LATEST NEWS

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.

Missed last week's invigorating Story Leads to Action at the 92YTribeca that we co-hosted with Chicken & Egg Pictures? Fear not, filmmakers Elizabeth Mandel and Beth Davenport have agreed to share their lessons learned from the evening for your benefit: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="photo by Chicken & Egg Pictures"][/caption]

Three years after filming the reunion of a Congolese girl and her mother, separated by war in Congo, Rose & Nangabire (working title) is almost complete. The work-in-progress screening last Thursday was an exciting opportunity to share our work outside the edit room. With a focus on audience engagement, it was also invigorating to finally explore in a public forum how the film can be used to create change.

While many social-justice issues are covered in the film, our audience engagement strategy focuses on refugee rights and resettlement; peace-building and reconciliation; and women in post-conflict situations. The evening was moderated by Robert West of Working Films, with panelists Matthew Edmundson, Operations Officer, Mapendo International and Desiree Younge, Senior Manager, Global Philanthropists Circle, Synergos. Audience members included representatives from the International Rescue Committee, STEPS to End Family Violence, Witness, Human Rights Watch and The Safe Harbor Project, as well as filmmakers and film fans. Ideas and thoughts generated by the post-screening discussion included the following uses for the film or modules created from the footage: •    Reaching policymakers and practitioners who are often, due to politicization, desensitized to the issues Rose and her family confront and challenge. •    Targeting schools, because the presence of a teenage refugee going to high school in the film will make the issues accessible to a youth audience. •    Partnering with the Department of Education to train teachers who work with refugees and other ESL populations. •    Bringing together diaspora communities, for example by creating a women's-only discussion group, and/or a group for teens, where survivors of war can have a safe space to share their experiences. •    Working with women- and girls- leadership programs to provide a portrait of a strong, resourceful role model. It was also pointed out that while embarking on our project we need to assess who is already doing this work and can program the film into their existing frameworks, and who can use the film to take their work to new places. This thought brings us to our next phase, solidifying relationships with organizations that address our three issue areas, and finessing the ways in which Rose & Nangabire can be used to help them in their work. As we finish up the film and begin to screen at film festivals, we're also looking forward to using this momentum to inspire thinking and follow up action on the part of general audiences as well. Stay tuned for announcements about our festival premiere and the launch of our audience engagement plan. In the meantime, if you are in any way involved with our issue areas -- refugee rights and resettlement; peace-building and reconciliation; and women in post-conflict situations -- please be in touch, we'd love to hear from you. We can be reached at elizabeth at artsengine.net or beth at artsengine.net.

I just came across this great article about the Transition movement. This movement isn’t about sitting around feeling sorry for ourselves because of climate change and peak oil. It’s about doing something, or as the article says, “Transition wants people to envision and create models for that future — and find much to be cheerful about.” I was excited to see the Transition movement getting the attention it deserves, especially because Working Films just recently worked with Transition US to put together a special offer for their supporters who want to host a screening of Garbage Dreams. We hope those in the Transition US network will be inspired by the pro-active recycling work of the Zaballeen and use community screenings of the film to support their own community- based solutions to environmental and economic changes!

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.