The Waiting Room, supported in part by our friends at The Fledgling Fund, is a film and hyper-local media project that presents a day-in-the-life perspective for patients and their caregivers in Highland Hospital’s E.R. waiting room. The film by Pete Nicks recently picked up the Special Jury prize at Silverdocs and is described by Variety as a “rock-solid vertié docu that provides ample evidence why our national health care system needs fixing.”Currently, tens of thousands of patients are not receiving the medical attention they need due to lack of health care as well as hospitals being underfunded. The Waiting Room is set for theatrical release this September and will premiere in New York, Washington D.C., San Francisco, and Los Angeles. The team behind The Waiting Room needs your help in getting the voices of both the patients and caregivers heard to a wider audience across the nation. They have launched a Kickstarter campaign to help fund The Waiting Room Storytelling Project with a deadline of July 27 to reach their goal. Help call attention to the thousands of underserved patients by making a pledge here.
Tribeca Film Institute has opened submissions for four of their programs: TFI Documentary Fund, TFI Sloan Filmmaker Fund, Tribeca All Access and TFI Latin America Media Arts Fund. Beyond providing grants for non-fiction, narrative and new media filmmakers, these programs also include year-round support like resources and industry connections for the grantees who will participate in events during the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival in New York. For more information, visit their website. The deadline is October 10th, 2011.
Full Frame Documentary Film Festival is now accepting submissions. The festival will be held April 12-15th, 2012 in Durham, NC. Full Frame serves the documentary form and its community by showcasing the contemporary work of established and emerging filmmakers. The festival provides a space that nurtures conversation between artists, students, and the Full Frame audience. Full Frame is committed to enhancing public understanding and appreciation of the art form and its significance, while making films more accessible to a wider audience.
The Fledgling Fund supports innovative media projects that can play critical roles in igniting social change. The primary focus of The Fledgling Fund’s creative media initiative is outreach and audience engagement. Applicants are encouraged to review their written resources on assessing impact and understanding distribution, outreach/strategic communications and audience engagement prior to applying. The next deadline to apply is September 30th at midnight (EST).
Chicken & Egg Pictures’ Mother Wit Human Rights Fund is now accepting applications. Check out their mandate to make sure you qualify before applying. The deadline is September 30th at midnight Pacific Time.
Eight documentary projects were selected out of hundreds of applications. The selected filmmakers and their projects are:
Gideon’s Army
Dir. Dawn Porter Gideon’s Army is the story of new public defenders working in the South. With long hours, low pay and staggering caseloads, many will not last. But now they have an advocate. Super-lawyer Jonathan Rapping, founder of the Southern Public Defender Training Center, is revolutionizing criminal defense by mentoring and supporting those who represent the people society would rather forget.
We The People
Dir. Soniya Kirpalani
United Arab Emirates, 2010: 17 Indians are given the death penalty for murdering 1 Pakistani. Further investigation reveals 1,785 more Indians languishing behind bars, 200 of whom face capital punishment. As Arab defense teams and India’s Lawyers for Human Rights challenge the Sharia Law Processes, We The People highlights the plight of migrant workers in repressive environments.
Who Is Dayani Cristal?
Dir. Marc Silver
An anonymous body is discovered in the Arizona desert. The only identifying feature is a tattoo reading ‘Dayani Cristal’. To unravel the mystery we must go on an epic journey beginning in a tiny Honduran village and ending in the corridors of power in Washington. Who Is Dayani Cristal? is a groundbreaking fusion of drama and documentary, starring Gael García Bernal, one of the most exciting actors of his generation.
Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry
Dir. Alison Klayman Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry is an intimate portrait of an international art star during two tumultuous years of his life. A “dissident artist” in the headlines, an online god to liberal Chinese netizens, Ai Weiwei blurs the boundaries of art and politics. But can an artist change China?
Untitled Partners In Health Documentary
Dir. Kief Davidson
Partners In Health is a remarkable global public health organization, insisting on quality health care as a basic right. This film delves deeply into their methods and beliefs, exploring the controversial characters that refuse to ‘choose one life over another, when there is all this wealth in the world.’
Brooklyn Castle
Dir. Katie Dellamaggiore
Amidst financial crisis and unprecedented public school budget cuts, Intermediate School 318 in Brooklyn, New York, has assembled the best junior high chess team in the nation. Brooklyn Castle follows five young teens for one school year as they struggle, grow and challenge themselves both on and off the chessboard.
Not In Our Town III: Light in the Darkness
Dir. Patrice O’Neill Not In Our Town III: Light In The Darkness follows a community in crisis after the fatal attack of a local immigrant resident. Stunned by the violence, diverse community stakeholders openly confront the crime and the divisive atmosphere, and commit to ongoing actions to prevent future hate crimes and intolerance.
Crime After Crime
Dir. Yoav Potash Crime After Crime is the exclusive documentary on the legal battle to free Debbie Peagler from prison two decades after her connection to the murder of the man who abused her. The film premiered at Sundance 2011 and has been acquired by OWN. Debbie’s Campaign is the accompanying campaign designed to spark public awareness and changes in domestic violence law.
