LATEST NEWS

Now in its fourth year, Working Films' Impact Kickstart program has helped underrepresented filmmakers create strategic goals for impact and specific plans to engage future partners, funders, and audiences in meaningful ways. This year, we will be providing $30,000 in impact campaign funding to each recipient, in addition to our in-kind services. Impact Kickstart recipients will use these grants toward the implementation of each film’s impact campaign. In reflection about the evolution of Impact Kickstart, Gerry Leonard, who now leads the program says, "In all of our work, we prioritize amplifying and increasing support for underrepresented artists. We believe the intentionality in our Impact Kickstart program reflects our commitment to redistributing resources and access within documentary filmmaking as well as highlighting critical stories that illuminate the complex intersections between people and issues." We are thrilled to announce the two films receiving an Impact Kickstart in 2021! BRING HER HOME by Leya Hale (Director/Producer) and Sergio Mata’u Rapu (Producer/Editor) Native women make up less than one percent of the U.S. population yet face murder rates that are more than ten times the national average. Bring Her Home follows three indigenous women – an artist, an activist, and a politician – as they fight to vindicate and honor their missing and murdered relatives who have fallen victims to a growing epidemic across Indian country. Despite the lasting effects from colonization, each woman must search for healing while navigating racist systems that brought about this very crisis. FIRE THROUGH DRY GRASS by Andres “Jay” Molina (Co-Director), Alexis Neophytides (Co-Director/Producer), Jennilie Brewster (Producer), Peter Yearwood (Associate Impact Producer), and Vincent Pierce (Impact Strategist/Musician) Fire Through Dry Grass uncovers in real time, and with singular access, the devastation nursing home residents experienced during the coronavirus pandemic. Co-Director Andres “Jay” Molina is one of the Reality Poets, Black and Brown disabled artists who live in an NYC nursing facility. Prior to Covid, they traveled throughout the city sharing their art and wisdom. Using GoPros clamped to their wheelchairs, the Poets document the harrowing year on “lock down.” Nurses beg for PPE, sick patients are moved into crowded rooms with the healthy, while refrigerated-trailer morgues hum outside the windows and city officials lie to hide their deadly decisions. Fire proceeds from the Poets' world to unmask the many issues and inequities that historically impact those most vulnerable, and shows the power of community and creativity. The Poets’ rhymes flow throughout the film, revealing their inner lives and describing life in the city-run institution, now as dangerous as the streets they once ran. Congratulations to the film teams selected. We look forward to the work ahead! Special acknowledgement to all the individuals who played a role in seeing this process through.   ABOUT IMPACT KICKSTART Impact Kickstart was launched with the understanding that a solid strategy for audience engagement and strong partnerships are critical for a documentary film to make a difference. 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 filmmakers can face the biggest hurdles, despite the potential of their projects. To respond to this challenge, Working Films offers free impact campaign development services to underrepresented artists whose films hold great promise to shift understanding and catalyze action that addresses some of the most critical issues of our time. Impact Kickstart is made possible through generous support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Perspective Fund.

