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 April
14
Visiting Filmmakers: Patrice O'Neill and Pamela
Calvert
Pictured from left: Pamela Calvert, Pat Aufderheide
and Patrice O'Neill. Photo by Lauren Kritzer.
Co-founder of The Working Group, Patrice
O'Neill has been producer and executive producer of successful
national series on PBS for fifteen years.
The Working Group’s 1995 story of how the town
of Billings, Montana responded to a rash of hate crimes, Not
In Our Town, set a new standard for television impact. What
began as a half-hour PBS special eight years ago has turned into
a national movement. In collaboration with the Independent Media
Institute and Benton Foundation, O’Neill led an unprecedented
outreach campaign featuring screenings and town hall meetings in
hundreds of communities nation-wide, and continued with a second
PBS Democracy Project special, Not In Our Town II. The
Not In Our Town campaign continues in communities to this day.
With Rhian Miller, O’Neill produced We Do
The Work, one of the only national public television series
about work and labor (1990-1996). Her ten-part PBS series Livelyhood
(1997-2001) won five Cine Golden Eagles and was called “a
stroke of television genius” by television critic Tim Goodman
and an “off-beat and uplifting series...with uncommon humor
and grace” by the Wall Street Journal.
Pamela Calvert is
the former station relations and outreach manager for the Independent
Television Service, where she developed award-winning campaigns
for public television productions including The Farmer's Wife
and La Ciudad; prior to joining ITVS, she was outreach
and organizing director for Judith Helfand’s Peabody Award-winning
ITVS documentary A Healthy Baby Girl. Calvert served as
director of programs and services for the Association of Independent
Video and Filmmakers and as a program evaluator for the Paul Robeson
Fund for Independent Media of The Funding Exchange, and was a founding
board member of Working Films. She is co-producer of The Fire
Next Time: A Not In Our Town Special, which will be broadcast
on PBS winter 2004-05. Read
an article by Calvert, Media and Metanoia>>
 NOT
IN OUR TOWN is a national movement that
encourages community response to hate crimes. The project combines
PBS broadcast, grassroots events, educational outreach and online
activities to help communities battling hate talk to‹and learn
from‹each other. For the past decade, NOT IN OUR TOWN has chronicled
positive community organizing stories and provided practical
tools to stimulate dialogue.
The original NOT IN OUR TOWN documentary told the
story of how the citizens of Billings, Montana joined forces to
resist bigotry in their town (www.pbs.org/niot). It was followed
one year later by a PBS Democracy Project Special, NOT IN OUR TOWN
II, that showed how communities all over the country were inspired
by the Billings story to start anti-hate campaigns in their own
towns.
What began as a half hour public television special
has turned into a movement which is now entering its second decade.
From Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Santee, California; Auburn, Maine
to Greensboro, North Carolina, hundreds of law enforcement, civic
groups, schools and PBS stations are using the program both to respond
to‹and to prevent‹hate crimes.
The latest film in the NOT IN OUR TOWN series, THE
FIRE NEXT TIME, profiles two years in the life of a dangerously
divided town in Northwest Montana. The program examines how hate
and intolerance manifest themselves in a community polarized by
rapid change, economic displacement and environmental issues.
A film presentation will include a condensed version
of the original documentary about Billings, Montana, excerpts from
NOT IN OUR TOWN II and other stories that have emerged from the
Not In Our Town movement, and clips from THE FIRE NEXT TIME, recently
funded by ITVS.
Patrice O'Neill and Pamela Calvert will talk about
how the successful impact of NOT IN OUR TOWN has influenced the
filmmaking direction of The Working Group, and new challenges for
broadcast-based community organizing and outreach.
Not in Our Town on PBS>>
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