As We Sleep

More About As We Sleep In the summer of 2002, Marcie Lotzgeselles’ parents welcomed documentary filmmaker Elizabeth…
Official selection of the Third Annual Festival

Ashray

More About Ashray from Director Ambika Samartha Ashray, one of the project organizations that makes up the…
Official selection of the Seventh Annual Festival

Denied

Filmmaker
Julie Winokur

When I met Sheila Wessenberg, she was living the American nightmare.

She had a potentially fatal illness, but because she was uninsured her life seemed expendable.

She said to me, “There is no reason why anyone should be shoved into homelessness and helplessness just to live.” She was referring to the fact that she could only get publicly funded health care if she gave up her home and her car. In the meantime, her doctor had abandoned her and she had already gone seven months with no chemotherapy.

I was so horrified by the real-life cost of poor public policy that I became obsessed with all the ‘Sheilas’ whose lives were on the line. I realized Sheila could be any one of us—could even be me. I wanted to shout from the highest rafter that she was being dealt one of the greatest injustices I had witnessed in the 20 years I’d been a journalist. 

We first published Shelia’s story in The New York Times Magazine. Readers were so shocked by her suffering that they donated over $50,000 in order to help the family stay afloat. Next, we published Sheila’s story in a book and exhibition called Denied, which was shared on Capitol Hill and toured to state capitols across the country.

But our work wasn’t done because U.S. health care policy hadn’t budged an inch. We decided we had to tell Sheila’s story in film so even more people could see the shocking truth. Considering the raging debate on health care reform in Washington now, inclusion in the Media That Matters Film Festival couldn’t be more relevant or more urgent.

Diana

More About Diana from Director Brynmore Williams We were approached by MTV to help create a documentary…
Official selection of the Eighth Annual Festival

Diane Wilson, A Warrior’s Tale

Diane Wilson, A Warrior’s Tale is one of several short subjects that appeared in an hour-long Lifetime…
Official selection of the Third Annual Festival

Don’t Worry

More About Don’t Worry from Director Emily James Don’t Worry was a TV series for Channel 4.…
Official selection of the Media That Matters: Good Food

Esmeraldas: Petroleum and Poverty

Esmeraldas: Petroleum and Poverty was directed by Joshua Holst, a life-long student of the environment and human…
Official selection of the Third Annual Festival

Every Third Bite

More About Every Third Bite from the Meerkat Media Collective Two years ago, honeybees started to disappear.…
Official selection of the Eighth Annual Festival

Fast and Reliable

More About Fast and Reliable from Director, Tom Soper I was a bike messenger when I first…
Official selection of the Fifth Annual Festival

Food for Thought

More About Food for Thought from Producer Kids on the Hill The Food for Thought animation was…
Official selection of the Media That Matters: Good Food

Food Justice: A Growing Movement

More About Food Justice: A Growing Movement from Directors and Producers Martina Brimmer and Zora Tucker Food…
Official selection of the Media That Matters: Good Food

Hammoudi

More About Hammoudi from Producer Tima Khalil I first read an article on Mohammad’s story in a…
Official selection of the Eighth Annual Festival

I Promise Africa

More About I Promise Africa from Director Jerry Henry I went to Kenya in late August of…
Official selection of the Fourth Annual Festival

I’m Just Anneke

Filmmaker Jonathan Skurnik

I’m Just Anneke is the first film in a four-part series of short films called The Youth and Gender Media Project designed to educate school communities about transgender and gender nonconforming youth. The first two films in the series are finished and the second two are in production. The completed films are already being used in schools and conferences throughout the U.S. to train administrators, teachers and students about the importance of protecting all children from harassment due to gender identity and expression.

Transgender and gender fluid youth are the most courageous people I have ever met. Despite overwhelming pressure to conform to an oppressive gender binary paradigm, they refuse to do it in order to be true to themselves. I wanted to pay tribute to these courageous young people and to inspire all of us to reconsider our own decisions about gender identity and expression.

Anneke is going into eighth grade in the fall of 2010 and I plan to film her over the course of her first year in high school. This footage will become a feature length documentary about Anneke’s life as she starts to take testosterone and begins a slow and thoughtful transition to fully embody her own unique gender identity.

In Transit

More About In Transit from Directors and Producers Bent Jorgen Perlmutt, Nelson Walker III and Louis Abelman…
Official selection of the Sixth Annual Festival

Inch By Inch: Providence Youth Gardens for Change

Teachers and students in Providence, Rhode Island get their hands dirty and their lives enriched.

It’s In Your Hands

Filmmaker Andrew Hinton

The figures are pretty startling. 3.5 million children die annually due to diarrhea and acute respiratory infection worldwide - more than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. But the good news is that a ridiculously simple act can save large numbers of these kids: hand washing with soap.

I went out with Jared and Sowmya on one of their school visits. Through games and theatre they and their team, teach schoolchildren about germs, show when and how hands need to be washed, and then they get them to build tippy taps.

