soil used to be full of lively diverse microbes, in most places this is no longer the case. In the last 50 years we have destroyed the world’s topsoil. In order to rectify this situation, synthetic fertilizers are used to enrich the degraded soil, which only puts further stress on the soil and increases its vulnerability to pests. This causes farmers to use more pesticides, stronger pesticides and stronger herbicides. One-third of the world’s arable land has been lost to erosion.

Seventy percent of our freshwater is used for agriculture irrigation. And that resource is quickly dissipating at an unsustainable rate. Among the chemicals that causes the most concern is aminopyralid.

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