Rural Cinema is a training institute and community engagement program resourcing leaders from rural areas and small towns across the United States to use films in their work for environmental justice and protection. The program supports participants in holding screening events that engage their communities and advance their goals over the course of one year. Rural Cinema creates spaces for residents to come together (in-person or virtually), discuss issues affecting their communities, learn and be inspired by the visual content and one another’s experiences, and generate solutions that address their needs and priorities. This year, we will be working with five organizations in communities that are directly affected by polluting industries or are transitioning from being economically fueled by fossil fuels to adopting other more sustainable approaches. We are excited to announce that the 2021 Rural Cinema cohort will include: The Center Pole (The Crow Indian Reservation, MT), the Missouri Rural Crisis Center (Cooper County, MO), Mountain Watershed Association (Melcroft, PA), Partnership for Southern Equity (Fort Valley, GA), and the Rural Utah Project (Grand County, UT). The Center Pole The Center Pole is a Native non-profit organization founded in 1999. The campus is located at the foot of the Little Big Horn Battlefield National Monument on the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana. Originally a youth development organization, The Center Pole has expanded their work to include projects for a stronger Crow community. The expansion includes an alternative energy demonstration project, work in the area of food sovereignty, a digital archive, an indigenous media and education center and a radio station to give the Crow people a voice. Mila Big Hair's Crow name is Holy Water Drum. Mila grew up on the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana and is 33 this year. Mila participates in the Crow sun dance and other sacred ceremonies and speaks the Crow language. Mila grew up at the Center Pole, her mother Peggy Wellknown Buffalo’s non-profit, and has worked there for about 10 years. Mila attended Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Mila is a visual artist and sees film as an important tool to build knowledge, justice and awareness in her Native community. She believes her community is her teacher. David Driftwood's Crow name is Child of the Sundance Whistle. David was born in Wyola, Montana, on the Crow Reservation and has lived there all his life. He is 24 years old. His father died when he was 12. His father instilled a work ethic in him and he began to be industrious, self motivated and interested in helping others at a young age. He grew up assisting his uncle, a filmmaker and teacher, to produce films for Little Big Horn College. He works at the Center Pole, Peggy Wellknown Buffalo’s community organization in community development, particularly in the area of food sovereignty. He has four children: 6, 5, 2 and 1 who are the lights of his life.  

---

Missouri Rural Crisis Center The Missouri Rural Crisis Center (MRCC) is a statewide farm and rural membership organization founded in 1985 with over 5600 member families. MRCC’s mission is to preserve family farms, promote stewardship of the land and environmental integrity and strive for economic and social justice by building unity and mutual understanding among diverse groups, both rural and urban. MRCC carries out this mission through its programming areas, each with its own specific role in advocating for family farms and rural communities. Their innovative approach to family farm organizing includes challenging corporate control of the food supply, creating sustainable alternatives to the current farm and food system, and generating community participation to create a just, democratic society based on equity and fairness for all people. MRCC fights to preserve family farms and independent family farm livestock production, promote stewardship of the land and a safe, affordable high-quality food supply, support social justice and economic opportunity, and engage rural Missourians in public policies that impact their farms, food, families and communities. In addition, MRCC plays leadership roles in national and international efforts for fair farm and trade policies. Jamie Blair is a longtime resident of Audrain County, Missouri,  hobby gardener, mom, and amateur potato scientist. She became Rural Organizer and de facto Digital Organizer with Missouri Rural Crisis Center in early 2020. She is passionate about MRCC’s mission to curtail corporate control of our food systems and restore the natural relationship between farmers and the land. She is especially devoted to the role that sustainable farming can have on our environment through carbon sequestration, decreased runoff, and responsible water use. She wants to see a day where we can start to achieve carbon drawdown as well as a fair price for the farmers who put food on all of our tables. She loves nothing more than talking with other rural folks and finding ways that we can help them meet their needs and conquer the unique challenges that come with rural life.  She also enjoys snuggles from friendly cows, horses, and llamas but makes do with her two dogs and cats for everyday affection. Erich Arvidson is a Loan Officer in Mid-Missouri. He grew up in Delta, Missouri and now resides in rural Cooper County. He has a boundless curiosity that has led him to master a variety of hobbies and skills such as restoring antique cast iron and vintage video games, as well as soap making and bee keeping. Erich is also the type of volunteer that can be counted on and has given his time to the Special Olympics, the Mid-Missouri Food Bank, the Cooper County Democratic Committee, The Missouri Democratic Party State Committee, and MRCC. Erich became involved with Missouri Rural Crisis Center and our Rural Healthcare work as a Medicaid Ambassador after losing both parents in the gap between Medicare and Medicaid in 2019. He made it his mission to make sure another family didn’t have to struggle to make vital healthcare decisions based on cost. He was an integral part of our effort to expand Medicaid in the state of Missouri and stayed involved with our work on healthcare education, racial justice, and environmental justice. He brings enthusiasm and versatility to our Cooper County Rural Cinema project and is personally invested as a resident of Cooper County  

