And the Winner Is….

Arts Engine would like to congratulate Robert Reed Altman who won our 2008/2009 Arts Engine survey drawing.  He will be receive a Flip Camera! We also thank, again, everyone who participated in the survey.  Your opinions got us thinking in many ways about our mission, content offerings and brands.

Robert Reed Altman made his mark as Director of Photography on Tanner on Tanner.  His most recent film credits, as as a camera operator or cinematographer, include Looking For Trouble for Roger Corman; several projects directed by his father, Robert Altman, Kansas City (1996), The Gingerbread Man (1998), Cookie’s Fortune (1999), Dr. T. & The Women (2000); as well as the more recent films, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001) directed by Kevin Smith, and The Scorpion King (2002) starring The Rock.

Published on November 30

DocuClub in November!

Our November DocuClub will take place on Wednesday, November 18, 7 p.m. This screening is a co-presentation with Tribeca All Access. Our venue is Tribeca Cinemas, located at 54 Varick Street. We will screen a rough cut of Beijing Taxi by Miao Wang. Read more.

Published on November 09

DocuClub in October!

DocuClub will take place on Wednesday, October 28, 7 p.m., at the 92YTribeca, located at 200 Hudson Street (at Canal). We will screen a rough cut of Bad Blood by Marilyn Ness. Read more.

Published on October 12

DocuClub partners with UnionDocs to bring you Sita Sings the Blues!

DocuClub is partnering with Brooklyn’s UnionDocs to co-present a special screening of Nina Paley’s Sita Sings the Blues on Saturday, September 12, at 7 p.m.

UnionDocs
322 Union Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11211
(718) 395-7902

Sita Sings the Blues is a musical, animated personal interpretation of the Indian epic the Ramayana, focusing on the relationship between the gods Sita and Rama, juxtaposed with the filmmaker’s story of the dissolution of her marriage.

Because some of the songs featured in Sita Sings the Blues have not been secured due to copyright issues, the film uses a Creative Commons license for its distribution.

Learn more about the film here: www.sitasingstheblues.com.

On-site dispensing dessert will be Sweet Tooth of the Tiger, a d.i.y. food and participatory art project that takes the form of a bake sale that utilizes the public sphere as a place for eating, feeding, and talking with your mouth full. Details here: www.sweettoothofthetiger.com.

A post-screening discussion on Sita Sings the Blues’ funding and distribution strategy will be held by Karl Fogel of QuestionCopyright.org.

Admission is free for current DocuClub members and $5 for non-members.

If you are a current DocuClub member who plans to attend, please RSVP to: docuclub@artsengine.net. Non-members need not RSVP.

Membership is an annual $50 and it includes free admission to all DocuClub events. It takes five minutes to join online at www.artsengine.net/store/#tools_consul.

Published on September 09

Slate of Eight for Good Pitch

The lineup for the Good Pitch at IFP’s Independent Film Week, taking place in New York City on 24 September is announced today.

The Good Pitch brings together inspiring social-justice film projects and a group of expert participants from charities, foundations, brands, government and media to form powerful alliances around groundbreaking films. For more information see www.britdoc.org/goodpitch.

The Good Pitch in North America is a partnership between the Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation and the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program (DFP), generously supported by the Fledgling Fund, Working Films, Chicken & Egg Pictures, Tides Foundation and anonymous donors.

From nearly 200 applications, eight filmmaking teams have been selected to pitch their films and outreach campaigns to an invited audience, in order to amplify the impact of their social-issue documentary projects.

The Good Pitch at IFP’s Independent Film Week builds on their collaborative program with the UN’s Department of Public Information which is entitled ‘Envision – Addressing Global Issues through Documentaries.’ Each of the selected film projects intersects with one or more of the UN’s eight Millennium Development Goals.

“The high number of applications we received shows just how engaged the documentary filmmaking community is with the spirit and ambition of the UN Millennium Development Goals,” says Good Pitch Director Katie Bradford. “We are excited to bring this themed Good Pitch to New York as part of Independent Film Week.”

“Through Independent Film Week, IFP has facilitated connections between social issue filmmakers and the film industry for the past 31 years,” says IFP Executive Director Michelle Byrd. “We’re pleased to welcome the Good Pitch and its embrace of a wider audience of concerned parties in support of these types of films, as well as the pressing issues upon which they seek to bring awareness.”

