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Making Your Documentary Matter:
Outreach and Impact Strategies that Work
Hosted by American University's Center for
Social Media
February 7, 2005, 1:00-8:00 p.m.
Panelist Bios:
 Cheryl
Head is Senior
Director of Outreach and Diversity Programming at the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting and is the primary programming liaison
to the Independent
Television Service, the Public
Broadcasting National Minority Programming Consortia and the
National
Center for Outreach. At CPB, Head is also program officer for
projects produced under the CPB Diversity Fund; and is the CPB manager
of the CPB/PBS Producers Academy.
Judith Helfand is
co-founder of Working
Films, a non-profit laboratory/institute based in North Carolina
that is dedicated to linking documentary filmmaking to long-term
social change, that is directing and coordinating the My
House Is Your House - the consumer organizing initiative for
Blue Vinyl.
She is an adjunct professor at New York University's undergraduate
film and television program and speaks widely with her films, doing
workshops and master classes on linking filmmaking to activism all
around the country.
 Melissa
Hook is the Deputy Executive Director
of the Victim
Assistance Legal Organization in McLean VA. Since 1998, she
has been involved in national crime victim-related projects, including
several which involve film or video production. She is a writer
for many texts commissioned for the National Victim Assistance Academy.
Since 2003, she has led an initiative to work with filmmakers on
victims’ rights and concerns and to promote sensitive treatment
of crime victims and survivors in the development of films. Hook
is the lead consultant on the Filmmakers’ Forum for Victim
Sensitivity, a partnership between New York Women in Film and Television
(NYWIFT) and International Documentary Association (IDA) funded
by a U.S. Department of Justice grant, to develop and implement
a strategy to increase awareness of crime victims’ issues
among colleagues in the filmmaking professions.
 Diana
Ingraham, Managing Director/US Independents
is the co-founder of US
Independents, a cooperative agency that works with independent
producers worldwide to provide informed access to the international
producing/broadcasting communities and marketplace. Since its inception
in 1996 US Independents has taken a hands-on approach that tailors
advice, guidance, and networking opportunities to the individual needs
of participants. US Independents hosts delegations at various markets
and seminars including: the World Congresses of Science, History and
Arts Producers, MIPDOC and MIPTV, MIPCOM, MIDEM, Arts in a New Matrix,
the Banff Television Festival, and Sunny Side of the Doc in Marseille
and SILVERDOCS: The AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival. The
organization maintains close ties with key partner organizations such
as Telefilm Canada, the Australian Film Commission, the European Union’s
Marketplace, TV France International, A.G. Doc and Film Kontakt Nord.
Ms. Ingraham has a long track record of work as both a producer and
a consultant to producers and funders of television and multi-media
projects. She specializes in program development, placement, and promotion
into international broadcast television, cable outlets, and ancillary
markets, with emphasis in particular on U.S. Public Television and
its varied local and national constituencies. Ingraham is a former
board member of Women in Film and Video and The Cavaliere Foundation
and currently serves on the Advisory Board of the International Documentary
Association.
 Tod
Lending is an Academy Award nominated
and national Emmy winning producer/director/writer whose work has
aired nationally on ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, HBO; has been screened and
awarded at national and international festivals; and has been televised
internationally in Europe and Asia. He is the president and founder
of Nomadic
Pictures, a film and television production company based in
Chicago.
 Cara
Mertes is currently
the Executive Director of P.O.V./American
Documentary, Inc. Cara Mertes is an award-winning filmmaker,
writer, consultant and programmer whose work has been featured widely
in museums, festivals, PBS and internationally. Since joining P.O.V.,
she has launched P.O.V.’s
Borders, a Webby-Award winning on-line showcase for original
non-fiction web-based content, Youth
Views, P.O.V.’s youth-targeted national screening and
training initiative, the Diverse
Voices Project, a co-production and mentoring initiative for
emerging filmmakers that has resulted in multiple Emmy, Peabody
and duPont-Columbia Awards and nominations for funded films, an
innovative partnership with Netflix
and Docurama
and True Lives, a new series featuring important documentaries
returning to public television broadcast, currently available from
American Public Television. Mertes was the creator and Executive
Producer/Director of SIGNAL TO NOISE: Life with Television,
a three-hour award-winning PBS series examining the impact of television
on everyday life, as well as series producer for New Television,
an annual PBS series featuring international experimental work and
Independent Focus for WNET/New York, at the time the premiere
public television showcase for American independent video and film.
