Blog

Feedback from Monica and David Director, Ali Codina, About IDFA

2010-07-22T14:10:08Z

Recently, I spoke with Ali Codina about Monica and David's international premiere at IDFA. She had this feedback about the experience:

I personally loved IDFA. It is a well-run festival, with strong industry presence, in a setting where people are very approachable. International sales were a huge benefit--several European buyers approached me directly--and I found my foreign sales agents there (CAT & Docs). But I quickly learned that IDFA is also what you make of it. The program is enormous and you have to work to make your film known. When I first arrived, I was disappointed that they seemed to be promoting the most obvious titles, which had already made the festival rounds. So, I personally reached out to press (you can get the list from their press office once you arrive); dropped postcards around town; and got in touch with the IDFA Daily, whose staff was great. Having the lead subjects (Monica and David) there was a huge help, because people easily recognized us and always wanted to meet the "stars". If you're willing to put in some initial effort, it's an amazing festival, whose staff really cares about film, and whose audiences are very embracing.

Thanks for the feedback Ali! Filmmakers, the deadline for submission to IDFA is quickly approaching.

Call2Action Filmmaker Discount

2010-07-20T16:16:25Z

Call2Action, a new and powerful online marketing and advocacy tool, is offering a discount for filmmakers through July. Learn how Participant Media used Spark to secure 250,000 views in only two weeks for The Cove. Read their letter for filmmakers here: http://conta.cc/abV5wC or visit their site: www.call2action.com

"Call2Action is easily the best tool we've seen so far for social media distribution and viewer empowerment - it's a must-have for anyone wanting stronger viewership data and higher impact!" --Maureen Issern, Moped Productions

Education and Documentaries in 2010

2010-07-16T18:22:21Z

Check out this article where USA Today asks, "Is 2010 the Year of the Education Documentary?" Great question, and we are looking forward to figuring out the answer. Can documentaries do for education what they have done for the environment in the last decade? Get people talking! We sure hope so. Check out these Fledgling Fund funded projects that are sparking education conversations:

Lunch Love Community
Two Angry Moms
The Teacher Salary Project
An American Promise
Speaking in Tongues
To Be Heard

The 31st Annual Emmy® Awards for News & Documentary The Nominations

2010-07-15T21:54:56Z

Congratulations to all of the Emmy Award Nomination recipients. We are especially excited to congratulate the following films, all of whom have received support from The Fledgling Fund:

The Reckoning (2 nominations)
War Dance (2 nominations)
Trouble the Water (2 nominations)
Split Estate
The English Surgeon
The Way We Get By
The Mosque in Morgantown

For the full list of nominations, click here.

Ben Nabors, Moving Windmills Producer, Chats with Witness

2010-07-14T16:59:47Z

The Fledgling Fund is excited to have recently offered a grant to the film Moving Windmills. We are eager to see how the final story takes shape and how the project will inspire more "William's" around the world. Check out Producer Ben Nabor's interview with Witness above or read the Witness blog to learn more.

Good Fortune Live Chat Today!

2010-07-14T14:53:42Z

Did you catch Good Fortune on POV last night? If not, you can catch the film online through October on the POV website. Today, you can chat with the filmmakers - Jeremy Levine and Landon Van Soest - and Lawrence MacDonald from the Center for Global Development. You can find them live online here today at noon.

A Report from The Recruiter

2010-07-12T14:12:38Z

From The Fledgling Fund

After a fantastic afternoon of web geekery courtesy of The Fledgling Fund - and a look at the impressive impact report put out by the filmmakers behind Lioness - the Propeller Films' audience engagement team was inspired to share some insights into what we've been working on and what we've learnt:

The Recruiter, directed by Edet Belzberg and released in 2008, is a documentary about American military recruitment told through the eyes of one of the Army's most successful recruiters and the four teenagers he recruits from his station in rural Louisiana. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and aired on HBO. Last year it won a DuPont Award from Columbia University for excellence in journalism.

Since the film's release, and with the support of The Fledgling Fund, our curriculum developer Sheila Sundar has been working with schools throughout the country to bring our film and educator's guide into high school classrooms. Our goal is not to assume a political position on the war but to initiate conversation about its disproportionate impact on low-income, rural communities, as well as the myths of war versus its realities. Ultimately, we hope that a critical examination of the choices that they and their peers confront will help students break the quiet that permeates high school classrooms around what it means to be a nation at war.

