Making an Impact
Impactful Projects
We've spoltlighted creative media projects that have propelled massive social action:
"Gasland"
Filmmaker Josh Fox has taken his Academy Award-nominated, Sundance Special Jury prize-winning film, "Gasland," all over the country, reaching some 80,000 viewers in 13 states and 100 cities, while also getting it on HBO. He’s been learning as he goes. An avant-garde theater director with a short fiction film behind him, he had never made a documentary before Gasland, which takes on Big Energy for “fracking,” the highly toxic process of extracting natural gas. He got into the subject when his own home was threatened with water and air pollution from the practice. More....
"Out in the Silence"
The bullying faced by many gay youth has been much in the news recently, as commentators and activists respond to the suicide of Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi. As Emmy award-winning documentary Out in the Silence shows, LGBT residents of small towns across the country can battle such bias their entire lives. Released last September, the film explores discrimination faced by LGBT residents of Oil City, Pennsylvania. We examine the filmmakers’ effective engagement strategies. More...
"The Reckoning"
Directed by Pamela Yates and produced by Paco de Onis, "The Reckoning" follows Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo of the International Criminal Court (ICC) as he issues arrest warrants for the rebel leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda, puts 4 Congolese warlords on trial in The Hague, charges the President of Sudan with genocide and war crimes in Darfur, challenges the UN Security Council to have him arrested, and shakes up the Colombian criminal justice system. Following the screening Pamela and Paco sat down for a lively Q & A session and earlier in the day they also conducted a filmmaking master class for students where they detailed some of the innovative outreach and distribution strategies they have pioneered. More...
Designing for Impact
Jessica Clarke shares ways in which the "design thinking" approach offers a framework for documentary makers to think about how research and evaluation can help to increase the impact of their projects. More...