---

Mountain Watershed Association Mountain Watershed Association works to preserve, restore, and protect the Indian Creek and greater Youghiogheny River watersheds. These watersheds are located in the Appalachian foothills of Pennsylvania, a region known as the Laurel Highlands. Mountain Watershed Association organization has a unique approach in that they pursue on-the-ground restoration of past coal mining damage while we also advocate to protect our communities from the impacts of continued extraction for coal and, more recently, natural gas. Their work blends environmental monitoring, legal advocacy, and community organizing in order to empower local residents to take action to defend the waterways and communities they love. James Cato is a Community Organizer with Mountain Watershed Association. He lives in Pittsburgh, PA and he graduated from Oberlin College in 2020 with a degree in Environmental Studies. His organizing work focuses on the impacts of the petrochemical buildout in the Ohio River Valley. In his off time, he publishes speculative fiction about rural environmental issues, hoping to contribute to a greater narrative movement. Stacey Magda is a community organizer with Mountain Watershed Association and lives along the Chestnut Ridge in the Laurel Highlands. She focuses on engaging communities around coal mining developments, fracking waste stream impacts, and defending the celebrated and endangered Youghiogheny River. Her deep appreciation of the area and natural resources feeds her passion for this work. When she isn't hosting community meetings and working on environmental impacts, she enjoys exploring rivers and trails with her young daughter and family. .

---

Partnership for Southern Equity Founded in 2009, the Partnership for Southern Equity (PSE) advances policies and institutional actions that promote racial equity and shared prosperity for all in the growth of Atlanta and the American South. PSE advances its work through an Equity Ecosystem to grow the momentum for change. The Equity Ecosystem uses equity as the lens to propose and pursue just and equitable solutions. Through Values-Based Organizing, community engagement, coalition building, and leadership development, PSE works with communities to promote just energy policies in Georgia and across the American South. A big part of that is helping people understand where their energy comes from, how that affects them, and how they can get involved. Racial equity is utilized as a framework for mobilizing advocacy around energy equity issues. Mobilization takes on many forms including the Just Energy Circle, which is made up of like-minded frontline community organizations and individuals looking to advance a “New Southern Agenda” in the fight against climate injustice. Marsha Gosier is the Central and Southwest Georgia Organizer for the Just Energy issue area within the Partnership for Southern Equity. Born in East Point, Georgia, and proudly representing her hometown Fort Valley, Georgia, Marsha is a natural born organizer, changemaker, influencer and strategist. She dedicates her passion and time to ensuring equity, with a special focus on racial equity matters through the lenses of environmental justice and economic development. In her role at PSE, she has facilitated values-based racial equity and environmental equity trainings, created hubs and organized around environmental justice issues throughout Georgia, including Peach, Houston, Taylor, and Lowndes counties, and in metropolitan areas including Columbus, Macon, Warner Robins, Fort Valley, and Albany. Marsha is passionate about ensuring that just, fair, and equitable policies for low-income and urban communities are attainable throughout the South, and her work is an intentional work of love. Keta Lucas is one of Marsha’s partners in community. Keta is currently participating in Just Energy’s 2021 Just Energy Academy, which advances energy equity in formal and informal leadership positions. This program was designed to provide cohorts with the knowledge, skills, and tools to effectively engage stakeholders regarding community concerns and policies that impact their communities; in particular, energy equity and climate justice issues. Marsha and Keta have partnered together within their community while supporting one another’s organizations, including Culture 64 and Sankofa Speaks. Keta is a community advocate with the objective of encouraging and inspiring the members of her community to reach their potential. Her work is dedicated to advocating for the underserved families in the Fort Valley community.  

---

The Rural Utah Project The Rural Utah Project is dedicated to increasing civic engagement in rural communities across Utah. We’re a young organization and are motivated to build a powerful movement with our neighbors that fights for a more just and sustainable future for rural Utah’s communities and landscapes. We seek to expand civic participation by breaking down barriers to the ballot box and providing organizing tools to local communities.   Nate Vosburg is a community and labor organizer having worked for political campaigns and unions across the country. Now based in southeastern Utah, his work with the Rural Utah Project focuses on voting rights and civic engagement, economic justice for workers, and just transition advocacy. Krystyna has lived and worked on the Colorado Plateau since 1992, first in Grand Junction, CO, now in Moab, UT. After ten years teaching high school and middle school mathematics, she refocused her energy on public lands, community development, and the environment with Public Land Solutions as Executive Coordinator and Technology Manager. An avid hiker, trail runner, and explorer, she holds a B.S. in Physics, an M.A. in Education and is currently working on a graduate degree in Natural Resources from Utah State University. She recently joined the board of KZMU 90.1, a local radio station, and volunteers with other organizations in the area. On the weekends she can be found roaming the desert with her dog, Beau. .

