In 1969, a band of draft-dodgers established a commune “to grow flowers and make pottery” near an abandoned train depot in Georgeville, Minnesota. One of them brought a video camera. His short documentary survives today.

A narrator’s voice lopes its way across some homemade footage of overgrown train tracks: “We talk to the outside world,” the voice narrates, “but we have an ambivalent attitude toward it.”

But before long, these ambivalent communards would venture to the city to participate in the burgeoning food co-op movement. In 1970, an underground newspaper in Minneapolis proclaimed “GOOD FOOD FOR STRONG REVOLUTIONARY BODIES AT THE PEOPLES’ PANTRY.”