Mertes is Contributing Editor for The Independent and frequently
serves on panels, juries and advisory boards in the media field.
Joy Thomas Moore is
the Manager of Making Connections Communications and Media Projects
for the Annie E.
Casey Foundation, a private philanthropy dedicated to helping
build better futures for disadvantaged children and families in
the United States. Her primary responsibilities are oversight of
the communications efforts of the Foundation’s national initiative,
Making Connections, including coordinating activities that help
the sites craft and disseminate the messages critical to the advancement
of the initiative’s goals of family strengthening and neighborhood
transformation, and charting the direction of the Foundation’s
media projects, primarily television documentaries, radio programs,
and media-based community projects centered in the Foundation’s
Making Connections sites. Prior to joining the Foundation in 1992,
Joy was a freelance writer and field producer in the New York city
area, where she contributed to numerous local and nationally syndicated
programs, including ESSENCE: The Television Program, where
for five years she was the senior writer for the weekly program.
She later served as writer or field producer for the following productions:
Women Into the Nineties (WNBC, Winter, 1990); America’s
Black Forum, hosted by Julian Bond (1990-1992); and the critically
acclaimed eight-part documentary series, Images & Realities:
African American Men and its sequels, The African American
Family (1992-1993), African American Women (1993),
and as senior writer for African American Children (1994).
Judy Ravitz is
President of Outreach Extensions (OE), a national consulting firm
that specializes in creating innovative educational and community
outreach campaigns for media projects. Services include designing
customized initiatives; conducting strategic planning and community
assessments; creating educational enhancements for new media; forging
national partnerships and collaborations; fundraising; and developing
cutting-edge outreach materials, Web sites, grant programs, and events.
In 2002, OE introduced the Reentry
National Media Outreach Campaign, which raises community awareness
as well as facilitates discussion and decision making about solution-based
prisoner reentry programs that foster public safety and support healthy
communities. The previous year, in March 2001, through support from
The Annie E. Casey Foundation, OE launched the ambitious Making
Connections Media Outreach Initiative (MCMOI), which includes
the Reentry Campaign. The overall purpose of any MCMOI campaign is
to strengthen families and communities through providing media resources
to local stakeholders. Current MCMOI campaigns in addition to the
multi-documentary Reentry Campaign include Aging Out, Race
Is the Place, and Waging A Living. Notable prior national
campaigns have included: American Family – Journey of Dreams
(PBS); American Family (PBS); Liberty’s Kids
(PBS); The New Americans (PBS); Matters of Race (PBS);
Legacy (HBO/Cinemax and PBS); This Far by Faith
(PBS); Take This Heart (PBS); Having Our Say: The Delany
Sisters' First 100 Years (Hallmark/CBS); Jesus (CBS);
Brooklyn Family Tale (PBS); Why Can’t We Be A Family
Again (PBS); numerous PBS children's series such as Kratts'
Creatures, Noddy, Tots TV, Shining Time
Station, and Disney Presents Bill Nye, the Science Guy;
as well as other series (To The Contrary) and multi part
documentaries (No Time To Be a Child) broadcast on PBS. Prior
to founding OE in 1992, as Outreach Director at KCET / Los Angeles,
Ravitz developed national and local outreach campaigns. Trained as
a sociologist, she taught college-level courses and advised on fieldwork
before becoming Executive Director of the Los Angeles Commission on
Assaults Against Women. Ravitz brings both academic and community-based
experience to the community empowerment media campaigns OE represents.
 Ellen
Schneider is founder and executive director
of Active
Voice®, a team of strategic communication specialists that
puts socially relevant film to work for personal and institutional
change in communities, workplaces, and campuses across America.