---

 

The history of the prison industrial complex is rooted in slavery and colonization, with an inherent purpose of reinforcing oppressive social and economic injustices. It’s driven by market forces that use surveillance, policing, violence and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social, and political problems. It is exacted by police officers, guards, ICE officers, and others that enforce state violence. Brutality and racism has always been the norm. The system is working how it was designed, and reform measures will always fall short.  To illuminate these realities and get to a world free of police and prisons - we need stories. Stories that share the history and harm of these institutions, stories that show people pushing back and taking action, and stories that bring forth irresistible visions of a future with humane and just alternatives to policing and incarceration. This was the intention of the Docs in Action request for proposals, which sought to fund short nonfiction films that can help define and amplify what prison industrial complex abolition means, and that inspire people to imagine and take action toward a world without police and prisons. We are excited and honored to announce the recipients of the 2021 Docs in Action Film Fund. $125,000 was awarded to five filmmakers to complete short films that embody these narratives. They include: Adamu Chan for What These Walls Won’t Hold, Erika Cohn for Belly of the Beast (short version), Walidah Imarisha for Space to Breathe, Sylvia Ryerson for Restorative Radio, and Khary Septh for Pen Pals.  The complexities of abolition are deeply layered. It is both historical and imaginative. This is why narrative is such a crucial component of the abolitionist movement. “Abolition contains multitudes,” Red Schulte, Organizer with Survived & Punished New York, reflects on the ongoing work and struggle. “A central aspect to me, an aspect that keeps me recommitted to these politics and relationship experiments, is the creativity and imagination that abolition demands. Making visual narratives, like films, making our own media is so crucial to shifting social and cultural norms, beliefs and commitments. Resourcing people to make their art, to document our movements, to imagine different worlds — that has to be part of our political agenda.” Working Films launched the Docs In Action Film Fund in 2018 to support the production of short documentaries that address critical issues of social and environmental justice. This year, we evolved how Docs In Action funding decisions are made. Because we believe that grassroots leaders and directly impacted people should hold the power to determine what stories are told and what films are funded to serve their movements, we ceded our role on the grant panel. The funded films were selected by our partners, which include Center for Political Education, Critical Resistance, MPD150, and Survived & Punished.  The intentionality to build power from the ground up is echoed in the words of Aminah Elster, Campaign & Policy Coordinator with the CA Coalition for Women Prisoners and organizer with Survived & Punished CA, “The overall process of the DIA panel allowed for proximate leaders working towards abolition at various intersections, to truly have a hand in selecting the narratives that most accurately reflect and amplify what our communities have long been experiencing.”  The 2021 Docs In Action Film Fund recipients include:  What These Walls Won’t Hold by Adamu Chan The COVID-19 crisis inside California prisons has claimed the lives of over 200 incarcerated people and infected tens of thousands more. This film tracks the origins of COVID-19 inside the California state prison system and a newly formed coalition, led by currently and formerly incarcerated people, that brought forward an abolitionist framework to a life or death situation. What These Walls Won’t Hold explores how relationships, built on trust, shared liberatory struggle, and connections across broader abolitionist organizing work, can unfold into sites of resistance and radical change. Adamu Chan is a filmmaker, writer, and community organizer from the Bay Area who was incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison during one of the largest COVID-19 outbreaks in the country. He produced numerous short films while incarcerated, using his vantage point and experience as an incarcerated person as a lens to focus the viewer’s gaze on issues related to social justice. Adamu draws inspiration and energy from the voices of those directly impacted, and seeks to empower them to reshape the narratives that have been created about them through film. What These Walls Won’t Hold is produced by Christian Collins and Adamu Chan. Space to Breathe by Walidah Imarisha, Jordan Flaherty, and Kate Trumbull-LaValle, in collaboration with Calvin Williams of Wakanda Dream Lab Space to Breathe is an abolitionist science fiction hybrid documentary. The film is set in a future where there are no prisons or police, looking back at how today's movements built that future. Walidah Imarisha is an educator at Portland State University’s Black Studies Department and a writer. Her work includes Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories From Social Justice Movements and Angels with Dirty Faces: Three Stories of Crime, Prison and Redemption. Jordan Flaherty is an award-winning journalist, producer, and author. You can see more of his work at jordanflaherty.org. Kate Trumbull-LaValle is an award-winning independent documentary