The projects for this edition of the Good Pitch were chosen by the Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation, the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program and Independent Filmmaker Project. The selected filmmakers are Michael L. Brown (25 to Life), Glenn Baker (Easy Like Water), Mai Iskander (Garbage Dreams), Beth Davenport and Elizabeth Mandel (Pushing The Elephant), Gayle Ferraro (To Catch a Dollar: Muhammad Yunus Banks on America), Beth Murphy (What Tomorrow Brings), Annie Sundberg & Ricki Stern (Youthbuild) and Mary Ann Smothers Bruni (Zhinan).

“Good Pitch North America has already opened doors for films pitched in Toronto and Silver Spring. This final 2009 session in New York ends on a set of outstanding projects which are strong character-driven stories, addressing issues from HIV / AIDS to poverty, and from children’s health to the health of the planet,” says Cara Mertes, Director of the Sundance Documentary Film Program. “We anticipate that this forum will engage funders and activists alike in meeting the challenges of this millennium.”

Organisations and individuals already confirmed for the September 24 event include TED, McKinsey & Co, Wallace Global Fund, Microcredit Summit, Abigail Disney, Whole Planet Foundation (Whole Foods), The Calvert Foundation, The Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund, POV, Impact Partners, The Katahdin Foundation, BAVC Producers Institute for New Media Technologies, Sundance Channel, LINKTV, Wide Angle and Human Rights Watch.

The Good Pitch at IFP’s Independent Film Week builds upon past Good Pitch successes. During the Good Pitch at SILVERDOCS, Art Stevens of the Calvert Foundation made an on-the-spot pledge of $10,000 towards the outreach campaign for Green Shall Overcome. Since then he has begun work on organising a fundraiser for the project in Berkeley, California. The same event introduced Split Estate director Debra Anderson to Planet Green which has now made a broadcast offer, and Hungry in America’s Kristy Jacobson said she and co-director Lori Silverbush experienced NGO partnerships that progressed “from first-date to marriage.” According to Executive Producer Ryan Harrington, the anti-hunger NGOs assembled at Silver Spring raised $600K in funds for the film since the June 16th event.

More on the 8 projects:

25 to Life
Dir. Michael L. Brown
William Brawner was infected with HIV before he turned two and kept it a secret for over twenty years. Now he seeks redemption from the women of his promiscuous past and embarks on a new phase of life with his pregnant wife, who is HIV-negative.

Easy Like Water
Dir. Glenn Baker
In Bangladesh, solar-powered floating schools are turning the front lines of climate change into a community of learning. As the water steals the land, one man’s vision is re-casting the rising rivers as channels of communication, and transforming people’s lives.

Garbage Dreams
Dir. Mai Iskander
Garbage Dreams follows three teenage boys born into the trash trade and growing up in the world’s largest garbage village, on the outskirts of Cairo.  When their community is suddenly faced with the globalization of their trade, each boy is forced to make choices that will impact the survival of his community.

Pushing The Elephant
Dirs. Beth Davenport and Elizabeth Mandel
In the late 1990s, Rose Mapendo lost her family and home to the ethnic violence that engulfed the Democratic Republic of Congo, yet she emerged from the suffering advocating peace and reconciliation. But after helping numerous victims to recover and rebuild their lives, there is one person Rose must still teach to forgive – her daughter Nangabire.

To Catch a Dollar: Muhammad Yunus Banks on America
Dir. Gayle Ferraro
To Catch a Dollar weaves two stories as they intersect in a common goal: Muhammad Yunus as he builds upon the millennium development goals through micro credit and while opening the Grameen Bank in Queens, NY giving 500 immigrant women unsecured loans of up to $3000 to invest in money-making projects.

What Tomorrow Brings
Dir. Beth Murphy
What Tomorrow Brings follows a year at the Zabuli Afghan girls’ school, where the battle to educate girls mirrors the battle to save Afghanistan from again becoming a failed state. Intertwining the stories of students and teachers, it is a portrait of innocence and idealism in the midst of war.

Youthbuild
Dirs. Annie Sundberg & Ricki Stern
The film follows a year in the life of young people selected for a high stakes community rebuilding project in Newark, one of the toughest cities in America. The film interweaves dramatic stories of poverty and opportunity, exploring the personal struggles to reclaim cities and to reinvent fragile lives.