If you’ve never come across one before, the tippy tap is a beautifully simple design solution to some big health problems, and the first time I saw one in use I knew it had the makings of a short film.

iThemba

More About iThemba from the Producers, Keefe Murren and Nelson Walker III The iThemba Film Project was…
Official selection of the Fourth Annual Festival

Laugh at the Fat Kid

More About Laugh at the Fat Kid from the Director, Kristina Schoentag Laugh at the Fat Kid…
Official selection of the Fourth Annual Festival

Looking Back

More about Looking Back from Director Emile Bokaer I learned about Albert Lewis while reading a newspaper…
Official selection of the Ninth Annual Festival

Luv Me Latex

In 2001, Visual AIDS partnered with Frame By Frame Fierce to produce Luv Me Latex. Frame By…
Official selection of the Third Annual Festival

My Hotness is Pasted on Yey!

Filmmaker Gus Andrews

The Media Show is a YouTube channel series staring puppets Weena and Erna, two high-school-aged sisters skipping school to spend time making their own videos in an abandoned storage closet in an advertising agency in New York City. The show’s model of media literacy aims to reconcile the exuberance of fan-created media with a critique of ad-driven corporate media.

In this episode of The Media Show, My Hotness is Pasted on Yey!, Weena and Erna happen across a terrible graphics job in Cosmopolitan, leading them to the website Photoshop Disasters, which gets them thinking about other photo manipulation throughout history. Stalin, Hitler, OJ Simpson, Beyoncé—who hasn’t been touched by photo alteration in some way? The girls explore art and propaganda and end up playing with Photoshop themselves, taking control and manipulating their own appearance.

By primarily distributing online, we aim to enter into a dialog about media where young producers, both casual and political, are already displaying and critiquing their work. We hoped this episode might be many things to many people. To viewers on YouTube, it has prompted dialog about whether media can simply be dismissed as “fake” and how photos are involved in the “pro-ana” (pro-anorexia) community online. To educators, we hope it offers Photoshop Disasters and ad agency websites as potential materials for media literacy lessons, while sparking some new ideas on how to approach the topic. We even hope that this might give ad agency creatives a moment to reflect on the impact of their work.

Neglected Sky

More About Neglected Sky from Citizens for Global Solutions The idea to submit a movie to the…
Official selection of the Fifth Annual Festival

Night Visions

More About Night Visions from Director Kathy Huang Since September 11, 2001, over a million Americans have…
Official selection of the Sixth Annual Festival

No Escape, Prison Rape

The first federal bill to stop prison rape, the Prison Rape Reduction Act of 2002, was introduced…
Official selection of the Third Annual Festival

Novela, Novela

More About Novela, Novela from Director Elizabeth Miller I first met Virginia Lacayo and Amy Bank, Executive…
Official selection of the Fourth Annual Festival

Profit Cola

More About Profit Cola and Parent’s Action for Children Profit Cola was created for Parents’ Action for…
Official selection of the Media That Matters: Good Food

Rebel

The Lower East Side Girls Club was founded in 1996 to address the egregious lack of services…
Official selection of the Third Annual Festival

Recycle

More About Recycle from Directors and Producers Vasco Lucas Nunes and Ondi Timoner Recycle is a portrait…
Official selection of the Sixth Annual Festival

Seeds of Hope: South Africa

More About Seeds of Hope: South Africa from the Director Sarah Hesterman Seeds of Hope was produced…
Official selection of the Fourth Annual Festival

Silence Speaks

Silence Speaks provides violence survivors, witnesses, and prevention advocates with the support, skills, and equipment they need…
Official selection of the Third Annual Festival

Still Standing

More About Still Standing from Producer EVC Youth Organizers Television (YO-TV) In December 2005, the EVC Youth…
Official selection of the Seventh Annual Festival

Storm

Thomas Brown, Director of Storm, is the founder of The Broken Toy Project a national anti-bullying program.…
Official selection of the Third Annual Festival

Talking About It

Filmmaker Isaac Haney-Owens

I joined BAYCAT, a San Francisco nonprofit community media production company, in the fall of 2009. At that time, I was just finishing high school and wanted to learn how to make films. I became a young media producer at BAYCAT taking filmmaking classes and started to work on films. At the beginning I was reluctant to be in front of the camera, but with time and some training on production and acting for the camera, I was able to feel more at ease and became more confident. I was excited that BAYCAT then offered me an internship. While working on our 19th episode of BAYCAT’s youth produced
TV show “Zoom In”, we focused on interpretations of “Legacy”. We were asked to reflect on what others have left for us, and what we would like to leave behind for future generations. With some encouragement from Marco, the Program Director and the BAYCAT team, I took a chance and started working on TALKING ABOUT IT. The film provides people with a snapshot into my life, living with Asperger’s, and my art. Besides turning the camera on myself, I asked my mom Karen a few questions, and I also included some of my photographs at the end.

The Farm Sanctuary

More About The Farm Sanctuary from Producer Fly Up Media The Farm Sanctuary is the nation’s leading…
Official selection of the Seventh Annual Festival

The Future of Food

More About The Future Of Food There is a revolution happening in the farm fields and on…
Official selection of the Media That Matters: Good Food

The Last Town

Filmmaker Yan Chun Su

In order to complete the Three Gorges Dam hydroelectric project in China, a total of sixteen historical towns, some with more than 2000 years of history had to be flooded. Kai Xian was the last of the 16 towns. Filmed in Kai Xian shortly before the final relocation, The Last Town is a portrait of the town and its residents as they ready (or not) themselves for the big move.

