With generous support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, we are now funding the creation of new work to expand the canon of films available for grassroots groups and NGOs to enhance their programs, extend their reach, and move their missions forward. We are pleased to launch an inaugural Request for Proposals (RFP) for Working Films’ Docs in Action Fund. We’re looking for documentaries that illuminate and demonstrate community-centered solutions in response to climate disasters. We will award at least two grants of up to $30,000 each…
We’re on the lookout for documentaries to incorporate into film-driven organizing campaigns! Working Films is seeking short documentaries to inform and mobilize residents from coast to coast to stop offshore drilling! Submit your film to be a part of Shore Stories. We’re also looking for documentaries focused on the intersections of immigration, climate, and environmental justice for use within the StoryShift initiative. Read more and submit your film. We will consider shorts, excerpts from feature length films, and multi-platform film projects. Screening rights fees will be paid and we will provide free impact…
For a documentary film to make a difference, a solid strategy for audience engagement and strong partnerships are key. Filmmakers often lack time to do this work themselves or the expertise and the funds to pay for it. Emerging artists, creators of color, and other underrepresented artists can face the biggest hurdles, despite the potential of their projects. Working Films responds to this challenge with Impact Kickstart, a program offering in-kind strategy development to underrepresented documentary makers with feature films in progress that hold great promise to catalyze action to…
Working Films is looking for short documentaries to inform and mobilize residents from coast to coast to stop offshore drilling! And no, you’re not having Déjà vu. The original compilation of shorts, Shore Stories, helped support the resistance to opening the East Coast to drilling in 2016. And now we’re back at it again as the Trump Administration looks to expand offshore drilling to new areas including the Arctic, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans. Communities across the country are standing up against these plans, and we’re looking for powerful short films…
We’re excited to partner with Appalachian Voices, Clean Water for North Carolina, and the NC Sierra Club to present a tour of Water Warriors throughout North Carolina. Water Warriors, a short documentary directed by Michael Premo, honors one native community’s struggle, against seemingly insurmountable odds, to protect their land, water, and way of life. When an energy company began searching for natural gas in 2013, these unlikely warriors united to drive the company out. Their efforts eventually contributed to the election of a new government and a conditional moratorium on…
Even before the Trump Administration took office, some 11 million undocumented immigrants were subject to a brutal detention and deportation machine. Since then, an even more drastic shift in rhetoric around immigration, a sharp rise in raids, the travel ban, and the rescindment of DACA indicate a harder stance and antagonism intended to push some of the country’s most vulnerable residents out. A new film called Out of Reach, part of the Epix America Divides series, follows actress America Ferrera as she travels to Texas in the final months of the…
A border and barbeque aren’t the only things Virginia and North Carolina have in common. The two states also have some of the most gerrymandered districts in the country. Cozy relationships between regulators and industry are another commonality. A new film called Democracy for Sale featuring NC native and comedian Zach Galifianakis puts a spotlight on the ways big money political interests have influenced the drawing of district lines and led to a lack of environmental protection and tax cuts for the upper class and corporations, education cuts, gerrymandering, and laws…
What will you do when the lights come up? One of our earliest taglines and our charge from day one is now ubiquitous in the field of documentary for change. And over the last eighteen years, we’ve remained committed to answering this question in ways that are meaningful for documentary film audiences and that serve the broader movements for social and environmental justice. We’ve changed a lot over the years. We’ve taken big risks, we’ve failed forward, and we’ve followed our hearts. We have been privileged to work with many…
Lindy Lou, a woman from rural Mississippi, always thought she could easily give the death penalty. Then she sat on a jury that handed down a capital punishment sentence to a man convicted in a double homicide. Twenty years later, in the new documentary film Lindy Lou, Juror Number 2, Lindy travels through Mississippi and interviews 11 jurors alongside whom she sentenced a man to death. This film challenges the sense that many Missourians have – that the death penalty is an abstract, distant concept unlikely to personally affect us.…
What’s the prospect of a region built on cod having no cod left to fish? Beginning August 23rd the Camden International Film Festival and Working Films are partnering with the Down to Earth Storytelling Project, The Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association, and many local organizations to launch a screening tour of Sacred Cod along the eastern seaboard of Maine to find out. The film focuses on the collapse of the historic cod population throughout New England, delving into the role of overfishing, impact of climate change, the effect of government policies placed on fishermen.…
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