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News from the Future of Public Media
Public engagement and documentary at Silverdocs
email discuss Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Jul 2, 2008 at 12:56 PM
Every year, there’s more to learn than you can absorb at Silverdocs, between the conference, which is organized by Diana Ingraham of US Independents, and the superb curating, by Sky Sitney. One of my conference faves was the workshop that Dennis Palmieri from Independent Television Service (ITVS) ran about outreach strategies. He linked goals (start a conversation, see action, change the world) with strategies, tactics and types of partners. If you didn’t make it, his Powerpoint is here.
Also, over on the moviegoing side of the festival, my personal favorite won the top prize, the Sterling US Feature award. Scott Hamilton Kennedy’s The Garden chronicles the fight to keep a neighborhood garden in Los Angeles’ devastated South Central district. A closely-observed and close-up story of organizing, it’s as unsentimental as it is genuinely moving. This is the second film I’ve loved of Kennedy’s’; the first was O.T.: Our Town, which ended up on PBS. It tells the story of a gritty, gang-ridden high school in Compton, CA, where high schoolers put on a play for the first time. At first suspicious, they discover surprising universalities in the New England small town story by Thornton Wilder. These are stories that not only show you aspects of the nation that you may not have encountered, but also show you the power of people to take charge of their own lives and fight for their rights when provided even a small opportunity.
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