filmmaker. She directed Ovarian Psycos (2016), Artist and Mother (2018), City Rising: The Informal Economy (2018), and she co-produced two of five episodes for the groundbreaking PBS series, Asian Americans (2020). Over the past 20 years, Calvin Williams has been worldbuilding for liberation as a dynamic cultural strategist & policy futurist, and is Co-founder and Creative Director for Wakanda Dream Lab. Restorative Radio by Sylvia Ryerson Every Monday night, Michelle Griffin dials into WMMT-FM community radio’s Calls from Home, to send a message over the airwaves to her husband, imprisoned 400 miles away. For thousands incarcerated in Central Appalachia, the show provides a lifeline to the world outside. Restorative Radio tells the stories of family and friends who call in, and those who listen in from prison. Directed by a former DJ of the show, the film portrays the many forms of distance that rural prison building creates — and the ceaseless search to overcome this regime of family separation and racial apartheid. Sylvia Ryerson is a multimedia artist, journalist and PhD candidate in American Studies at Yale University. Prior to graduate school she worked at the Appalshop media arts and education center in Whitesburg, KY, where she served as a reporter, producer and WMMT-FM Director of Public Affairs. She co-directed and hosted Appalshop’s Calls from Home radio show, broadcasting music and toll-free phone messages from family members to their loved ones incarcerated, and Making Connections News, a multimedia storytelling project documenting efforts for a Just Appalachian Transition. She currently co-produces Melting the ICE / Derritiendo el Hielo, a bilingual radio show broadcasting testimonios and information to people detained by ICE in New Jersey. Her academic and artistic work has appeared on Kentucky Educational Television (KET), the BBC, NPR’s The Takeaway and Here and Now, the Third Coast International Audio Festival, in American Quarterly, the Boston Review, The Marshall Project, and Critical Resistance’s The Abolitionist. Restorative Radio is produced by Sylvia Ryerson, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Mimi Pickering, and Reuben Atlas. Impact production by Michelle Griffin. Cinematography by Randall Taylor Jr. and Ayesha Gilani Taylor. Pen Pals by Khary Septh Pen Pals shares the stories of the Black LGBTQ+ community caught in the web of America’s prison industrial complex. Exploring the story of Dominique Morgan who was formerly incarcerated and now is the Executive Director of Black and Pink where she works tirelessly to advance prison abolition and supports LGBTQ+ people and people living with HIV/AIDS who are affected by that system, we gain not only an analysis of the structural role of the PIC in maintaining white supremacy and capitalism, but also, a call-to-action for our community to engage in cooperative activities to end it. Dominique’s story as a Black transgender woman also adds the complexity of gender identity to the story, and how it relates to the extreme suffering of trans people trapped in the PIC, and also in society beyond the walls. Stories soften the heart so that the mind may rationally consider things like our moral obligation to support our incarcerated population, or the safety of trans identities in the prison industrial complex, and ultimately, our duty to topple the prison industrial complex. Pen Pals is a collection of these stories, all shared in service of ending the suffering of our people. Khary Septh is a filmmaker and Executive Editor of The Tenth Magazine, a bi-annual publication that engages the world’s most dynamic LGBTQ+ artists and intellectuals of color in presenting content steeped the American tradition of politically engaged journalism that pays attention to long form, ambitious writing and critical queer thought. A graduate of Cornell University, before starting The Tenth, Khary spent many years as the head of Pink Rooster Studio—a Brooklyn-Based creative studio, and these days, spends his time living and working between New York’s Hudson River Valley and New Orleans, focusing on projects such as the Hudson Emergency Artist Response Team (HEART); non-conditional grants of $500 awarded monthly to BIPOC Hudson-based artists to weather the COVID-19 crisis, and The Tenth Academy, which strives to democratize access to quality mentorship and education, specifically for today’s Black and brown queer youth and adult communities through partnerships with institutions such as Spelman College and the Amistad Research Archives.    Pen Pals is produced by James Powell and Andre Jones.  Cinematography by Drew McCrary.  Belly of the Beast (short version) by Erika Cohn When an unlikely duo discovers a pattern of illegal sterilizations in women’s prisons, they wage a near impossible battle against the Department of Corrections. Filmed over seven years with extraordinary access and intimate accounts from currently and formerly incarcerated people, Belly of the Beast exposes modern-day eugenics and reproductive injustice in California prisons. Erika Cohn is a Peabody, Emmy and DGA Award-winning filmmaker who Variety recognized as one of 2017’s top documentary filmmakers to watch and was featured in DOC NYC’s 2019 “40 Under 40.” Erika directed/produced Belly of the Beast, a NY Times Critic's Pick, currently playing in virtual cinemas. Erika also directed/produced The Judge (TIFF 2017) and co-directed/produced In Football We Trust (Sundance 2015). Belly of the Beast is produced by Angela Tucker, Christen Marquez, and Nicole Docta.