Our goal, on a recent visit to three demographically distinct schools in New York and New Jersey, was to raise questions among young people about the relationship among poverty, opportunity, and enlistment. We wanted students to think critically about the inequity that shapes the choice to enlist, and about the desperation with which some young people make a choice that others, with perhaps greater opportunity, could not imagine for themselves.

Our first visit took place at Montclair High School (NJ), an ethnically diverse, affluent suburban community located roughly half an hour from New York City. In 2004, a student-led effort resulted in over eighty percent of parents submitting written requests to keep their children's contact information private and inaccessible to military recruiters. Yet students spoke of this success not as a product of their political leanings but their privilege. One student argued that families could afford to resist military recruiters because they were able to pay for college with little compromise or sacrifice. Roxbury High School (NJ), reflected greater economic diversity and slightly higher rates of military enlistment. Yet, despite our presence in the classrooms of two dynamic teachers in a course focused on the Vietnam War, students were hesitant to draw connections between history and the present, between the lives captured in The Recruiter and their own. When they did begin to speak, their words seemed to challenge not only the silence in the classroom but a greater silence around war both within and beyond the school. At Christopher Columbus High School (Bronx, NY), students gathered from three schools housed within the same building. Similarly, the conversation began quietly. Yet it ended with a group of students and the eager and extraordinary librarian who hosted us continuing the discussion informally over pizza after school. This group included a number of young men and women who spoke with great frustration about the influence of military recruiters on the lives of many of their friends and family members, as well as a number who were in support of the opportunity provided by recruiters and who themselves hoped to enlist. In all three classrooms we circled back to the questions of equity and fairness. Why were the young people in The Recruiter choosing to enlist? Why are some communities paying a higher price than others?

Students in all three schools initially resisted the notion that this was a reflection of injustice. Many argued that, unlike the Vietnam War, young people now are presented with a choice. The choice may be unfair, it may be rooted in inequity, and it may be guided by monolithic notions of war, but it was a choice nonetheless. Yet in each school, as we continued to talk, minority voices emerged that cracked this notion. They pointed to Lauren, whose choice to enlist is captured in The Recruiter as one motivated only by a desire for a college education. They talked about Matt, who spoke after his first tour in Iraq about the losses he endured, and about the reality he confronted that was so different from the one presented by his recruiter. And they spoke of people in their lives who chose to enlist based on a vague understanding of war and a belief that the army would give them opportunities that seemed unavailable everywhere else.

As these voices grew more powerful in each classroom, they came to challenge not just traditional ideas of poverty and opportunity, but the silence around a war that has remained marginalized in high school curricula. And we hope that as we continue to reach out to schools we will play a role in breaking the silence around an issue that is as critical in communities directly impacted by war as in those in which it its impact is less visible. We hope that our conversations will guide those students considering enlisting to think deeply about the realities of the decision they confront, and we hope that students far removed from this choice will think of their peers with heightened compassion and understanding.

We filmed our programs in each of these schools and will be adding them to our website this summer. We have already added the footage shot during our visit to Manassas High School in Memphis at the beginning of last academic year. This August we will be putting together a short compilation video from all of the schools in which we have filmed to showcase student responses. We will feature this on our website so that teachers can see that our curriculum has been used across a wide spectrum (from rural schools to urban ones, from North to South, etc.). We will also be completing an article about the teaching of war in high school classrooms as observed through our outreach efforts, and revising our curriculum which will be available on our website in the fall. We are also excited to announce that our curriculum was chosen to be included in the 2010 -2011 educators' guide "Planning to Change the World: A Plan Book for Social Justice Teachers". Howard Zinn called the guide "an imaginative and innovative idea in the field of education." And we hope that our continued outreach will live up to his words by bringing these qualities into critical discussions of war in high school classrooms.

A Girl Story

2010-07-09T18:31:23Z

Check out this interactive animated story about a girl in India who wants to go to school. Keep watching to see how they are engaging audiences with the issues represented in a unique way. Very smart - I wonder how successful it has been so far. I am intrigued by the model and thinking about how it can be expanded.

Feed's Ellen Gustafson's TEDx Talk on Hunger and Obesity

2010-07-07T17:48:50Z

As we think about how all of these issues we care so much about are connected, Ellen Gustafson makes the connections between poverty, agriculture, obesity, conflict and obesity in a powerful way. Check it out:

Video Evidence of our Website Discussion

2010-06-30T19:03:29Z

As described below in a previous blog entry, The Fledgling Fun and Chicken and Egg Pictures hosted an informal discussion with a small group of our grantees about how to create the best website platform for their social issue film. Check out the written notes below, but here is the video to go along with it.

