Do You Have the Best Nonprofit Video of the Year?

Our friends at See3 and YouTube have partnered to bring you the 4th Annual DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards. The contest will award a total of $10,000 in grants, funded by the Case Foundation, to the best videos of the year found in the YouTube Nonprofit Program—a special program that YouTube designed to help nonprofits achieve their missions. Submit any video your organization made last year by March 19, when a set of nonprofit and media professionals will select 16 finalists to compete in a public vote. Awards will go to…

Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy

What makes a movement, a leader, and a follower? This is for all of those trying to build ‘the movement’. Thanks to Derek Sivers for this.

IMPACT Series Launched Today

How do social issue documentary films do more than just raise awareness? Are you a documentary filmmaker looking for the formula to take your film to the next level? IMPACT is a new series of videos created by Working Films and The Fledgling Fund focused on building film campaigns that ignite social change. Assessing Impact: A Funder’s Perspective is the first video in our series. It features our partner The Fledgling Fund and gives you an insider’s look at how to assess the impact of a film, its distribution and…

Including Samuel Makes Impact

Including Samuel and the film’s campaign has big plans for 2010: a youth-driven inclusion campaign, international outreach, screenings across the country and more. But sometimes looking back is as exciting as looking forward. Filmmaker Dan Habib has shared a few spectacular highlights on the impact of Including Samuel that follow below. 20 TEENS & 48 HOURS First, twenty teenage leaders from across the country held Including Samuel viewing parties in their communities, then came together at Imagination Stage in Bethesda, MD on January 8-10, 2010. Their goal was to develop…

With 'Good Fortune' Story Will Lead to Action

Sophie Gore Browne from Chicken & Egg pictures joins us as a guest blogger Chicken & Egg Pictures in partnership with Working Films hosted another STORY LEADS TO ACTION at 92YTribeca, with a screening of the documentary Good Fortune by filmmakers Landon Van Soest and Jeremy Levine. Set in Kenya, the documentary vividly calls into question the positive impact of international development organizations, from the housing reconstruction efforts of the UN in the slums of Kibera to a private agri-business in the swamp lands of Yala. The film raises issues…

Upcoming Screenings for A New Kind of Listening

A New Kind of Listening follows Chris Mueller-Medlicott, a young man with cerebral palsy who was mislabeled profoundly mentally disabled because he could not speak. Chris breaks through into stunning self-expression in this moving and inspiring film. The hour-long documentary, by Durham filmmaker Kenny Dalsheimer, takes viewers inside the creative work of the Community Inclusive Theater Group, the cast of which is made up of members with and without disabilities, as they create and perform an original stage piece. Together they prove that a small community arts project has the…

The Campaign: Inside the NO ON PROP 8 Fight

I was energized by the news last week that Christie Herring’s work-in-progress The Campaign was just awarded a new grant from Chicken & Egg Pictures. All week I had been following the related so-called Prop 8 trial, Kristin M. Perry v. Arnold Schwarzenegger, through the Courage Campaign’s Prop 8 trial tracker. Christie attended our MASS MoCA residency in 2009 when her film was in early development. The Campaign follows the daily efforts and emotional rollercoaster of the community of people working to stop Prop 8, the 2008 Constitutional Amendment to…

Call for Entries – NC Black Film Festival

The North Carolina Black Film Festival (formerly known as the Cine Noir Festival of Black Film) is currently accepting entries for their film festival March 18-21, 2010 in Wilmington, NC. Deadline for submissions is January 31st 2010. In it’s 9th year, the four day festival will showcase feature length films, documentaries, shorts and animations by African-American filmmakers. $500 prizes will be awarded in each category. Please visit their website for submission requirements.

Full Frame Announces 2010 Career Award

The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival is honoring Liz Garbus and Rory Kennedy with the 2010 Career Award.  Working Films extends our congratulations to these extraordinary filmmakers, we partnered with Rory and Liz on their highly successful Ghosts of Abu Ghraib and Coma audience engagement campaigns. This filmmaking team co-founded their production company Moxie Firecracker Films in 1998.  Together, they have produced and directed a wide range of work exploring social issues through the lives of everyday people, including examinations of the U.S. legal system, AIDS, violence, abuse, and human…

Working Films' firehouse acts as "green room" to Wilmington's MLK Parade

Every year, Wilmington’s Martin Luther King Jr. Parade marches down Castle Street, starting at the Working Films offices in the old firehouse on 5th Avenue. Each year,  our firehouse serves as the “green room” for the parade, with coffee and donuts for the organizers and volunteers. This year, parade organizer Hollis Briggs wants to use the parade to raise awareness of Bone Marrow Cancer and the pressing need for donors especially within minority communities. The Wilmington StarNews published a story today sharing the story of Denise Hale and her bone…