The Docs in Action Film Fund is made possible with support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

Working Films hosted three events during the 2021 Sundance Film Festival at our virtual venue, THE MOVEMENT SPACE. These conversations examined power, collaboration, accountability, and the magic of film as a catalyst for radical imagination and action. Click below to watch them now! BUILDING POWER THROUGH CREATIVE COLLABORATION A conversation about building collective power through creative collaboration. The Rise-Home Stories Project is a group of multimedia storytellers and housing and land justice advocates who are coming together to reimagine the past, present, and future of our communities by transforming the stories we tell about them. Feauring award-winning filmmaker and supervising producer of Rise-Home Stories, Paige Wood; development director of City Life / Vida Urbana, Mike Leyba; deputy director of Texas Housers, Christina Rosales; award-winning director and producer Angela Tucker; and writer Evan Narcisse, whose credits include the Rise of the Black Panther graphic novel and Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales. Learn more about the Rise-Home Stories Project and sign up for updates here. DOCS IN ACTION: MOVEMENT BUILDING & SHIFTING POWER Who decides what stories are needed and which films get funding? How do we ensure grassroots leaders and directly impacted people hold power in the process? Docs in Action partners, Set Hernandez Rongkilyo, director and producer of COVER/AGE and Aminah Colbert, Survived + Punished CA organizer, talk with Working Films' Gerry Leonard and Andy Myers in a discussion about ways that film-driven organizing campaigns can be informed and led by those with the most at stake in the issues at hand. Find out more about the Docs In Action program here. STORYSHIFT: THE FUNDERS A movement to highlight and address inequity and extractive practices in documentary filmmaking has ramped up in recent years. How do calls for accountability extend to funders? This conversation examines ways that grantmaking practices could evolve to prioritize ethical storytelling and influence broader change throughout the sector. Featuring: Chi-hui Yang, Ford Foundation; Shaady Salehi, Trust Based Philanthropy; F. Javier Torres-Campos, Surdna Foundation; Molly Murphy, Docs In Action Film Fund / Working Films; and Moderated by Natalie Bullock Brown, StoryShift Strategist / Working Films. Find out more about StoryShift here.

