Helen De Michiel, co-director of the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture (NAMAC) recently wrote an interesting piece discussing the changing landscape of independent documentaries and the use of media as a tool for participation, transformation, and social action. She writes about the relationship that filmmakers have with the making of their film and the development of social outreach - especially how increasingly the approach is shifting toward alternative avenues for distribution:
Public engagement and outreach planning are the farthest from a filmmaker’s thinking when beginning the process, but now these may become one of the most important links to get the film completed and distributed, and most importantly, used by people.
In come the efforts of Working Films, and those of our counterparts at Active Voice, where she explains that we:
… offer strategy, partnership matchmaking for long term relationships, and the service of being the much-needed intermediary between the creative filmmaking team and the advocacy networks that can use the work to open up dialogue and set the stage for inspired action… In this model, the filmmaker and community collaborators assume a stance of equality while undertaking the project, seeing a creative arc from production to presentation and distribution to ways that “users” can shape it into their worlds.
She urges filmmakers to not be overwhelmed by the possibilities, and instead embrace them and your audience cohorts. Read the entire piece A Mosaic of Practices: Public Media and Participatory Culture.
What’s better than the opportunity to make a video that sends an inspiring message about climate change to our next president? How about the chance to win a cash prize and your video broadcast on internet and TV channels?1Sky and Brighter Planet are inviting Americans to create powerful video messages that deliver a clear message to Washington: We’re ready for strong leadership on climate change. Upload your 30- or 60- second video to the contest page on Vimeo.com before September 22, 2008 to compete for $4,500 in cash prizes: www.vimeo.com/climatematters.
The ten videos with the most views per day will be judged by a select panel that includes award-winning documentary filmmaker and producer Rory Kennedy (Ghosts of Abu Ghraib) and Academy award-winning producer Tia Lessen (Trouble the Water, Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine), among other notable individuals.
The Banished post-broadcast outreach campaign is in full swing! DVDs and event resources are available for community groups, civil rights institutions, and activists. Since its broadcast in February 2008, there has been overwhelming interest in intersecting Banished with on-going activism around reparations, displacement and gentrification. In June a New York-based youth program, Cultural Connections used Banished as part of its leadership development series for high school students from all over the City.
LDF attorney, Damon Hewitt explained in greater detail the difficulty with “adverse possession” cases. Other attorneys present volunteered to do more research. Most of the discussion focused on strategies for organizing communities and faith-based institutions to support the families portrayed in the film. Participants agreed to contact institutions in their networks. Ultimately, the groups present decided to host a major screening and panel discussion in NYC bringing out people featured in the film as well as the filmmaker.
On July 21, Judith Helfand and I, representing Working Films, headed to the BritDoc Film Fest at Keble College, Oxford, to continue our partnership with the Channel 4 British Documentary Film Foundation, hosts and masterminds of this hippest fest. (In early June, Judith and I ran the Films for Change workshop in London, also hosted by BritDoc.) The BritDoc fest has become widely celebrated, as IndieWire tells it:
In three years, BritDoc has transformed from noble experiment (inclusive documentary conference based at a legendary university) to unquestionable success. Set over three days on the Keble College campus in Oxford, UK, the conference has become a necessary launch pad for both completed and in-progress nonfiction filmmaking. The 2008 edition will be known for its combination of large audiences (early estimates are at 900 attendees), inspiring discoveries, and unconventionally beautiful English weather.
BritDoc invited us to co-conspire with them on their latest brainstorm for the fest, The Good Pitch. The intent for The Good Pitch was simple: as the London Guardian newspaper tells it:
for filmmakers to shop their wares to a roundtable of potential ‘stakeholders’ - distributors, broadcasters, charities, foundations, brands and media - not just to raise production money but to help situate each film as part of a wider campaign and maximize its impact. Accordingly, representatives from Amnesty, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Compassion in World Farming, the World Development Movement, Christian Aid, Channel 4, the Sundance Institute, Participant Media, MySpace, Snagfilms The British Beekeepers’ Association (BBKA) and many more spent the afternoon swapping table places to give guidance and support to the relevant projects.
This year’s Republican and Democratic National Conventions will include the Impact Film Festival which will be screening socially themed films over a four day span. Following each film will be panel discussions consisting of filmmakers, lawmakers and other civic leaders. The films involved with the festival were selected based on their powerful and thought provoking stories on hot topic issues.
