You can’t just want your film to be a powerful tool for creating social change.

YOU HAVE TO ENSURE IT!

Working Films is accepting applications for the first annual Fledgling Fund and Chicken & Egg Pictures Grantee Residency to be held in the beautiful Hudson Valley at the LifeBridge Sanctuary Retreat Center, August 12-15, 2009. Eight filmmakers will be selected to participate in this interactive retreat focused on the nuts & bolts of audience and community engagement campaigning for non-fiction films. This residency is for Chicken & Egg and Fledgling Fund grantees only.

Working Films will guide a select group of grantees from these two organizations as they create and/or refine audience engagement plans for their non-fiction media and film projects. Linking the documentaries to organizations committed to progressive social change will be a key component of the residency.

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Arts Engine presents Media That Matters: More than a Festival on Wednesday, June 3, 2009 at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. This year’s festival includes a spectacular line up of 12 jury selected short films (each 12 minutes or less) on issues of social and environmental concern.

Exiled in America won Working Films’ Changemaker Award, a prize we bestow annually. This moving piece explores immigration issues in the United States related to detention and deportation from the point of view of five siblings struggling to live in America after their mother was deported to Mexico.

The festival will kick off a full year of action tied to the films aimed at making positive impact around the globe. The films will be made available in their entirety online and distributed on DVD for use in community based screenings. Organize a screening where you live! Visit www.mediathatmattersfest.org for more information, take action links, and a DIY guide to using films to inspire change.

The Good Pitch North America tour, taking place at the the AFI-Discovery Channel SILVERDOCS Festival on 16 June 2009, is a partnership between the Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation and the Sundance Institute documentary Film Program, generously supported by the Fledgling Fund and us, Working Films.

From over 300 applications, eight filmmaking teams have been selected to pitch their films and outreach campaigns to an invited audience, comprising leading national and international NGOs, foundations, broadcasters, campaigners and media in order to maximize the impact of their social-issue documentary projects. Those already confirmed to attend include: Cinereach, IMPACT Partners, Fledgling Fund, Moveon.org, Katahdin Foundation, Avaaz.org, Amnesty International, ITVS, Tribeca Film Institute, Wide Angle, Indiepix, BAVC Producers Institute for New Media Technologies, POV, Incite Productions, 1% for the Planet, The Impact Arts + Film Fund, Grantmakers in Film and Electronic Media and the Phoebe Haas Charitable Trust.

The selected filmmakers are Julia Bacha (Budrus has a Hammer), Robbie Gemmel (Cape Wind: The Fight for the Future of Power in America), Hugo Berkeley (The Exchange), Megan Gelstein (Green Shall Overcome), Stephen T Maing (High Tech, Low Life), Kristi Jacobson & Lori Silverbush (Hungry in America), Joe Wilson & Dean Hamer (Out In The Silence) and Debra Anderson (Split Estate). After a day of pitch training by Robert and Judith, they will present their projects in a live pitching event on June 16th, 2009 in Washington D.C.

Find out more about the remarkable films participating in the Good Pitch at SILVERDOCS.