(Hate) Machine

More About (Hate) Machine from Director Phil Caron The concept for (Hate) Machine came out of the…
Official selection of the Sixth Annual Festival

A Girl Named Kai

More About A Girl Named Kai from Director Kai Ling Xue  Three years in the making, shot…
Official selection of the Fifth Annual Festival

A Loud Color

More About A Loud Color from Producer & Director Brent Joseph I was asked by Tim Ryan…
Official selection of the Eighth Annual Festival

A Nomad’s Life

More About A Nomad’s Life from Director Lynn True A Nomad’s Life was conceived as part of…
Official selection of the Eighth Annual Festival

African Underground: Hip Hop in Senegal

More About African Underground: Hip Hop in Senegal from Director Ben Herson I was inspired to make…
Official selection of the Eighth Annual Festival

After the Harvest

In a recent survey of small-scale coffee famers in Mexico, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, over 67% indicated they were unable to maintain their normal diet for 3-8 months of the year. There are “Los Mesos Flacos”, or the thin months, when families make ends meet by eating less, eating less expensive foods, or borrowing against their future earnings from coffee. While incredibly complex, recent work suggests it is not unsolvable.

AFTER THE HARVEST: FIGHTING HUNGER IN THE COFFEE LANDS is a film that brings the day-to-day challenges of the thin months to life in the voices of coffee farmers themselves, and shares the successes of creative projects that have been established to eliminate this annual period of food insecurity.

Argentina Turning Around

More About Argentina Turning Around from Director Melissa Young In the 1990s, Argentina embraced globalization. Instead of…
Official selection of the Eighth 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

Bits and Pieces - a short from Jordan

More about Bits and Pieces from filmmakers Jackie Sawiris and Ben Mandell Bits and Pieces is a…
Official selection of the Ninth Annual Festival

Bread

More About Bread from Director Marcelo Bukin The idea forBread was born in Guatemala while shooting a…
Official selection of the Sixth Annual Festival

By-Standing: The Beginning of an American Lifetime

More About By-Standing: The Beginning of an American Lifetime from Director Karen Lin By-Standing is the collision…
Official selection of the Seventh Annual Festival

Day Job

Filmmaker Sara Hopman

From the beginning, filmmaking and positive social change have always gone hand-in-hand for me. After working with non-profit organizations such as Environment California, the Human Rights Campaign, and CalPIRG, I was further inspired to use my strengths in filmmaking to help facilitate progress in our communities. In October of 2009, I had the opportunity to create a film that could make such an impact—Day Job.

We’ve all seen day laborers standing and waiting in public places, but most of us pass by without thinking twice. I wanted to discover the story behind these workers—who are they and what are their lives like? This is a current, pressing issue, commonly ignored by the media; this is a group of people with little to no voice in our society; this is happening right now, in my city, and many cities across the country.

During the making of my film, I found Faye, a temporary employer of laborers. She has an extraordinary perspective that I felt I had to share with the world. With the help of four translators, which included two crewmembers, I was able to record the images and voices of a shunned community, for all the world to see.

Day of Remembrance

More About Day of Remembrance from Director Cynthia Fujikawa Day of Remembrance is a short documentary that…
Official selection of the Fourth Annual Festival

E-Waste

More About E-Waste from Producers at GOOD Magazine If the transition from 386 to 486 resonates loudly…
Official selection of the Eighth Annual Festival

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

Exiled in America

More about Exiled in America from Director Angela Torres Camarena Exiled in America explores immigration United States,…
Official selection of the Ninth Annual Festival

Eyes on the Fair Use of the Prize

More About Eyes On The Fair Use Of The Prize from Director/Producer Jacob Caggiano Eyes On The…
Official selection of the Sixth Annual Festival

Face to Face: Stories from the Aftermath of Infamy

Face to Face, produced by Rob Mikuriya, connects the experiences of Japanese-Americans in the early 1940s with…
Official selection of the Third Annual Festival

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

Holla Back Dubai!

Founded in 1991, Global Action Project empowers youth to become agents of change by making powerful, thought-provoking…
Official selection of the Third Annual Festival

How To Make a Bird

Director Juan Carlos Zaldivar comes from a long line of bird breeders. When going to summer camp…
Official selection of the Third Annual Festival

How Wal-Mart Came to Haslett

More About How Wal-Mart Came To Haslett from Director and Producer Meerkat Media Collective In the fall…
Official selection of the Sixth 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

In the Morning

More About In The Morning from Director Danielle Lurie When a young Turkish woman, Derya, 15, is…
Official selection of the Sixth Annual Festival

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

Is My Neighbor Latino?

Is My Neighbor Latino? was produced and directed by Jorge Aguirre and commissioned by Latino Public Broadcasting…
Official selection of the Third Annual Festival

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

Knock Knock, Who’s There?

More about Knock Knock, Who’s There? from Breakthrough Part of a larger Bell Bajao or Ring the…
Official selection of the Ninth Annual Festival

Massacre at Murambi

More About Massacre at Murambi from Director & Producer Sam Kauffmann During the genocide in Rwanda in…
Official selection of the Seventh 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

Power Up

More About Power Up from Director & Producer Sverre Fredriksen Power Up is an animated short film…
Official selection of the Seventh Annual Festival

Rapping at Fear

More About Rapping At Fear from Producer Listen Up! Beyond Borders: Personal Stories from a Small Planet…
Official selection of the Seventh Annual Festival

Rights on the Line: Vigilantes at the Border

More About Rights on the Line: Vigilantes at the Border from Producer WITNESS Rights on the Line:…
Official selection of the Seventh 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

The Apollos

More About The Apollos from Director Nick Parker My role in the making of The Apollos was…
Official selection of the Seventh Annual Festival

The Countdown

More About The Countdown from Director Rene Dongo The Countdown is a collaboration that had been in…
Official selection of the Eighth Annual Festival

The Final Frontier: Explorers or Warriors?

More About The Final Frontier: Explorers or Warriors? from Filmmakers Stephen Sotor & Trace Gaynor On January…
Official selection of the Seventh Annual Festival

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 Luckiest Nut In The World

More About The Luckiest Nut in the World from Director Emily James I had been reading a…
Official selection of the Media That Matters: Good Food

The Next Wave

More about The Next Wave from Director Jennifer Redfearn The Next Wave presents the human face of…
Official selection of the Ninth Annual Festival

The Rules of the Game

More About The Rules of the Game from Directors and Producers Garance Burke and Monica Lam Garance…
Official selection of the Sixth Annual Festival

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

Vision Test

Wes Kim is the writer/director of Vision Test as well as co-director of the Seattle-based AIVF Salon,…
Official selection of the Third Annual Festival

We are the Zaballeen

More About We are the Zaballeen from Director Mai Iskander “If there weren’t any garbage collectors, Cairo…
Official selection of the Seventh Annual Festival

We Were Humans

Allysson Lucca’s Italian production company, LuccaCo, specializes in creating Web sites/movies for humanitarian and social organizations and…
Official selection of the Third Annual Festival

Why Do White People Have Black Spots?

More about More about Why Do White People Have Black Spots? from Anya Kandel This film is…
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