LATEST NEWS

The Hunger Season is now inviting schools and universities, NGO’s, environmental groups, and faith based organizations to order a copy of the film and host their own ‘Meal & a Movie’ event – similar to the one hosted in Madison during Tales from Planet Earth. Multiple copies of the DVD can be included so that organizations can reach out to their constituency, raise awareness around hunger and raise money for their organization at the same time. When the group comes together, it is asked for them to forgo their evening meal and instead watch the film, and eat cooked maise as a show of solidarity for the billion hungry. As a part of the event, it is encouraged to use the moment to come and talk about initiatives happening in their area, to encourage audience members to volunteer their time if they are able or make a small donation to hunger projects in their community. For every DVD or Event Box that you buy, $5.00 will automatically be sent to Action4africa, a charity which supports child farmer projects in Swaziland where children are taught the life skills which have been lost in a population ravaged by the effects of AIDs and Famine. You can find out more about this initiative and sign up.

The Hunger Season is now inviting schools and universities, NGO’s, environmental groups, and faith based organizations to order a copy of the film and host their own ‘Meal & a Movie’ event – similar to the one hosted in Madison during Tales from Planet Earth. Multiple copies of the DVD can be included so that organizations can reach out to their constituency, raise awareness around hunger and raise money for their organization at the same time. When the group comes together, it is asked for them to forgo their evening meal and instead watch the film, and eat cooked maise as a show of solidarity for the billion hungry. As a part of the event, it is encouraged to use the moment to come and talk about initiatives happening in their area, to encourage audience members to volunteer their time if they are able or make a small donation to hunger projects in their community. For every DVD or Event Box that you buy, $5.00 will automatically be sent to Action4africa, a charity which supports child farmer projects in Swaziland where children are taught the life skills which have been lost in a population ravaged by the effects of AIDs and Famine. You can find out more about this initiative and sign up.

POV’s Executive Director Simon Kilmurry announced their extraordinary lineup of films for 2010. Among them are many great films that we have had the honor to work with including former Working Films’ Park Scholar Jeremy Levine’s Good Fortune and more recently POV’s Adoption Stories series with Wo Ai Ni (I Love You) Mommy, Off and Running, and In The Matter of Cha Jung Hee. Only a few weeks ago we hosted a strategy summit in partnership with POV for the Adoption Stories series which will air in late August/early September. At the strategy meeting, we brought together the filmmakers and POV team with non-profit organizations that work on adoption issues on many different levels every day. During the two day meeting, we discussed the multiple layers and complexities of adoption and identified overarching themes in the films such as identity, race, multiculturalism and the concept of family. Their diverse perspectives gave us insight to the best ways to approach an adoption awareness campaign around the broadcast and the films. We’re really excited about the results of the meeting and can’t wait to see the campaign develop leading up to the first film of the series, Wo Ai Ni (I Love You) Mommy on August 31st.

Last month, our friends over at The Line emailed us some exciting news and attention they received. Nancy and her team have been coming up with great ways to raise awareness about her film & campaign, Where is Your Line? They have also been very strategic in creating dialogues around sexual consent by using popular culture as a springboard. Take a look as Nancy Schwartzman describes last month’s Valentine’s Day romance with MTV’s "A Thin Line":

Since its launch, our team has been watching MTV’s “A Thin Line,” a campaign, dedicated to raising awareness of “Digital Abuse,” and helping teens untangle normal versus unhealthy relationship dynamics. They focus on how cell phones can amplify and exacerbate abusive behaviors. Some of my favorite slogans are: It’s a thin line between attentive/obsessive, curious/controlling, love/abuse. I was thinking that we over here at The Line Campaign, have a lot of  things in common such as: young people, sexuality, violence, web-based media, and activism.

I initiated a Twitter back and forth about Beyonce’s “Video Phone” video (*ugh*) and then I asked our fab intern Ingrid to do some research and write a post about their campaign. It was a couple weeks before February, Teen Dating Violence Awareness month, so we took a look at Katie Couric’s piece on the topic, too. Ingrid spent a lot of time on both initiatives, picking apart what was authentic, realistic, what felt scripted, what related to her demographic, and what fell flat. She posted Corporation: FAIL! Teens, Sex & Violence. I tweeted to @a_thin_line that they were featured on the blog and -Internet magic!-  they responded. The takeaway here is your voice does matter.

MTV then invited us to a meeting at Viacom HQ to discuss their work and hear our feedback. Obviously, I let 18 year old Ingrid do the talking, her comments ranged from the show “16 & Pregnant” not showing struggles of lower income or homeless girls, “Jersey Shore” which entertains us with violence in every episode, and the PSA’s for “A Thin Line” not showing real kids going through the issues. I mediated, waxing the benefits of reaching a wide audience, raising awareness, and the reality of working within a Corporate Social Responsibility framework.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, me and the home team shot and edited a short video using candy and some of our favorite responses to “where is your line?” Our hope was that with the video would go viral on Valentine’s Day and drive more traffic to the site and generate interest in the film and campaign.  Ingrid followed up our meeting at MTV with an email and a link to our video “ASK ME” — and today they posted it!

What’s really exciting is that we developed The Line Campaign with support from The Fledgling Fund in June, and only went live in September 2009. The trailer for The Line has been on Vimeo for less than a year, and already has over 12,000 views. We are learning as we go, and the results have been really interesting.

Where will it lead next? A broadcast on MTV or streaming broadcast on MTV.com? We sure hope so.

The American Museum of Natural History's Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival is the longest-running showcase for international documentaries in the United States. The festival screens documentaries that increase our understanding of the complexity and diversity of the peoples and cultures that populate our planet. Submissions are now being accepted for the 34th annual festival to be held Thursday, Nov. 11, through Sunday, Nov. 14. Deadline: March 31 (early), May 3 (final) For more information: http://amnh.org/programs/mead/submit.

The American Museum of Natural History's Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival is the longest-running showcase for international documentaries in the United States. The festival screens documentaries that increase our understanding of the complexity and diversity of the peoples and cultures that populate our planet. Submissions are now being accepted for the 34th annual festival to be held Thursday, Nov. 11, through Sunday, Nov. 14. Deadline: March 31 (early), May 3 (final) For more information: http://amnh.org/programs/mead/submit.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="368" caption="photo by BRITDOC"][/caption] Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation and the Sundance Documentary Institute have announced the lineup for the Good Pitch @ Tribeca, hitting the screens in NYC on April 27 during the Tribeca Film Festival. 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! Find out more about the event and the selected projects. Announcements on how to apply to the next Good Pitch will follow shortly.

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 organizations of all sizes, including a special award for Best Innovation in Video.

Now is your chance to get your nonprofit video featured on the YouTube homepage, receive a grant from the Case Foundation, get great prizes from Flip Video and Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN), and have your work showcased at a screening in Washington DC, hosted by Nomadsland.

Winners will be announced on April 10 at the Nonprofit Technology Conference in Atlanta.

Visit youtube.com/nonprofitvideoawards to enter today!