Zhinan
Dir. Mary Ann Smothers Bruni
Americans are poised to leave Iraq, and the national election that may change the status of Iraqi Kurdistan looms. Three Kurdish women activists – an architect, a surgeon, and a refugee turned entrepreneur – must use the talents they honed rebuilding their Kurdish homeland to bring it effectively into the new Iraq.

For more information about the Good Pitch, contact Katie Bradford at the Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation: katie@britdoc.org or on +44 20 7033 2562

EDITORS’ NOTES

Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation is a UK-based not-for-profit organisation backed by Channel 4 TV.  It is dedicated to reinventing funding and distribution models for British documentary filmmakers. As well as funding ground breaking social-issue films (such as double Sundance winner Afghan Star, Berlin winner The Yes Men Fix the World, Sundance 09 feature doc The End of the Line and Tribeca winner We Are Together), the Foundation brokers relationships between filmmakers and the NGO and brand sectors in the UK to create better, more effective films. The Good Pitch is a key part of the Foundation’s important work in this area.

Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program (DFP) supports contemporary nonfiction filmmakers globally with year-round activities, including the Sundance Documentary Fund, Creative Labs focusing on the art of documentary, the DocSource website (www.sundance.org/docsource) and the Stories of Change partnership with the Skoll Foundation. The DFP has supported over 400 films since 1996, including Nerakoon: Betrayal, Trouble the Water, Iraq in Fragments, My Country, My Country, Why We Fight, and Long Night’s Journey Into Day. The DFP is a core program of the Los Angeles-based non-profit Sundance Institute. Founded by Robert Redford, Sundance Institute is dedicated to the discovery and development of independent artists and audiences.
www.sundance.org/docsource

After debuting with a program in the 1979 New York Film Festival, the nonprofit Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP) has evolved into the nation’s oldest and largest organization of independent filmmakers. Since its start, IFP has supported the production of 7,000 films and provided resources to more than 20,000 filmmakers’ voices that otherwise might not have been heard. Currently, IFP represents a network of 10,000 filmmakers in New York City and around the world. Annually, IFP fosters the development of 350 feature and documentary films through its Project Forum of Independent Film Week, Independent Filmmaker Labs and fiscal sponsorship program.
www.independentfilmweek.com

The Fledgling Fund seeks to improve the lives of vulnerable individuals, families, and communities by supporting innovative media projects that target entrenched social problems. It believes that film and other creative media coupled with well-structured and creative community engagement initiatives can ignite social change. To that end it supports projects that are timely, tell compelling and important stories, represent a unique perspective or an intriguing solution to an entrenched social problem, and lend themselves to innovative community engagement campaigns that have strong potential to raise awareness about complex social issues, encourage dialogue, share possible solutions, and move people to action.
www.thefledglingfund.org

Working Films advances social, economic, environmental and racial justice by linking independent non-fiction media to activism. Working Films has current projects ranging from high profile efforts – including HBO and PBS broadcasts – to regional and local grassroots initiatives. Now in its ninth year, Working Films has partnered or collaborated on the audience and community engagement and non-traditional distribution efforts of over 400 films.
www.workingfilms.org

Chicken & Egg Pictures supports women filmmakers, emergent and veteran, non-fiction and fictions, who have made a commitment to use their storytelling skills to address the social justice and human rights issues of our time, l;ocally, nationally and globally. Chicken & Egg is committed to reaching out to a diverse and dynamic representation of women’s voices, particularly those who are traditionally under-represented in the media.
www.chickeneggpics.org

Tides partners with philanthropists, foundations, activists, and organizations across the country and around the globe to promote economic justice, robust democratic processes, and the opportunity to live in a healthy and sustainable environment. Tides is a nonprofit organization founded in 1976 that provides an array of services to amplify the efforts of forward-thinking individuals and organizations to make the world a better place. With offices in San Francisco and New York City, Tides provides fiscal sponsorship for over 200 groups across the country, operates and supports green nonprofit centers, and granted more than $500 million since 2000 alone.
www.tides.org

Published on August 19

Two Short Documentaries Screened at DocuClub

A sold-out crowd gathered during July’s DocuClub to watch two short documentaries, El Bondera by Sherif Sadek and Republican Dad by Robert Hatch-Miller, at The Tank. Moderator Reva Goldberg of Cinereach expertly led the discussion. El Bondera chronicles the story of two Cairo cab drivers, Ashraf and Ibrahim, as they focus viewers’ eyes on a world of inadequate meter prices and their day-to-day struggle to survive. In Republican Dad, the filmmaker sets out to document his dad’s campaign for the U.S. House Of Representatives.

