PRESS RELEASE

Los Angeles, CA - June 1, 2009 - Antibody Films announced today that it has green-lighted "Beanstalk," a documentary following the push towards the wide-scale roll-out of the revolutionary green-energy/sustainability concept known as "Vertical Farming."

Vertical Farming is the implementation of large-scale, sustainable, carbon-negative, industrialized agriculture within indoor skyscrapers in urban and suburban areas.  Although the concept has been dreamt of since the 1920s, technology has now caught up with the idea, and there is both private and public-sector interest in building the first working prototypes.

Dr. Dickson Despommier, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Health Science at Columbia University, has been championing the idea in the media since 2007, and has received coverage from New York magazine, Popular Science, U.S. News & World Report, Science, Wired, The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Time, The Discovery Channel, and The Tonight Show.  He will be a central figure in Beanstalk, and provides the human hub for a network of participating scientists and educators that includes multiple Nobel Award winners, well-known scientists, and best-selling authors.

While growing crop plants inside metropolitan greenhouse-skyscrapers requires a radical break from the norm for the agro industry, the direct benefits - and the looming disasters this change could help avert - are too powerful to be ignored.  "Everyone is talking about oil right now, and how oil is a non-renewable, dwindling resource - and to be sure, 10% of all energy consumed in the US is used for the transportation of food, so Vertical Farming could have a huge impact on oil consumption - but an even less renewable resource is land," says Beanstalk producer-director Jesse Lawler.  "Over 40% of all land on Earth is already used for agriculture today.  Much of the rest is deserts or mountaintops or places you can't grow crops.  Basically, all the good stuff is already gone.  We're expecting a world population of 9.2 billion by 2050.  Where are we going to grow food to feed these people?  There isn't going to be any new land.  The only answer is: up."

The documentary is planned to follow three interweaving story threads:  The massive problems in today's food system, as highlighted in books like Paul Roberts' The End of Food and the upcoming documentary film Food, Inc.; the many benefits Vertical Farms offer over the status quo, and a vision of a future food economy based around hydroponic, pesticide-free, locally-grown, sustainable, carbon-negative, fresh foods; and the boots-on-the-ground work of the men and women at the core of this movement, pushing Vertical Farms off of the drawing board and into production.

Beanstalk will also have the support of Chris Jacobs, co-founder and Executive Creative Director of the marketing firm United Future, and designer/architect of many of the best-known prototype models for Vertical Farms.

Beanstalk is expected to be in production throughout 2009, 2010, and 2011.  Says co-producer Peter Platt: "There are several implementation sites on the drawing board now that could be the first real Vertical Farm; we're not sure which will reach a production-stage first, but when it does, we'll be there with the cameras rolling."

Antibody Films anticipates Beanstalk's release in late 2011 or 2012.

About Antibody Films (www.AntibodyFilms.com)

Antibody Films produces marketable, high-impact, audience-friendly films and television projects.  The company aims to release two to three original narrative or documentary projects per year, either as theatrical releases, straight-to-video or original cable programming.  Producers Chris Aronoff and Jesse Lawler oversee all company operations and film productions, while eagerly collaborating with outside artists and financial partners.  Writers interested in submitting material to Antibody should send a brief query letter to submissions [at] AntibodyFilms.com.