The Fledgling Fund and Chicken and Egg Pictures Website Discussion from Emily Verellen on Vimeo.

Promised Land on POV

2010-06-30T16:42:25Z

Though apartheid ended in South Africa in 1994, economic injustices between blacks and whites remain unresolved. As revealed in Yoruba Richen's incisive Promised Land, the most potentially explosive issue is land. The film follows two black communities as they struggle to reclaim land from white owners, some of whom who have lived there for generations. Amid rising tensions and wavering government policies, the land issue remains South Africa's "ticking time bomb," with far-reaching consequences for all sides. Promised Land captures multiple perspectives of citizens struggling to create just solutions. A co-production of the National Black Programming Consortium, American Documentary/POV and the Diverse Voices Project, with funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Promised Land Broadcast Premiere

Tuesday, July 6th on POV. Check local listings for times.

The film will also be available to watch online from July 7th - October 5th on the POV website.

http://www.pbs.org/pov/promisedland/

Envision 2010 at Times Center in NYC

2010-06-30T16:36:12Z

ENVISION 2010 is a full-day program taking place on Saturday July 10th at The TimesCenter. The event will include a full day of screenings and panel discussions focusing on the United Nations Millennium Development Goal of achieving universal primary education by 2015.

For more information and to purchase your tickets, visit our website: http://envisionfilm.org/

A letter from The Fledgling Fund Executive Director - Sheila Leddy

2010-06-28T13:43:23Z

From The Fledgling Fund

We have had a busy and exciting June. As many of you may know, The Fledgling Fund has announced its latest group of grantees and as you will see from the July e-newsletter, many are poised to play an important role in critical national debates about immigration, our food system, environmental justice issues, and global human rights.

Each project's individual engagement campaign will be very different but reflect the needs of the issue it is addressing and the NGOs that are working for social change. We continue to be amazed by the number of very strategic proposals that we receive; in many ways they reflect the development of the social issue documentary field. Filmmakers continue to do what they do best - bring us compelling and moving stories. But, many are also beginning to work with NGOs and other stakeholders earlier in the process so that they can place their film into the larger narrative of the movement. That is not to say that they lose control of their film or story, but it does mean that they tap into the expertise of advocates who understand the different sides of a particular issue, the opportunities for social change and the potential obstacles in the way.

This approach was on display last week at The Good Pitch at Silverdocs. Despite the fact that both England and the U.S. were participating in key World Cup games when the day began, there was a full house with funders, filmmakers, NGOs, broadcasters and other industry representatives all present to watch eight projects pitch to tables of carefully selected stakeholders. Click here for a complete list of the projects represented. The most attractive projects to me were those with compelling characters and interesting and complex story arcs. There were several offers of financial support that will have an immediate impact, allowing several filmmakers to move forward with filming this summer. However, perhaps just as importantly, several projects received important information about the complexity of the issue they were addressing, insight on story, and offers to provide ongoing guidance or connect them with others who could assist them as they move their project from production to audience engagement. Clearly, this very public forum with all its energy is just the first step in a long process of relationship building and project development. It is likely that some of these relationships may prove to be less useful over time, while others will emerge as critical to the project. All will require work to cultivate mutually beneficial relationships that respect the needs and expertise of all parties. What is exciting to me is that these relationships - whether initiated at the Good Pitch or in another forum -can help lay the foundation for highly strategic audience engagement campaigns that maximize the social impact of truly amazing nonfiction stories.

Web Geekery Report Back

2010-06-19T02:45:01Z

On Wednesday June 16th, The Fledgling Fund began a new event series in collaboration with Chicken and Egg Pictures. The idea is simple - the media-makers we support are experts on so many things - let's get them all together to see what kind of sharing can happen. Every project we fund has had successes and failures that they have learned from along their journeys from making the media to inspiring social change. We wanted to take time to celebrate those lessons and create a collaborative space to share them.

So, for a few hours on Wednesday evening, 11 media-makers, myself and Natalie Difford from Chicken and Egg Pictures shared dumplings, sake and wisdom - all delicious. The topic for the evening was "Social Issue Film Website Do's and Dont's" - "Web Geekery" for short, dubbed by Nancy Schwartzman. Below is some of that delicious wisdom that we also wanted to share with you.

