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The Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation, in partnership with the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program, is bringing the Good Pitch to NYC on May 20th 2011. The pitch will be hosted at the Ford Foundation as they join the Tides Foundation, the Fledgling Fund, Chicken & Egg Pictures, Impact Partners, Crosscurrents Foundation and a number of anonymous donors as supporters. Working Films will continue to provide campaign development for the invited filmmakers. 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: To receive updates on future Good Pitch events, please join our email list. For more information about The Good Pitch, visit workingfilms.org/goodpitch.

"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.” For more information, go to https://www.workingfilms.org/impact and http://www.thefledglingfund.org/impact.

STEPHANIE BLEYER produces engagement campaigns and raises funds for social issue documentaries. Some of her current and past clients include Academy Award nominees Gasland and Sun Come Up, BBC’s Why Poverty?, The Documentary Group’s 10x10, Errol Morris’ Standard Operating Procedure, Planet Green’s No Impact Man, PBS’ To Be Heard and OWN’s One Lucky Elephant. Stephanie has studied organic farming in Italy, bicycled across Cuba on a grant to study sustainable energy, created a documentary for Oxygen about her social action bicycle trip from Seattle to Washington D.C., produced a 35-city bus tour for the Eat Well Guide to promote family farming, produced an international conference for a 9/11 family group, produced the opening of Mercy Corps’ Action Center to End World Hunger, worked at a performing arts school for street boys in Kenya and managed displacement camps for thousands of tsunami survivors in Sri Lanka. Stephanie holds a Masters of Public Administration from New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service. Stephanie Bleyer has a lot on her plate. How does she keep up with it all? Here’s what she told us: I always have at least four interns working with me; they are my tentacles, my foot soldiers and my secret weapon. On average, 25% of the tasks I assign my interns are administrative and the rest of the work is challenging, creative and cerebral. To keep them engaged, I know I need to build their skill set and give them a sense of ownership over their work. I give them a lot of responsibility with minimal oversight, which empowers them and saves me a hell of a lot of time. There’s usually a one-month learning curve, I start out slow with them and then build up so they take on more and more responsibility and require less and less of my time. Many social issue filmmakers involved in outreach and engagement campaigns would like to work with interns but are worried about quality control. How do you give meaningful work to interns and assure excellent outcomes? The quality of interns can vary pretty widely but I’ve figured out a few simple ways to insure some quality control: 1. I only hire grad students, never post-grads and rarely undergrads (unless they are experienced and exceptionally mature). Post-grads will either quit on you once they find a paying gig or they will expect you to start paying them within a month of working. My interns work virtually so it doesn’t matter where they live but it does matter to me that they are current students enrolled in quality programs. 2. I don’t hire film students because they rarely care about learning about outreach and engagement. I hire writers and organizers, students studying marketing and communications and young people who are very passionate about the issue that the film addresses. 3. I post my job ad on career boards for the top schools in the country, never on craigslist or on filmmaking job boards and rarely Idealist. I also distribute the job ad through my social network and on the Facebook page for the film so I can find interns who are already familiar with the film. During a number of our recent trainings and consultations, filmmakers have expressed concern that it takes too much time to train and manage interns. How extensive is your orientation and training of interns? If you choose the right interns you shouldn’t need more than a one-hour orientation. I require them to read every page on the film’s website before the orientation and I expect that for the first month they’ll need some guidance and that it will lessen over time. How often to you check-in with them and how do you make sure they are “on track”? My interns check in every Monday morning and Friday afternoon. We email throughout the week and they call me when they’re stuck. We meet face-to-face maybe once or twice during the internship. How do you create incentives for unpaid interns to stick with a project? I incentivize interns in three ways: 1) I organize career building brown bag luncheons twice throughout the semester. During the brown bag I give them an hour lecture about getting, finding and keeping a job. Part two of the career-building luncheon is a one-on-one session where I rip their resumes to shreds and help them rebuild it. They love this. 2) I challenge them. 3) I only ask that they work 10 hours/week. Are there pitfalls that you have learned to avoid in your experience with interns? Top 5 lessons: 1) Commitment. I just lost two interns in a two-week time period. Two of these interns were grad students but weren’t receiving credit, and mid-semester they felt overwhelmed with the internship and school and work. If they were receiving credit, it would have prevented them from leaving. I make it very clear up front that I need a four-month commitment, and 99% of the time the interns live up to their commitment. 2) Generation Text. Most of my interns are afraid of calling people up on the telephone and I have to constantly push them to pick up the phone if they haven’t received a response to their emails. 3) Communication. Because my interns all work virtually, I need them to over-communicate with me. I constantly have to remind my interns to let me know where things stand. 4) Overwork. I have a tendency to pile work on my interns expecting they’ll get it all done efficiently and well. I’ll have the rare intern who can’t meet deadlines and ultimately creates more work for me with the quality of their work. They don’t last. 5) Dear Stephanie Bleyer. This is not a pitfall; it’s just a funny thing that every single one of my interns does when they first start with me. They think the proper way to address someone in an email is Dear first name, last name. To inquire about Stephanie Bleyer's audience outreach and engagement services, contact her directly at [email protected].

