LATEST NEWS

During last night’s State of the Union, President Obama called for a clean energy future, but then rattled off a list of our dirty energy past with clean coal and natural gas leading the pack. The films involved with Reel Power: Films Fueling the Energy Revolution uncover the truth behind these so-called “clean” technologies, showing the damaging effects of climate change on populations across the globe, and offering real energy solutions.

And for their efforts and artistry the films are being recognized in big ways!

It was announced on Tuesday that Gasland and Sun Come Up have both been nominated for Oscars. Gasland, about natural gas drilling and the threat it poses to the Marcellus Shale region of the eastern United States, is nominated for Best Feature Documentary. Sun Come Up, a story that follows the relocation of some of the world’s first environmental refugees, is nominated for Best Short Subject Documentary. Congratulations to directors Josh Fox, Jennifer Redfearn and Tim Metzger! Another Reel Power film receiving a distinguished honor this month is Deep Down: A story from the heart of coal country, which premiered on the Emmy-award winning PBS series Independent Lens in November. The filmmakers of Deep Down have received a major honor from the U.S. State Department in being selected for the American Documentary Showcase. The film’s participation in this prestigious cultural diplomacy program will draw international attention to the subject of mountaintop removal coal mining and community organizing in Appalachia. These films are extending their reach and receiving critical acclaim, exemplifying the important role documentary films play in social justice movements. Join us and help educate your community by signing up to screen a Reel Power film today. Our film for February is Dirty Business, an exploration into the science and politics behind “clean coal.”

Queen Noor of Jordan and Documentary Director Morgan Spurlock Join First Jury

Today PUMA.Creative and Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation announced the launch of the PUMA.Creative Impact Award, a major new annual award to honor the documentary film creating the most significant impact in the world. This 50,000 Euro award acknowledges the film's makers and will help the continuation of the film's campaign work. The PUMA.Creative Impact Award will be selected by a jury which includes Her Majesty Queen Noor of Jordan; Morgan Spurlock, Academy Award nominated Director of Super Size Me; Orlando Bagwell, Director of the Ford Foundation Social Justice Media Initiative; and Emmanuel Jal, musician and activist. "Finally, an award which acknowledges the unique role documentary film plays in society" said Morgan Spurlock. "I am proud to be invited to join the first jury and I encourage documentary filmmakers everywhere to take a look at this initiative. It is really going to make a difference." "With a financial reward that encourages best practice in the filmmaking community, the aim of the PUMA.Creative Impact Award is to draw attention to the finest creative, social justice, peace and environmental filmmaking in the world" said Jess Search, CEO, Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation." Recent high profile releases such The Cove, Food Inc, Burma VJ, No Impact Man and The Age of Stupid will all be eligible to compete for the prize money as well as less well-known films that have had a large local effect. "As individuals and as organizations, we are faced with some serious challenges today such as ongoing conflict, climate change, loss of biodiversity. None of these issues will solve themselves without intervention," says Jochen Zeitz, Chairman and CEO of PUMA. "We, at PUMA, have chosen to intervene through film because it is the most powerful medium to reach mass audiences and influence opinion formers and will contribute to leaving a better world for generations to come." The call for the PUMA.Creative Impact Award opens on January 21 during the Sundance Film Festival. Anyone can put a film forward from any country-filmmakers, distributors, film festivals, partner organizations including NGOs and Foundations, film critics and journalists. Each filmmaking team must submit data demonstrating evidence of the film's social impact and if shortlisted additional data and verifications will be requested. Films can be put forward any time up to three years after release (where the release is defined as first film festival screening, TV broadcast, cinema release or internet release). Submissions close on April 1, 2011 when Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation will assess applications and produce a shortlist to be assessed by an international Peer Review Committee including: Carol Cone, Executive Vice President of Cone@Edelman; Diana Barrett, President and Founder of Fledgling Fund; Yvette Alberdingkthijm, Executive Director of WITNESS; Pat Aufderheide, Director of Center for Social Media, American University; Isabelle Schwarz, Head of Strategic Programmes at European Cultural Foundation; and Sarah Hunter, Head of UK Public Policy at Google. Five final nominated films will then be put forward to the Jury for consideration. The PUMA.Creative Impact Award will be given in London in October at the annual PUMA.Creative and Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation Gala and Awards Ceremony. "Music is one of the few things that has the power to touch your heart mind and soul without your permission. This is why I choose to use this tool to pass my message to the world," said says Juror Emmanuel Jal. "Film has the same power, moving pictures can tap into the senses, pull on the heart strings and communicate intense and detailed information to the viewer." Filmmakers interested in applying for the PUMA.Creative Impact Award should go to www.britdoc.org/impactaward

The Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation, in partnership with the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program, are delighted to announce that the touring funding and networking forum the Good Pitch – will be returning in 2011 with expanded plans, including a third forum in New York City hosted by the Ford Foundation at their midtown headquarters. The call for entries for the Good Pitch NY 2011 is now open and will close on February 18^th. The call is aimed at filmmakers of any nationality working on feature-length or hour-long independent documentary film projects which tackle important global and national issues and enhance our understanding of the world. For more information and to apply go to http://britdoc.org/goodpitch.

“We are excited to be entering our 3^rd year of international Good Pitch events with a dynamic new supporter and venue. In addition, we see Good Pitch scalable globally and we intend to pilot that in 2011 and 2012,” said Jess Search CEO of the Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation. “With the Ford Foundation’s support, Good Pitch can continue to grow, open doors for world-changing films, engage major stakeholders across multiple sectors and fast-track creative game-changing partnerships.”

The Ford Foundation joins the Tides Foundation, the Fledgling Fund, Chicken & Egg Pictures, Impact Partners, Crosscurrents Foundation and a number of anonymous donors as supporters of the Good Pitch. Working Films will continue to provide campaign development for the invited filmmakers.

"The foundation is committed to expanding the community of film and media makers who are creating compelling works, particularly around some of our most urgent social issues,” said Orlando Bagwell, director of the foundation’s social justice media initiative. “The Good Pitch is superb at bringing together key players from the nonprofit, government and business sectors to ensure that these powerful social justice stories reach audiences who can make change happen.”

The Good Pitch is an invitation-only event, starting with an intensive two-day campaign development workshop for the filmmakers, followed by a day-long live event which brings together invited foundations, NGOs, social entrepreneurs, broadcasters and other media to expand the resources aimed at maximizing the impact of social-issue documentary. Filmmaking teams pitch their project and its associated outreach campaign with the aim of creating a unique coalition around each film to accelerate its impact and influence.

“Sundance Documentary Film Program has been the creative partner for the Good Pitch since the beginning because we believe it offers new possibilities for increasing the resource and stakeholder pool for independent social issue documentaries,” said Cara Mertes, Sundance Institute DFP Director. “In a time when documentary resources are eroding and the independent media landscape is undergoing massive realignment, a new initiative that prizes independent storytelling of great skill with the potential for new partners is sorely needed, and the contagious enthusiasm that filmmakers and funders alike have shown for this approach has led us to continue its evolution.”

Since the first North American event in Toronto in 2009, Good Pitch has received over 1200 applications to events in North America and the UK. Over 60 films have now pitched to more than 700 organizations, with a vast range of positive results, including over $2 million leveraged in new funding. The Good Pitch NY 2011 is the year’s first Good Pitch event. Further events will be announced later in the year. You can sign up to our newsletter to receive updates on upcoming events or check back on our website. 

2011 has started with a bang, as we celebrate our 10th anniversary with a new grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The grant will support a new residency open to the field of filmmakers and non-fiction media makers, intended to support strategic collaborations between non-profit/non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and story-driven documentaries. This one-year grant of $300,000 will enable us to research, design and facilitate a week-long residency built around one urgent theme. Following the residency, and supported by the grant, we will launch a high profile campaign between the filmmakers and NGOs dedicated to the thematic issue at hand. The goal is to turn “competition” for space in the media landscape into unprecedented collaboration. These new partnerships will leverage multiple opportunities for audiences of social issue films to contribute to civic engagement and progressive public policy shifts. Stay tuned; we will be announcing details of the residency in the coming months. Press Release in PDF.