Facing widespread land disputes and unfair relocation assignment, many of the unprivileged residents had to deal with the hardship of not only leaving their homeland behind, but also how to make a decent living afterward. Dust-filled streets and crumbled houses provided the backdrop for stories of ordinary residents dealing with the uncertainty ahead.

I felt compelled to see what old Kai Xian looked like after I found out it was the last old town to be flooded for the Three Gorges Dam Project. What I saw was quite surreal. People burning door frames, window frames on the street, metal salvagers picking on piles of rubble, and the almost eerie contrast between ordinary, everyday activities and the fact that people there were going through a historical time—they were the witnesses and also part of a town’s more than one thousand years of history about to be flooded forever.

The residents still struggling to make the move discovered me very quickly on the street and I was able to record this small glimpse of their lives. It is hopeful that by having their voices recorded, their stories and situations could weigh in on future developments with such profound human impacts.
Old Kai Xian town was completely flooded in 2009. Corruption is still widespread.

Many people are struggling in the new city. In order to rake in as much profit as possible, contractors appointed by local government constructed sub-standard housing and immigrants with little financial and political backing were more likely to be assigned to live in those buildings. 

The Leaves Keep Falling

Filmmaker Julie Winokur

When I was asked to become a media fellow for the Vietnam Reporting Project, I jumped at the opportunity to try to take a fresh look at a subject I had grown up with, during the Vietnam War era in America. My first reaction was, “isn’t this an old story?” But once I got into the research and realized two very compelling facts: 1) young generations in America and around the world did not know what Agent Orange was, and 2) due to the transmission of the ill effects of dioxin (the active ingredient in Agent Orange), new generations of babies with disabilities were born in both Vietnam and America. That last fact is devastating. My mission is not to point fingers and place blame.

The Meatrix

More About The Meatrix from Free Range Graphics The Meatrix is a humorous 4-minute Flash animation that…
Official selection of the Media That Matters: Good Food

Tyttonen (The Young Girl)

More About Tyttonen (The Young Girl) from Director Fabian Giessler This is a short movie inspired by…
Official selection of the Seventh Annual Festival

Uninsured in the Mississippi Delta

Filmmaker
Katie Falkenberg

At a time when the health care debate is at the forefront of the political agenda, Uninsured in the Mississippi Delta puts a human face on the struggles of the 46 million Americans surviving without health care.

The Mississippi Delta is one of the most impoverished and uninsured regions of the United States. The area also has soaring rates for diabetes, hypertension and stroke, and some of the highest mortality rates and lowest birth rates in the nation. The town of Greenville, Mississippi, in the heart of the Delta, has, on a per-capita basis, the highest number of uninsured households in the country. Contributing factors to this statistic include high unemployment rates, poverty,  business owners who cannot afford health insurance for their workers, and agricultural jobs that are often only seasonal. Those who have jobs that pay minimum wage cannot afford health insurance on their own.

Howard Moncrief and Edward Smith are among those living in the Delta struggling without health insurance. Both of these men, putting the needs of their children and families before their own, have gone without vital health care and medicines. They simply could not afford them.

Inspiration
I had been following the debate on the health care bill in Congress, and was moved by the stories I had heard from those who were struggling without insurance while working on a photo and video project about a Remote Area Medical (RAM) free health care clinic in Appalachia the year before. I knew that this year, with the health care issue being at the forefront of this administration’s agenda, I wanted to tell another story to put a human face with the statistics being talked about so frequently in the Capitol and on the news.

When I heard that 34% of the households in the impoverished Delta town of Greenville, Mississippi were living without health insurance, I knew that this was a story that needed to be told. As I began researching the story, I learned that the problem wasn’t just concentrated in Greenville; it extended throughout the entire Mississippi Delta region into the rural areas where poverty was rampant and there were few jobs.

Many of the folks who are patients at the two health care clinics I spent time in for this film—the Good Samaritan Health Clinic in Greenville, and the Tutwiler Clinic in Tutwiler—would go without the most basic and vital care if these clinics did not exist. This was a driving force behind my inspiration for this film: that, because of the cost of health care and insurance, people would have to go without the care they desperately need, were it not for these clinics.

Furthermore, it is not only the people in the Delta; it is the 46 million other Americans throughout the country.

Water Warriors

More About Water Warriors from Director and Producer Liz Miller Water is quickly becoming the liquid gold…
Official selection of the Media That Matters: Good Food

Will I Be Next?

More about Will I Be Next? from Director Ralph Rollins Will I Be Next? explores the issue…
Official selection of the Ninth Annual Festival

World On Fire

A Message from Sarah McLachlan Sarah McLachlan wrote us this message about her music video and participation…
Official selection of the Fifth Annual Festival

Young Agrarians

More About Young Agrarians from Director Johanna Divine Young Agrarians was created as a tool to introduce…
Official selection of the Media That Matters: Good Food