Filmmakers and organizations are coming up with creative ways to incorporate a spectrum of social media into film campaigns, including interactive websites and games, issue-based social networking communities, podcasts and web TV shows. Filmmaker Dawn Valadez joins us as a guest blogger to share how she and her partners created their own social networking community just for girls. Going on 13 began in 2000 and was an ambitious journey to capture the transformation of 4 pre-teen girls as they became young women. We shot the film for four years and edited for…
Filmmakers and organizations are coming up with creative ways to incorporate a spectrum of social media into film campaigns, including interactive websites and games, issue-based social networking communities, podcasts and web TV shows. Associate Director of the No Impact Project, Stephanie Bleyer, joins us as a guest blogger to share how she’s using a widget as part of the No Impact Project’s campaign. The No Impact Project and the Center for a New American Dream have joined together to help communities simplify the holidays this year. During the two-weeks of…
Filmmakers and organizations are coming up with creative ways to incorporate a spectrum of social media into film campaigns, including interactive websites and games, issue-based social networking communities, podcasts and web TV shows. Filmmaker Nancy Schwartzman joins us as a guest blogger to share how she’s using popular social media tools to engage young people in her campaign. @thelinecampaign: Sex. Consent. Power. Pleasure. The Line is a film. The Line is a movement. The Line is up to you. “The Line is about building a world where people are free…
In our consultations with filmmakers, at our strategic summits, in our workshops and residencies, and during informal conversations at film festivals we are always trying to hammer home for filmmakers the importance of forming solid, ongoing, mutually-beneficial partnerships with organizations working on the issues featured in their films. From the start of our work ten years ago, we found strategic partnerships – finding the right NGOs, funders, and even brands – to be the one key component for successful film campaigns. If we identified the right partners, the rest came…
The Media That Matters Film Festival is now accepting submissions for their 10th Annual Film Festival. The festival showcases short films on various social justice issues. This year they are particularly interested in films on Media Literacy, Human Rights, LGBTQ & Sexual Identity, Youth Activism and International issues. Each year, Working Films presents the Changemaker Award to the film with the most potential to inspire activism. Last year, we presented the award to Exiled in America, a film about five siblings struggling to support their American livelihoods after their mother…
When watching news about famines and starving people in foreign countries, we often feel removed from the problem, even as we express pity and regret. Beadie Finzi’s The Hunger Season shatters our illusions of distance, however, revealing the complex interconnections between global economic systems, the hunger for new biofuel sources of energy, global climate change, political unrest, and resulting devastation of drought and famine for millions of people around the world. Tracing the journey of food aid from the fields of Wisconsin farmers to USAID and finally to Swaziland, where…
I am just back from the hills of Sheffield UK and their exuberant Doc Fest. Five days of high energy started as soon as I stepped off the train; most of the festival venues were right by the station and crowds were already milling. The sold out opening night film was Moving to Mars, a film we supported this past summer through the Good Pitch and a strategy summit. Out of these efforts, the film developed a community engagement campaign that takes them on the road with refugee supporters and…
Working Films is proud to be coordinating panel discussions after two films at the Cucalorus Films Festival in our hometown of Wilmington, NC. Named one of the “25 Coolest Film Festivals” by Movie Maker Magazine, Cucalorus runs November 11th-15th at venues across city. Crude is a real-life high stakes legal drama that uncovers the infamous “Amazon Chernobyl” case against a backdrop of the environmental movement, global politics, celebrity activism, human rights advocacy, the media, multinational corporate power, and rapidly-disappearing indigenous cultures. Crude will screen at 10am Thursday November 12th. In…
As part of the community events of Tales from Planet Earth, Troy Gardens and MACSAC participated as community partners in the screening event of What’s On Your Plate? along with filmmakers Catherine Gund and Sadie Rain Hope-Gund. What’s On Your Plate? follows Sadie and Safiyah as they talk to each other, food activists, farmers, new friends, storekeepers, their families, and the viewer, with a mission to understand the story behind the food we eat. This film traveled to Madison a year ago as part of the build up to this…
As part of the Community Engagement through Film class, students Jessica Halpern and Ryan Josephson worked with community partner Mario Garcia Sierra of Centro Hispano, matching the issues and stories of the organization’s community – such as immigration, labor, and education – to the issues and stories in several films by Alex Rivera. Together they hosted a special pre-screening event for Tales from Planet Earth at Centro Hispano to show Alex Rivera’s Papapapá along with a series of shorts made by youth members of Centro Hispano. The event included good…
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