2011 has started with a bang, as we celebrate our 10th anniversary with a new grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The grant will support a new residency open to the field of filmmakers and non-fiction media makers, intended to support strategic collaborations between non-profit/non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and story-driven documentaries. This one-year grant of $300,000 will enable us to research, design and facilitate a week-long residency built around one urgent theme. Following the residency, and supported by the grant, we will launch a high profile campaign between the filmmakers and NGOs dedicated to the thematic issue at hand. The goal is to turn “competition” for space in the media landscape into unprecedented collaboration. These new partnerships will leverage multiple opportunities for audiences of social issue films to contribute to civic engagement and progressive public policy shifts. Stay tuned; we will be announcing details of the residency in the coming months. Press Release in PDF.

Dates and Venues 2011 Session 1: May 15-21, Romania Session 2: July 3-9, Italy Session 3: September/October, venue t.b.c. APPLICATION DEADLINE: MARCH 4, 2011 ESoDoc (European Social Documentary) is now accepting applications for their 2011 trainings. ESoDoc is a training initiative that takes up the challenge of bringing together the demands of different players now involved in documentary film-production. Their focus is on a special genre of documentary production that is particularly suitable for the new multi-platform world: documentaries that draw attention to human rights, social justice and environmental protection. Last year, Working Films participated in two extraordinary ESoDoc trainings. At the Italy training in October, Robert opened the session with a look at how filmmakers can ensure their films have authentic impact. He was also among a group of experts that trained 22 participants on how to best present their project during pitching forums and at markets. The session ended with an actual public pitching forum held in cooperation with the University of Catania and with the financial support of the Regional Province of Catania. At ESoDoc India in Naukuchiatal last December, I led European and Indian filmmakers in a session on creating a dynamic film campaign to increase the film’s distribution, financing, and impact. This cross cultural and cross market retreat aimed to develop documentary projects that have a potential for the Indian and European audiovisual market and which succeed to respond not only to the distinct market needs of the broadcast industries in both regions but also – and especially – to respond to the communication needs of the NGO sector worldwide. Learn more about ESoDoc’s upcoming opportunities and apply through their site.

The Reel Power Film series kicks off the New Year with the Emmy-award winning film, Split Estate - a film every American should see this year! Get Involved!: 1) Host a House Party of Emmy-award winning Split Estate in January.  You can purchase a DVD of Split Estate here. Note that bulk pricing is available if you’d like to use this film with your organization. 2) Take Action with Split Estate by contacting your state legislators to express your concern over oil and gas drilling. A list of resources to help further inform you and your representatives are available here. 3)  Stay Informed of breaking news, national legislation and more action steps- including contacting the EPA- at the Split Estate website. You can also follow the action with Split Estate on Facebook and Twitter. 4)  Stay Connected to the Reel Power Film series. Our February featured film will be Dirty Business. About Split Estate Imagine discovering that you don't own the mineral rights under your land, and that an energy company plans to drill for natural gas two hundred feet from your front door. Imagine having little recourse, other than accepting an unregulated industry in your backyard. Split Estate maps a tragedy in the making, as citizens in the path of a new drilling boom in the Rocky Mountain West struggle against the erosion of their civil liberties, their communities and their health. Zeroing in on Garfield County, Colorado, and the San Juan Basin, this clarion call for accountability examines the growing environmental and social costs to an area now referred to as a “National Sacrifice Zone." Split Estate helped break the story of health risks associated with hydraulic fracturing to a national television audience on the Discovery Channel’s Planet Green. The film was the first of its kind to give voice to a few of the courageous families, among thousands, struggling to protect their health, civil rights, and land before the ever encroaching oil and gas industry. Exempt from federal protections like the Clean Water Act, the oil and gas industry has left landscapes and rural communities pockmarked with abandoned homes and polluted waters. One Garfield County resident demonstrates the degree of benzene contamination in a mountain stream by setting it alight with a match. Many others, gravely ill, fight for their health and for the health of their children. Important for all Americans to see, Split Estate is especially timely given our country’s renewed interest in natural gas and the escalated drilling now proposed throughout the Marcellus Shale region of the Eastern United States and will serve as an urgent wake-up call to your community. More Than A Movie: Connecting Communities & Creating Change From Harvard to the EPA to living rooms, churches, community centers, and high school classrooms, Split Estate has been shown in hundreds of communities and has been at the forefront of a grassroots movement to stop reckless drilling. Citizens across the country have used the film broadly to educate their friends and neighbors, the media, and local, state, and national policy makers. Since it’s release, Split Estate team members have been answering emails and calls from landowners, farmers and ranchers needing to understand their rights and how to protect their land; from students seeking information for projects and papers; and from women and men who are sick and needing leads to health care and support. The Split Estate Community Engagement Campaign has been innovative in it’s approach to connecting people to information and resources — and to each other. Community organizers in battlefield states are hosting screenings and drawing upon Split Estate to raise awareness and mobilize action for clean energy and water.  Check out this piece by Agit-Pop which used excerpts from the film, to help build support for the moratorium on gas drilling in the New York City watershed: And teachers are bringing Split Estate to classrooms at the secondary and university level and to charter programs for youth-at-risk. Launching in the Spring semester of 2011, the film and related curriculum will be featured on WGBH's Teachers' Domain, a free digital media service for educational use from public broadcasting and its partners. But natural gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing is not just a U.S. problem. In August, director Deb Anderson traveled to Sweden to support a growing grassroots movement against new natural gas development. The film has also had a presence in Tunisia, Singapore, Australia, Canada, and, most recently, the Southern Cape of South Africa where Split Estate was featured in a report about fracking on a news program called 50/50 on the South African Broadcasting Corporation Channel 2. In addition, Split Estate has been the subject of more than 100 print, radio, and television articles and interviews, as well as hundreds of blog posts on the web.  It was featured in three broadcasts of Democracy Now! focused on hydraulic fracturing and water contamination.  In addition, the film has been featured on NBC Nightly News, ABC News and 60 Minutes Australia. The film’s media outreach has been instrumental in helping to inform a worldwide audience and in shaping public opinion. Split Estate Wins an Emmy! In September, Split Estate was honored with an Emmy for Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Craft: Research, at the 31st Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards.  Congratulations to Deb Anderson, Mitchell Marti, Matt Vest, and the entire Split Estate film team! Join this movement by hosting a screening of Split Estate in your community this January and engage with the fight for a clean and just energy future!  Visit our website for a complete listing of the films and months they are being released for the Reel Power series.