To learn more about DocuClub, please visit to our website.

Published on July 30

Rose Mapendo Honored by the United Nations

Dear Friends of Pushing The Elephant,

Recently Rose Mapendo, the subject of our upcoming film Pushing The Elephant was the recipient of the Humanitarian of the Year Award from the United Nations’ Refugee Agency (UNHCR). We were in DC to film the event, which included presentations by Angelina Jolie and Ann Curry from NBC’s Today. The event featured a clip from our film showcasing Rose’s international work.  Rose gave an emotional and effective speech about the plight of refugees and the importance of maintaining world focus on the issues, illustrated by her personal story. This was also the first time Nangabire had the opportunity to see her mother at work. Nangabire is adapting well to her new life. She comfortably chatted (in English!) with other guests at a party, relaxed in her hotel room with her mother, and joined in a photo shoot for the Boston Globe.

We are eager to bring this new material into our edit room. We started editing in early May with award-winning editor Mona Davis (LOVE & DIANE). We have made real progress on the film and are amazed at the richness and complexity of the footage. However, our edit budget will only last another 6 weeks, at which point we risk losing Mona (as well as missing the Sundance Film Festival entry deadline). We are grateful to you and to all of our donors and supporters, without whom we could not have come this far. Out of a deep commitment to this important story of peace and family, we feel obliged to ask if you can contribute more to enable us to continue the edit or if you would be willing to ask a friend or a colleague to join you in your support. Every contribution gets us that much closer to a finished film.

All donations are tax deductible. Please consider donating online or sending a check made out to Arts Engine to 104 West 14th Street, #4, New York, NY 10011, and be sure to include Pushing The Elephant in the memo line.

Published on July 15

From Your Arts Engine Peers: A $10,000 CHALLENGE

Dear Friends of Arts Engine:

During a time of newly found optimism, we are asking you to join us in making an online donation to one of our favorite organizations, Arts Engine—the folks who bring us the Media That Matters Film Festival, MediaRights.org, Big Mouth Films and DocuClub. As your peers in the independent media world, we feel it is important to band together to keep the organizations we love in good working order.

Arts Engine received a $10,000 challenge grant from one of its strongest local supporters, Guy Lancaster and his family at the Still Point Fund. If all of us reading this letter now donate $35 or more, Arts Engine can reach the $10,000 level and meet Guy’s challenge in no time. All fifteen of us made a donation to kick things off. Won’t you join us?

Click here to support the Peer2Peer Campaign.

By making a donation to this Peer2Peer campaign as a community, we are making a statement to all stakeholders of social-issue media and documentary film that we value the work that Arts Engine does.

Join us and make a contribution now. The amount is not as important as 100% participation. Consider contributing $35, $100, $250, $500 or more.

Click here to support the Peer2Peer Campaign.
Click here to look at what Arts Engine is up to in 2009.

Your donation will help to ensure that:

• The ninth collection of Media That Matters streams and screens in more classrooms, community organizations and on more computers across the country and around the world than ever before
• MediaRights.org’s new exciting content, to be launched this summer, reaches a greater numbers with more in-depth coverage (Stay tuned!)
• Big Mouth Films finishes a rough cut of its current feature documentary, Rose & Nangabire
• DocuClub’s monthly screenings continue to positively impact our work and make a rich contribution to the field

Thank you for joining us in this Peer2Peer Campaign for Arts Engine. Your support is important for Arts Engine and for the field of independent social-issue media.

Your peers,

Barbara Abrash, Director of Public Programs, Center for Media, Culture and History & Center for Religion and Media, New York University
Phil Bertelsen, Director, Outside Looking In
Sharese Bullock, Producer, Off and Running; Media/Communications Strategist, The Young People’s Project
Wendy Cohen, Co-founder, Screening Liberally
Laurie Collyer, Director, Sherrybaby
Marshall Curry, Director, Street Fight
Ben Herson, Founder, Nomadic Wax
Susan Kaplan, Founder, DocuClub
Ross Kauffman, Director, Born Into Brothels
Sam Kauffmann, 2009 Guggenheim Fellow
Julia Pimsleur, Founder & President, Little Pim
Kimberly Reed, Director, Prodigal Sons
Lynn True and Nelson Walker, Co-Founders/Directors, The Kham Film Project
Andrew Walton, Director, Arctic Son

Published on June 09