North Carolina Humanities and Working Films have collaborated on an exclusive version of Revisioning Recovery: Films Uncovering the Roots of Disaster, a limited-time documentary and discussion series for communities in North Carolina. Revisioning Recovery features a collection of five short films that tell environmental disaster recovery stories and examine historical inequities that worsen when disasters hit. Sponsored by North Carolina Humanities, these free events will also include interactive, post-screening discussions. The first screening event will take place on February 17, hosted by Alamance Community College with upcoming events happening in Alleghany, Macon, Nash, New Hanover, Onslow, Wake, and Watauga counties. For a list of locations and dates, please visit www.workingfilms.org/revisioning-recovery/nchtour. The films featured in Revisioning Recovery include Robeson Rises, directed by Michael Pogoloff; Razing Liberty Square (work-in-progress) directed by Katja Esson; The Right to Be Rescued, directed by Jordan Melograna & Rooted in Rights; The Sacrifice Zone, directed by Julie Winokur; and a sneak peek of We Still Here, directed by Eli Jacobs Fantauzzi. You can watch the trailers for these films at www.workingfilms.org/revisioning-recovery. “The underlying themes and messages explored in these films resonate with environmental events we are experiencing today,” said North Carolina Humanities’ Executive Director Sherry Paula Watkins. “It is our hope that these films will bring people together, virtually or in a limited capacity, to have meaningful discussions about our varied relationships with the environment and equitable disaster preparedness, response, and recovery in our state.” Working Films Impact Coordinator, Hannah Hearn, adds “most of our team is based in North Carolina, so we are no stranger to the issues that arise with disaster prep and recovery. We have seen our same community members who are overlooked in everyday life continue to be overlooked during disasters. The inequities that have always been there become glaringly apparent. We hope this tour promotes conversations on this issue, even after the screenings are over, and we hope it encourages people to take next steps to figure out how to create equitable emergency response in their own town.” Communities across North Carolina, and the United States, have faced increasing threats from climate disasters including hurricanes, wildfires, floods, and tornadoes which leave them hoping to recover before the next climate event occurs. Equitable disaster preparedness and recovery are important, especially in communities where preparation and recovery efforts have historically experienced inequities. Revisioning Recovery examines and explores the issue of how preparedness and recovery can become more inclusive and allow everyone to thrive .   About the Revisioning Recovery Collaboration:    North Carolina Humanities and Working Films have partnered on this presentation of Revisioning Recovery as part ofNorth Carolina Humanities’ “Watershed Moments” initiative and Working Films’ Revisioning Recovery campaign.  “Watershed Moments” was created by North Carolina Humanities to explore our varied relationships with the environment, culturally and historically. Programs include a Statewide Read of The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi, and Dry by Neal and Jarrod Schusterman as well as the statewide tour of the Smithsonian exhibit, Water/Ways. "Watershed Moments" is part of the national initiative on "Democracy and the Informed Citizen" administered through the Federation of State Humanities Councils and funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. North Carolina Humanities is a statewide nonprofit and affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Revisioning Recovery is a project of Working Films, a national nonprofit organization based in Wilmington, NC. Recognizing the power of stories to inform and inspire, Working Films builds partnerships between nonfiction media-makers, nonprofit organizations, educators and advocates to advance social justice and environmental protection, and support community-based change.   To stay up to date on upcoming screenings, visit www.workingfilms.org/revisioning-recovery/nchtour.    

How can films shift public understanding and inspire action for social justice? Working Films—together with our partners at The Light Factory and The School of Good Citizenship— is leading a free online workshop on September 24th at 1pm ET focused on leveraging the power of documentaries to amplify important messages, reach and rally key audiences, build partnerships, and influence decision makers. As a case study, the workshop will feature Stories Beyond Borders, an organizing initiative featuring five short films that together show a comprehensive picture of the attacks on immigrants in the United States and lift up community-led solutions. Launched in the fall of 2019, Working Films and our partners have used Stories Beyond Borders to disrupt stereotypical portrayals and harmful narratives of undocumented immigrants and to support statewide and local organizing for immigrant justice. We invite you to join us for this free workshop designed to teach you how to utilize films as a resource for social justice in your community and beyond. If you’re in the Charlotte, NC area, you can also join us on Saturday, October 3 for a physically distant drive-in screening of Stories Beyond Borders.