Among the films to be screened is Trouble the Water, which won the 2008 Working Films Full Frame Award. Trouble the Water tells the story of an aspiring rap artist and her streetwise husband, trapped in New Orleans by deadly floodwaters, who survive Hurricane Katrina and then seize a chance for a new beginning. It’s a redemptive tale of self-described street hustlers who become heroes that takes you inside Hurricane Katrina in a way never before seen on screen.
The Impact Film Festival will run August 25-28th at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado and September 1-4th at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Activists and Nonprofits are turning to YouTube to spread their message
As a media and technology activist, I’ve been researching, testing and tweaking ideas on how to incorporate social networking into Working Films’ online presence. Since we work with documentaries, we needed a visible place to host trailers and video clips and to also spark discussions about films in an interactive way. It was only a matter of time before we would turn to YouTube, the 3rd most visited website on the Internet according to Alexa, to fulfill that need.
Many organizations have started using YouTube’s non-profit program to spread their message and calls to action to a wider audience. Working Films recently became a part of this program and shortly after, our Biofuels High video was featured in the Spotlight section of the YouTube Nonprofits and Activism page. The clip, which you can view below, is a video extra from the Everything’s Cool Activist DVD. The clip highlights the Automotive High School in Brooklyn, NY and how their students are the future engineers and visionaries for a green energy economy.
More recently, another video extra from the Everything’s Cool Activist DVD, Green Jobs Revolution, was featured on the Nonprofits and Activism page. We’re hoping that these opportunities will help us spread the powerful messages in the films we work with and will encourage people to share their opinions about the issues raised.
“But first it will make you miserable.” Typically, people know the first part of that quote, but rarely do they understand the meaning of the second. Recently, Working Films organized a summit that brought together grassroots activists, organizers, peace-builders and others who have been involved in truth and reconciliation efforts and racial justice around the film, Greensboro: Closer to the Truth. The summit, which was also attended by Greensboro filmmaker Adam Zucker, proved to be a ground-breaking discussion for people to talk about the many meanings behind the nature of what we do when we work on issues of racial and social justice. We talked about the nature of truth and how dominant institutions are often invested in a narrative that trivializes the need for racial dignity. We talked about the power of the people to reclaim their own democracies by setting up their own unofficial truth and reconciliation projects. We talked about the differences between truth and reconciliation when it comes to events of racial violence, and how standing up to racism often doesn’t start with a commission and definitely doesn’t end with a report; they are part of a process that continues every day. But most of all we talked about who we need to get “Greensboro” closer to, because none of us have gotten to the truth yet, and the sooner we get there…the freer we’ll be.
The extent to which politics plays a role in scientific reports on the environment is incredibly disappointing for those of us that care about climate change. Government whistleblower Rick Piltz and journalist Ross Gelbspan featured in Everything’s Cool demonstrated that many government and news reports have been skewed to misrepresent the threat that global warming presents - thus widening the gap between what scientists know and what the public understands.
“Our investigation,” the report said, “found that during the fall of 2004 through early 2006, the NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs managed the topic of climate change in a manner that reduced, marginalized or mischaracterized climate change science made available to the general public.”
Revkin also noted that Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, the New Jersey Democrat who wrote the request for the inquiry stated:
“Global warming is the most serious environmental threat we face, but this report is more evidence that the Bush administration’s appointees have put political ideology ahead of science,” Mr. Lautenberg said in a statement e-mailed by an aide. “Our government’s response to global warming must be based on science, and the Bush administration’s manipulation of that information violates the public trust.”
There is no doubt that this type of suppression is having an impact on our government policy or the lack thereof. Our partners at 1Sky are mobilizing for strong climate legislation from the next Congress. In the mean time we will continue to push for the truth.
I have long been intrigued by the question of to what degree our personalities and our health are affected by our genes versus our environment. Through reading and film I’ve learned more and more about how pollutants in our environment put as at risk for health problems, and simultaneously I have marveled at scientists’ capacity to unlock the human genome. Among other advances brought about through these new scientific understandings, we now have the tools to help us learn whether a certain gene might increase our risk of cancer or other diseases.