Sun Come Up is an Oscar-nominated short documentary that follows the relocation of some of the Carteret Islanders, a peaceful community living on a remote island chain in the South Pacific Ocean, and now, some of the world’s first environmental refugees. When rising seas threaten their survival, the islanders face a painful decision: they must leave their beloved land in search of a new place to call home. The film follows a group of young Carteret Islanders led by Nick Hakata as they search for land in Bougainville, an autonomous region of Papua New Guinea 50 miles across the open ocean. The move will not be easy as Bougainville is recovering from a 10-year civil war. Many Bougainvilleans remain traumatized by the “Crisis” as the civil war is known locally. Yet, Sun Come Up isn’t a familiar third world narrative. Out of this tragedy comes a story of hope, strength, and profound generosity. The educational non-profit, Rethiking Schools, has just released their Spring Issue of the Rethinking Schools Magazine focused on “Climate Crisis in the Classroom.” Two Reel Power films, Deep Down and Dirty Business, are spotlighted in the issue and Sun Come Up fits in perfectly with the teacher guides and recommendations these progressive educators provide. Make April the month you bring Sun Come Up and the issue of Climate Change to your campus or classroom. Order an educational copy of the Oscar-nominated Sun Come Up today. To place your order email [email protected]. For those of you that want to screen the film at home, be sure too look for it on HBO this Fall.

Reel Power is excited to announce that our films will be part of the 2011 Power Shift program from April 15-18 in Washington D.C. This year's Power Shift will feature Vice President Al Gore, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, Green Jobs leader Van Jones, 350.org founder Bill McKibben, and a Reel Power film festival! Power Shift is the world's largest youth gathering and training for climate change solutions. This year the conference will serve as the largest grassroots organizing training in history with the goals of catalyzing the clean energy economy, initiating more clean energy research on college campuses, and moving communities beyond dirty energy. Reel Power films will be featured during Friday, Saturday and Sunday evening programs and Reel Power filmmakers will participate on panel discussions throughout the weekend about our world's most important climate challenges. Check out the write up on the PowerShift blog about Reel Power! Be sure to come to Washington D.C. and join over 10,000 youth leaders from across the country as we take a stand for the planet - Register for Power Shift today!

Almost every film we work with tells a unique story of people fighting for social or environmental justice in their communities. Our job is to make those local stories resonate with folks in other places across the country and around the world. Our goal: help audiences make connections between what they see on the screen and what’s happening in their towns, motivating them to take action. So when free speech came under attack in Working Films’ hometown of Wilmington, N.C. we knew we had to share this story with our friends and allies. We have been inspired by two of our neighbors who refuse to be silenced and intimidated, and we hope that they will motivate you to speak up on issues of concern wherever you live. Engaged citizens educating themselves and speaking out on community issues is the root of strong democracy and at the heart of what we do at Working Films. If you want to support Kayne Darrell and Dr. David Hill’s legal defense fund you can donate at fighttitan.com. If you want to learn more about the controversy around the building of the cement plant you can read the back story from our local paper, the Star News. Stand up for the right to free speech! Please repost this video and share this story with your friends, neighbors and other networks.

Gasland Director and member of Reel Power, Josh Fox, has been attacked with anti-Semitic slurs. Read more about this on the Huffington Post and the criticism Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett is facing.

Well, sometimes opportunities are so unique and exotic that you can’t turn them down. The Global Social Change Film Festival and Institute invited me, through the kind recommendation of filmmaker Lexi Leban, to present at their upcoming gig. Located in lush Ubad, regarded as the cultural center of Bali, and opening on April 13, the Festival features four days of films, panels, workshops, selected shorts and special events to inspire and build a global community focused on expanding the reach of conscious social change film and media. I will be on a panel called Bringing It All Together: Film, Audience Building & Social Action. Finalist films include: Climate Refugees, Deep Down, Dog Sweat, Fambul Tok, In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee, Nothing Rhymes with Ngaparjti, There Once Was an Island and A Village Called Versailles. Cash in your frequent flier miles and join us!