Check out the activity that happened on twitter during the Good Pitch:
“New generations of people in this country should see disability as just a natural part of the diversity of our culture.” – Filmmaker of Including Samuel, Dan Habib
Including Samuel: The Power of Youth brings us behind the scenes of a youth summit, inspired by a Working Films strategy meeting and co-organized by filmmaker Dan Habib. This summit created an audience engagement campaign for Including Samuel that has extended the life and reach of the film. Teen-focused and teen-led, the “I am Norm” campaign was developed by young people for the full social and educational inclusion of people with disabilities. This peer-to-peer effort demonstrates how to empower youth in a way that is truly authentic and meaningful.
As you will hear in the video, Working Films collaborated previously with Habib and the Institute on Disability at the University of New Hampshire, to shape the overall audience engagement plan for Including Samuel. The idea of a youth summit is one of the ideas that were sparked at this meeting.
IMPACT is a series of videos created by Working Films and The Fledgling Fund focused on spotlighting film campaigns that ignite social change. Previous videos include “Deep Down: Make it Local,” “No Impact Man: Activating Your Audience” and “IMPACT: A Funder’s Perspective.”
The Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation, in partnership with the Sundance InstituteDocumentary Film Program, are delighted to announce that the touring funding and networking forum the Good Pitch – will be returning in 2011 with expanded plans, including a third forum in New York City hosted by the Ford Foundation at their midtown headquarters.
The call for entries for the Good Pitch NY 2011 is now open and will close on February 18th. The call is aimed at filmmakers of any nationality working on feature-length or hour-long independent documentary film projects which tackle important global and national issues and enhance our understanding of the world. For more information and to apply go to http://britdoc.org/goodpitch.
Whew, just back from Washington DC and the Good Pitch @ Silverdocs, where it was hot hot hot – both inside the Performing Arts Center with an amazing lineup of films and responses from funders, NGOs, and strategists, and outside, where the temp hovered around 99. Jess Search, of C4 BRITDOC, set up a time lapse camera to capture the day:
Natalie Difford of Chicken & Egg Pictures and Emily Verellen of the Fledgling Fund have been catching some of the excitement on their blogs, Facebook and Twitter pages.
In this video, Emily asks Lora Smith, the Appalachian Regional Coordinator for the fantastic film, Deep Down, what sustains her activism.
As Thursday is the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, we’re thinking about our impact in the sustainability work that we do, and the change that media projects like No Impact Man can spark.
How do filmmakers create an audience engagement campaign that is unique, yet has ties to a movement that already exists? Gillian Caldwell, Campaign Director of 1Sky, puts it simply when speaking about their partnership with No Impact Man, “It’s important that the relationship be reciprocal.”
Working Films and The Fledgling Fund are excited to bring you the second video in our series, No Impact Man: Activating Your Audience. It illustrates the benefits of mutually beneficial relationships and demonstrates creating opportunities for participation that extends the story beyond the film. Watch the video and find out how No Impact Man and its partners, like 1Sky, worked together to move participants from individual action to collective action.
The call for submissions for the Good Pitch Forum at Silverdocs 2010 is open! The Good Pitch is a one-day forum set to take place during the Festival (June 22-27, 2010), bringing together specially selected foundations, NGOs, social entrepreneurs, brands and broadcasters to maximize the impact and create powerful alliances around groundbreaking films.
The Good Pitch is a project of The Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation in partnership with the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program. It is made possible by The Fledgling Fund, Chicken & Egg Pictures, Tides Foundation and anonymous donors, with campaign development for filmmakers provided by Working Films on June 19-20.
For three years and running (we were there at the very first Good Pitch in Oxford UK), Working Films has provided a two day workshop on campaign development for the Good Pitch filmmakers. Our allies the Fledgling Fund, Chicken & Egg Pictures, the Tides Foundation, the Hartley Film Foundation and anonymous donors provide additional support.
From an impressive 220 submissions, eight outstanding filmmaking teams will pitch their projects and associated engagement campaigns. The goal is to create a unique coalition of non-profits, NGOs, for-profit brands and foundations around each film to accelerate its impact and influence. The filmmakers in the Good Pitch 2009 can attest to successes: immediate funding from unexpected sources, strategic partnerships with organizations to reach new audiences, savvy and unique audience and community engagement tactics from allies “on the front lines”. And it keeps getting better, watch for some highlights from us in future blogs.
The selected filmmakers are Tom Rielly (Moving Windmills), Jennifer Arnold (A Small Act), Michele Stephenson & Joe Brewster (An American Promise), Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady (Detroit Hustles Harder), Michael Collins (Give Up Tomorrow), Alexandra Codina (Monica & David), Lee Hirsch (The Bully Project) and Eugene Martin (Anderson Monarchs Soccer Club). Congrats to all of them, and we’re off!
Chicken & Egg Pictures’ Mother Wit Human Rights Fund is now 
The Good Pitch
