In the film What’s On Your Plate?, Sadie and Safiyah go on a mission to find out where their food comes from. The film follows them visiting local farms and farmer’s markets, talking to food experts and activists, cooking delicious meals, and being aware of the journey their food took to get on their plates. The Pesticide Action Network just launched a free iPhone application that makes it easy to find out what’s on your food. Check it out to see what kind of pesticides are on your plate. Yuck!
This year we’ve worked with a number of films on environmental issues, including The Age of Stupid and No Impact Man, where a prevalent theme is the need for a binding and just international agreement to address climate change. With world leaders set to gather in Copenhagen in just under a month to negotiate a new international climate treaty, we need President Obama and the Senate to show leadership in enacting bold climate solutions. Leading organizations, such as 1Sky, are urging people to make a creative statement through “Make Art…
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…
Note from Working Films: You can follow the festival live on Twitter: #TfPE09. We’ll also be posting updates on our blog along the way. by Gwen Evans, Nelson Institute The Tales from Planet Earth film festival this weekend, Nov. 6-8, will screen some 50 environmental films from around the world that explore how stories told through film can influence our understanding of, and relationships to, nature. But the festival, organized by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, is more than just hunkering down in a dark theater…
By Lewis Beale StarNews Correspondent Robert West was working as a film programmer at Charlotte’s Mint Museum when he became increasingly interested in documentaries with a social context – films about race, health care, women’s and gay rights – because “they seemed to be the most powerful stories. I would watch 200 people in a room be collectively moved by a story.” But West noticed something else. After the lights went up, and the q&a session with the filmmaker began, the first question often would be “What can I do?”…
Are you a grassroots activist or a community organizer interested in using films for social change? Working Films is accepting applications for audience and community engagement coordinators, with possible openings starting in early 2010. These will be either full or part time positions connected to a number of new projects and campaigns that are in the development phase at Working Films. Engagement coordinators will manage national community engagement campaigns for social and environmental issue documentaries. Read more on our website.
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