The event was such a success, that we have committed to doing a similar event every other month - each on a different topic. So, stay tuned for more of these updates, and if you are a grantee, let us know if you would like to participate in future get-togethers and topics that interest you the most.

Here were the participants for Web Geekery:

Jesse Epstein - Filmmaker, Body Typed http://jessedocs.blogspot.com/
Trish Dalton - Filmmaker, Body Typed
Nancy Schwartzman - Filmmaker, The Line http://whereisyourline.org/
Robbie Gemmel - Filmmaker, Cape Wind http://www.capewindmovie.com/
Stephanie Bleyer - Audience Engagement Campaign Manager, No Impact Project http://noimpactproject.org/ and Gasland http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/
Vaishali Sinha - Filmmaker, Made in India http://www.madeinindiamovie.com/
Roland Legiardi-Laura - Filmmaker, To Be Heard http://www.tobeheard.org/
Amelia Green-Dove - Filmmaker, The Recruiter http://www.propellerfilms.com/recruiter/
Alexandra Lescaze - Filmmaker, All Of Me http://allofmethemovie.wordpress.com/
Daria Sommers - Filmmaker, Lioness http://lionessthefilm.com/
Marty Syjuco - Filmmaker, Give Up Tomorrow http://www.giveuptomorrow.com/

Before the discussion, I gave the participants the following homework to bring with them to share:

1) At least one burning question you have about website design, functionality or creation process that you want to discuss with the group

2) One example of something you did right with your own film's website or with a film website that you really like

3) One example of something you would change about either your own film's website or a film website that you have visited

4) At least one thing you love about a NON-film website that you think filmmakers should incorporate into their website strategies

Here were some of the key questions that came out of the discussion:

Q. How can I find a designer that I really like?
Q. Should we be using HTML or FLASH?
Q. What are the advantages of using a blog vs. a website. Do we even need websites?
Q. We want to have an international reach and want to be compatible with bandwidths in other countries - what do we need to be aware of to make that work?
Q. How can we translate our website for other countries?
Q. What are the best ways to drive people to your website that perhaps haven't seen the film yet?
Q. How do you create a financially sustainable website?

Here are some of the highlights from the discussion:

•   Wordpress is fantastic and works really well for people who have slow internet speeds or for smartphones
•   No Impact Project site is not a movie site - in that it is not there to promote the movie No Impact Man but to start the conversation for people to be a part of the movement, and that structure worked well to engage people who had seen the movie and even those who had not
•   Use Facebook for the interactive parts of your campaign - it's where people are at anyway and it's best to not add a new website to their day or else they won't come as often
•   NING is a tool that media-makers need to know about - it's not for everyone, but can be very useful in some cases
•   VOKLE is a great tool to do live Q&A's with an audience. People can interact with you on this website like a radio show so you can have web chats. Its an embeddable player. Your picture goes up next to the host and you are interacting via twitter and chat feed.
•   CALL TO ACTION is a great tool for social issue media makers as well - allows you to create a widget with a piece of media that directly engages people in action after they have seen it. You can embed the widget anywhere so that it reaches people beyond your own website.
•   TUMBLR is a very easy to use site that acts like a visual Twitter. One of the great things about it is that it leads visitors back to your own website.
•   Media makers need to decide how much time they want to commit to their website. Do you want it to be a place where people get news about the subject of your film? If so, it is much more time consuming to do it well. It may be a better idea to let other websites who already do that continue to be the source for updated news - and you can just send your visitors to them.
•   It's useful to have a full-time Twitter intern for some media-makers. If Twitter is a major part of your strategy, make the commitment. Help those interns to feel invested in the project and the issue and they will begin to really take ownership over the social media world and do an excellent job. They can even begin to create a name for themselves within the issue space.
•   Make your website as "cool" as possible so that broader audiences find you online, stay with you and come back often. Don't just make a boring film website. That is useless these days.
•   Linking to other films within the same subject area should be more natural - more films need to recognize the eco-system they exist within and find new ways to collaborate with other media-makers who have similar social missions.
•   To just vote on something online or be told to do something is not enough, audiences have to be engaged.

Stay tuned here - I will soon be posting a video featuring highlights from the conversation as well.

Impact Report from Lioness

2010-06-18T14:08:10Z

The Fledgling Fund is pleased to share this report with you from Lioness - a documentary film by Meg McLagan and Daria Sommers which tells the story of a group of female Army support soldiers who were part of the first program in American history to send women into direct ground combat. The film has had tremendous success changing hearts, minds and policies. Read the report here.

From The Fledgling Fund