The I am Norm campaign was envisioned during a Spring 2009 summit Working Films co-hosted with Filmmaker Dan Habib and the National Education Association. Our goal for the meeting was to develop an advocacy campaign using the documentary Including Samuel to advance the full social and educational inclusion of people with disabilities. At the summit, we all agreed that youth have to be at the table in devising the strategies needed to engage their peers. The campaign was 'born' when twenty teenage leaders from across the country came together at Imagination Stage in Bethesda, Maryland last January for a National Youth Inclusion Summit. Before coming to the Summit, each teen held an Including Samuel viewing party and discussion in their community. The I am Norm campaign is now working to: • Raise awareness about inclusion through a viral video campaign and website. (The campaign is giving away 2 free HD video cameras to the best I am Norm videos submitted. One will go to an individual and one to a class/club. Details are on the website.) • Provide opportunities for youth and adults to share their ideas about inclusion • Promote inclusive practices in schools and community organizations This week the campaign is partnering on outreach with the Inclusive Schools Network on Inclusive Schools Week (December 6-10). There are lots of ways you can get involved in supporting this incredible new, youth-driven campaign for inclusion and disability rights! Help launch the campaign: • Watch the 3-minute compilation video at either of these sites for a quick sense of the campaign’s content and personality. I promise you’ll enjoy it! Website: http://www.iamnorm.org YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/IamNorm2010 • Post the I am Norm website and YouTube video on your Facebook page. Sample text: Meet Norm! Check out the 3-minute video for the new youth-led, national inclusion campaign: I am Norm! Website: http://www.iamnorm.org • Put the word out through other social media (MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, blogs, etc…) • Ask organizations you are involved with or know to put information about I am Norm into newsletters and websites. • Arrange an interview with I am Norm youth and adult organizers for a story in your publication. To do so contactus@iamnorm.org • Are you a teacher? If so, download the free I am Norm Educational Guide and use it to promote disability awareness and inclusion in your school Look for Including Samuel and the I Am Norm campaign to be featured as part of Working Films’ Impact Series in 2011!