Because of my fascination with the role of our genes in shaping our lives and because of my own family history of cancer I was delighted when I found out that Working Films would be planning a summit meeting for the film In the Family. In this documentary, filmmaker Joanna Rudnick, age 31, faces an impossible decision: remove her breasts and ovaries or risk incredible odds of developing cancer. Armed with a genetic test result that leaves her vulnerable and confused, she balances dreams of having her own children with the unnerving reality that she is risking her life by holding on to her fertility. In the Family follows Joanna as she connects with other women trying to navigate the unpredictable world of predictive genetic testing.
I’ve worked closely with Joanna and the film’s co-producer Beth Iams in preparing for the summit meeting for the film. At this meeting we will bring together the leading organizations working to prevent breast cancer and raise awareness of the issues surrounding genetic testing for cancers and other diseases. A few weeks ago I picked up our office phone and on the other end heard Beth’s voice, full of excitement: “Anna, take a look at C-Span right now, the Senate is just about to pass GINA.” I hurried over to the television and sure enough the Senators were voting on the Genetic Information Non-discrimination Act.
Beth’s excitement was certainly warranted. One of the reasons that some folks choose not to take potentially life saving genetic tests, like the one taken by Joanna in the film, is that they are worried about the use of the information after the fact. They worry they will never get health insurance or will lose out on job opportunities if they have certain genetic mutations. GINA, which was signed into law On May 21st by President Bush, is landmark legislation designed to avoid those types of abuses. It will provide protections against discrimination based on an individual’s genetic information in health insurance coverage and employment settings.
One of the lead partners in a coalition working for the passage of GINA is our host for the summit meeting, the Genetic Alliance. We look forward to their participation in our strategy meeting and to finding out how In the Family can help raise awareness of the new rights afforded to people under GINA.
Much of our work in media outreach is founded on hope and belief in a process of what can come out of getting smart and committed people together, and working toward a vission of social justice. Like ripples in a pond, the ultimate outcomes come back to us in ways that continue to surprise and inspire us.
The film follows the journeys of Ayehu, Zewdie, Almaz, Yenenesh and Wubete to the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital to seek treatment for the devastating child-birth injury that has left each of them incontinent. From their remote villages, over miles of dusty steppes and sprawling lowlands, the women travel to the capital city to reclaim their dignity after years of social ostracism.
The film was conceived in 2004, after Steve Engel, executive producer and owner of Engel Entertainment, read a New York Times column by Nicholas Kristof. The column, entitled “Alone and Ashamed”, described the lives of fistula survivors in rural Ethiopia. “I didn’t even finish the second paragraph, before thinking—first, I’ve never heard of this condition, and, second, we have to make a movie about it.”
The summit meeting brought together the creative energies of the film’s creators with organizers and experts on women’s health generally and fistula specifically. The summit’s objective was to help create new opportunities to use this award-winning film to create increased awareness of and support for programs that promote maternal health.
Earlier this week, Veronica Chambers wrote about the campaign to end fistula at TheRoot.com. The title of the piece and its general message emphasized how the campaign, which seeks to raise funds to support the $300 surgery which can prevent fistula, a vaginal rupture caused by prolonged, obstructed labor. Chambers writes,
In the U.S. and Europe, fistula has been almost eradicated. New York’s famous Waldorf-Astoria Hotel stands on the grounds of what was the first fistula hospital in the world. It opened in 1857 and closed its doors in 1895; fistula has not been a maternal health issue in North America for over 100 years.
But the condition is still common in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and the Middle East. In the countries where it is still prevalent, lack of medical equipment and expertise can escalate an obstructed labor into a medical emergency. Sometimes the labor lasts for days at a time. The resulting delivery causes a rupture between the vagina and bladder or the vagina and rectum. Those who survive face ongoing indescribable pain and incapacitating leakage of urine and feces that renders them outcasts in their communities. And in almost every case, the woman loses her baby.
It is believed that 2 million women are living with fistula in the world today.
We believe that the the film, A Walk To Beautiful, the accompanying campaign, the summit meeting, coverage like Chambers’s and the web of policy and reforming practice will help women suffering from fistula, and eventually prevent the condition.
Ours is the belief in the evidence of things unseen - accompanied by the dedication of resources through focused through intent.