Schneider was formerly executive producer of P.O.V., PBS’
longest running independent nonfiction film series. In 1994, while
at P.O.V., she created High Impact Television®, a technique
for creating links between documentaries, individuals, grassroots
organizations and other media. In 1997 she launched the Television
Race Initiative, one of the few media projects recognized as
a “promising practice” by President Clinton’s
Initiative on Race. She also created the pilot series, Right
Here, Right Now, PBS’ first laboratory for small format
video diaries. When the series premiered, Entertainment Weekly wrote,
“Finally, a blueprint for what reality television should be
all about.” She was a member of the start-up team for the
Independent Television Service and has served on panels and juries
ranging from the Sundance Film Festival to the RioCine Festival
in Brazil.
Robert West
is executive director and co-founder
of Working
Films, is a nationally recognized activist-driven bridge between
high quality documentary filmmaking and serious progressive community
organizing. Working Films, based in North Carolina, was co-founded
by Peabody Award-winning filmmaker and organizer Judith Helfand
and has current projects ranging from high profile national efforts,
including HBO and PBS broadcasts, to regional and local grassroots
initiatives. Now in our fourth year, our work supports efforts for
social, economic, environmental and civil justice. Trembling
Before G-d, Invisible Revolution, On Hostile Ground,
Blue Vinyl, and Two Towns of Jasper are all currently
partnering with Working Films on their outreach. National press
coverage of current Working Films campaigns has included the Village
Voice, LA Weekly, The Nation, the Independent
Film and Video Monthly, In These Times and The
Progressive.
 Panel
Moderator: Patricia
Aufderheide is
a professor in the School of Communication at American University
in Washington, D.C., and the director of the Center for Social Media.
She is the author most recently of The Daily Planet: A Critic
on the Capitalist Culture Beat (University of Minnesota Press,
2000), and of Communications Policy in the Public Interest:
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 (Guilford Press,1999), and
she is the editor of Beyond PC: Toward a Politics of Understanding
(Graywolf Press). She has been a Fulbright and John Simon Guggenheim
fellow, has served as a juror at the Sundance Film Festival among
others.
 Rapporteur:
Barbara Abrash,
an independent producer, curator and
educator, is Program Director of the Center for Media, Culture and
History and the Center for Religion and Media at New York University.
She also teaches in the graduate program in Public History. Her
publications include Mediating History (NYU Press, 1992),
a special issue of the media journal Wide Angle (2001),
on the work of media activist George Stoney, and 9/11 After:
A Virtual Casebook (NYU, 2002). Her reviews and articles have
appeared in various journals including Visual Anthropology Review,
History Workshop Journal, and The Independent.
She has served on the boards of International Film Seminars, Women
Make Movies, the Center for Social Media, and several other media
organizations, and has been a panelist for the National Endowment
for the Humanities, New York Council for the Humanities, Independent
Television Service, etc.
 Workshop
Coordinator: Malkia Lydia
is an independent documentary filmmaker,
with a background in community-based programming, outreach and advocacy.
In 2004, she received an Individual Artist Award from the Maryland
State Arts Council. Malkia’s most recent production, with
collaborator Ryan Saunders, documented family legacies, integrity
and spirituality amongst jazz musicians, for WYBE Public Television’s
Philadelphia Stories. She holds an MFA in Film & Media Arts
from Temple University, has worked with the Scribe Video Center,
the Philadelphia Independent Film & Video Association, and Silverdocs.
She is currently developing a full-length “hometown documentary.”
COME AROUND OUR WAY will tour Black Washington and glimpse into
its future, as led by “Barry’s Kids,” the generation
of African American twenty- and thirty-somethings born in DC in
the 1970s.
 Workshop
Coordinator: Agnes Varnum
is the assistant director of the Center
for Social Media. Varnum has a BA in electronic filmmaking and digital
video design from Fairleigh Dickinson University and is completing
an MFA in film and electronic media at American University. Previously
a research assistant for the Center, she managed the War
Beyond The Box research and web site development. Additionally,
she has worked as the assistant curator of the Council on Foundations
Film and Video Festival, as a volunteer for the DC Environmental
Film Festival, and serves on the screening committee for the Black
Maria Film & Video Festival and Silverdocs.
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