The Works-in-Progress Lab (WiP) is a partnership between Cucalorus and Working Films that supports the audience engagement and impact strategies of social issue documentaries being made by Black filmmakers. The week-long virtual residency is a key program of the annual Cucalorus. Five filmmakers receive extensive community feedback during a series of public and private screenings, workshops, and one-on-one consultations with expert mentors. We’re thrilled to announce that the following documentary films have been selected for the 2020 WiP lab: 17 Days directed by and about Christine Varisse, is a dissection of her immigration journey prompted after receiving a notice of deportation. In the film, she retraces her footsteps towards citizenship while rebuilding the relationship with her mother broken by the immigration system while examining a variety of issues that historically and still today impact the system, in particular black immigration rights. Saltwata Vibes: Sankofa Seeds from Geechee Roots directed by Sherard Duvall examines how the 20-40 year old generation of Gullah Geechee are redefining their identity and reclaiming their power through creating a modern musical expression that is wholly their own. Following a Gullah Geechee brother and sister, descendants of the enslaved from West Africa, who are on a quest to evolve their culture. Can evolution keep it alive? This Belongs To Us directed by Atinuke Diver questions how beer brewing, a practice that began in Africa, became synonymous with White male identity in the United States, and will cover the historical, systemic and current barriers faced by Black-owned breweries in general, as well as in particular for a Black, woman/female brewer in the American South, Eastern North Carolina. These Kids This City directed by Dorian Munroe, is centered around the young people of Liberty City Miami and its infamous bike culture, which reaches its pinnacle every Martin Luther King Day, when thousands flood the streets on dirt bikes and four wheelers riding in a form of rebellion and community. They Tried to Bury Us directed by nationally recognized activist Bree Newsome, documents unfolding events as her hometown becomes the epicenter of national clashes over racism and other systemic problems, exploring how the city’s commitment to host the 2020 Republican convention highlights contradictions between Charlotte’s projected image as a progressive city and its continued legacy of segregation. The Works-in-Progress Lab is designed and led by Working Films, a twenty year old Wilmington based nonprofit organization that is nationally recognized for it’s work using documentaries as a resource to inform and involve communities in addressing social and environmental issues that impact their lives. The 2020 Works-in-Progress Lab mentors include acclaimed filmmakers Byron Hurt and Jacqueline Olive.

Are you looking to engage in more conversations about racial justice? Or maybe there are people you know who are looking to expand their analysis and understanding of systemic inequities? We invite you to join us for our upcoming online screening events this week and next, which will tackle environmental racism, immigrant justice, and equity during disasters. Please spread the word to your networks! Mossville: When Great Trees Fall June 16 @ 7pm ET RSVP here for streaming link Presented with Partnership For Southern Equity What does environmental racism mean? Join Partnership for Southern Equity and Working Films for a “Juneteenth Chat and Chill” featuring Mossville: When Great Trees Fall. The film tells the story of Mossville, Louisiana: A once-thriving community founded by formerly enslaved and free people of color, and an economically flourishing safe haven for generations of African American families. Today it’s a breeding ground for petrochemical plants and their toxic black clouds. Many residents are forced from their homes, and those that stay suffer from prolonged exposure to contamination and pollution. Amid this chaos and injustice stands one man who refuses to abandon his family’s land - and his community. The screening will be followed by a discussion hosted by Partnership for Southern Equity’s Organizing Unit with filmmaker Alexander Glustrom. Stories Beyond Borders June 18 @ 7pm ET RSVP here for streaming link Presented in partnership with Women AdvaNCe How can you contribute your time, energy and resources to support immigrant led organizing? This collection of five shorts is part of Working Films’ film-driven organizing campaign broadening the narrative of who is impacted by racist, inhumane immigration policies while lifting up the ways we can organize in response. The screening will be followed by a conversation with Juana Luz Tobar Ortega - featured in Santuario - who has been taking sanctuary in a church for over three years to avoid deportation. The film and post-screening discussion will be available in Spanish and English. Revisioning Recovery Virtual Premiere June 23 @ 6:30pm ET RSVP here for streaming link Presented in partnership with California Rural Legal Assistance, Houston Organizing Movement for Equity (HOME) Coalition and World Institute on Disability What can we learn from climate disasters as we respond to the COVID-19 pandemic? Join us for the virtual premiere of Revisioning Recovery, a collection of short films that illuminate the current injustices, systems at play, and the solutions needed to prepare and respond to disasters. The screening will be followed by a discussion with community based and national leaders working to ensure emergency response and long term recovery is equitable and inclusive of all. The films will be available in English with English and Spanish closed captioning and English audio description. The post-screening discussion will include English live captioning, Spanish interpretation, and International Sign.