Since 1999, Working Films has harnessed the humanity, power and vision of nonfiction filmmaking to educate viewers and mobilize communities for positive social change — at home, on the street, and in the halls where public policy gets made. We’re asking you to give today to support Working Films’ unique approach to making “stories lead to action.” 2013 has been a year of transition. In June we tragically lost Robert West, our beloved co-founder and executive director, to brain cancer. Although deeply saddened, we renewed our commitment to carry out…
Director Josh Fox is headed on a Southern Grassroots Tour with Gasland 2, the recent follow-up to his 2011 Academy Award-nominated documentary Gasland. We are psyched to announce that as part of our Reel Power efforts we have teamed up with grassroots groups in Texas and North Carolina to co-host 4 stops on the tour. “Gasland 2 features real people – ordinary Americans – whose lives have been upended by the dirty and dangerous process of fracking.” Fox said. “That’s why I’m working with environmental leaders and advocates across the…
The new documentary, The Campaign will air in a wave of broadcasts across public television on Sunday August 25th. Immediately following each broadcast, The Campaign team will host an online Google Hangout to connect with viewers in each city with local organizations in their region, including: The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, Our Family Coalition, PFLAG, and ACLU Northern California. Directed by award-winning filmmaker Christie Herring, The Campaign takes a heartbreaking and inspiring look at California’s No-on-8 Campaign to defend same-sex marriage, which unfolded in 2008. The film was…
Stephanie Bleyer, a long time friend of Working Films, is an outreach and engagement campaign manager for films such as American Promise, God Loves Uganda, and Escape Fire (Sundance 2012). Stephanie has written a two-part blog post on how to effectively and efficiently raise funds for socially engaged projects. By covering topics from finding your prospects to writing your proposal, she has put together a ton of helpful information for fundraising. Check out the following excerpts below (with links to full story) and be sure to look out for part…
Interacting with thoughtful talented filmmakers and organizers is the best part of my job, and that job is made all the better when I get the chance to work with these folks on multiple projects. That’s where I find myself at this moment, engaged in another opportunity to support the work of filmmaker Dan Habib. My colleague, Molly Murphy, and I facilitated a strategy summit for Dan’s first film, Including Samuel, that resulted in the I Am Norm campaign and other collaborations between the film and educators, disability rights organizations,…
As Thoughts of George Rise Up: Judith Helfand on Long-Time Mentor George Stoney Original Post can be found at PBS.org’s POV Films Blog Page Soon after the news of George Stoney’s passing was made public, POV asked me to write a few words about him and our work together on The Uprising of ’34, which was broadcast on POV in June 1995 — a fact we were both so very proud of. Life’s divine symmetry had me start writing this on the way to a complicated shoot that I was…
Lucy Cooke, a PUMA Creative Winner and good friend of Working Films has an upcoming National Geographic series titled “Freaks and Creeps” set to air on Tuesday July 17 at 10pm ET. Read her blog post below to learn more about the production and her adventures: Tasmania is like a time machine. Its primeval forests team with living fossils that have followed a different evolutionary branch to most mammals. So for freak lovers like me it’s like hitting the jackpot. My number one quarry is the echidna – an ancient…
On June 19th I had the pleasure of moderating our Story Leads to Action panel with my colleague Judith Helfand, co-founder of both Working Films and Chicken and Egg Pictures. This year’s panel featured the award winning documentary Brooklyn Castle. After watching several clips from the film where we saw the championship chess team and their teachers in action and learned about how budget cuts affected the after school program at I.S. 318 in Brooklyn, we launched into a strategic conversation about how the film can continue to be leveraged…
After starting in festivals in Europe and the US, Our School finally had its premiere in Romania – a homecoming of sorts for the film and an event that we have been anticipating for almost six years. We shot in a small town in Transylvania, a very real place in Northern Romania. Our intention was to begin to understand, and hopefully improve, race relations between majority Romanians and the Roma ethnic minority by showing under a magnifying glass the story of three spirited Roma children involved in a school integration…
This edition of the Good Pitch takes place at Silverdocs, near Washington DC. It brings together inspiring social-purpose film projects and a group of expert participants from charities, foundations, brands and media to form powerful alliances around groundbreaking films. THE LINEUP We are delighted to announce that we have selected the lineup for the Good Pitch @ Silverdocs. The 8 filmmakers are Victor Buhler (A Whole Lott More), Macky Alston (The Truth Will Set You Free), Jon Shenk (Higher Ground), Angad Bhalla (The House That Herman Built), Dara Kell &…
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