Media
Making a Difference
Media as a Social Tool: Makers, Brokers
Users
June 18-19, 2002
Center for Social Media, American University
Sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation
Here is a sampler of stories told about the impact of socially-engaged
media projects, contributed by participants to the conference:
Barbara
Abrash
"Steps for the Future" is a 37-part video series, designed
in response to the HIV/AIDS crisis in Southern Africa and realized
through a collaboration between a Finnish television commissioning
producer and a South African documentary producer/media activist.
This rare example of South-North media flow has brought together
European and US funders and media makers with southern African producers
and HIV/AIDS activists in a project that has created an infrastructure
for southern African social media production, as well as a web of
local, national, and transnational connections for the circulation
of social issue media. NYU will host a conference in Spring 2003
on this exemplary project.
Larry Daressa
Twenty years ago, there was an anti-infant formula campaign (INFACT)
which made very effective use of a 28 minute film Bill Moyers happened
to make for PBS called "Into the Mouths of Babes". A vigorous
social action campaign existed before the media project which was
in a sense purely incidental. I also like to think that Newsreel's
Southern African Media Center may have made a modest contribution
to the anti-apartheid campaign again because there was a pre-existing
wide-spread social movement which could put it to use.
Helen De
Michiel
My film "Turn Here Sweet Corn" was about a Minnesota farm
family whose land was being threatened by the pressures of suburban
development. The Diffleys were organic farmers, working and taking
care of land that had been in the family for more than a hundred
years. The financial and political pressures were complex.
In the end, they lost their family property to developers. Although
they still have a flourishing organic produce business, they can
grow now only on rented land, farther and farther from the metropolitan
Twin Cities area. When the piece was finished, I partnered with
the Land Stewardship Project to present the film to farmers and
landowners around the region, to trigger discussion about how to
save farm land and families from suburban sprawl. The film wasn't
a traditional documentary but a many-layered story constructed to
elicit an emotional response from the audience.
I wove in archival material as well as Super-8 film from Minnesota
landscapes that had already been paved over and were gone by the
time the film was completed. In the workshops following the screenings,
the Land Stewardship folks had audiences jot down their personal
impressions and experiences of watching the film. From there they
moved fluidly, listening to the personal stories people recalled
and engaging them in public policy and community activism. They
discussed the hard facts of land preservation and how to save endangered
farms. Action groups were formed, and steps were taken that in several
cases culminated in benchmark land trusts.
Sally Jo Fifer
"Two Towns of Jasper" created a forum for Utah legislators
to convene at their Statehouse to watch the film and discuss disputed
hate-crimes legislation. Their meeting was later highlighted on
the local evening news.
"Poetic License" brought a youth voice to the forefront
in community centers and schools throughout the country through
poetry slams and spoken word performances.
"New Cop on the Beat" provided a timely vehicle for community
leaders to discuss a recent police shooting in Louisville. ITVS
sent community policing expert to facilitate the discussion.
"Digital Divide" furthered the national dialogue on this
important topic. In Idaho, community training centers were set up
to assist unemployed lumber jacks as a result of local dialogue.
"La Ciudad" events drew 100's of immigrants and undocumented
workers together for screenings and discussions, sometimes with
public policy groups and/or their station.
Faye Ginsburg
In 1997, an indigenous unit was established at the Australian Film
Institute that insisted that Aboriginal media makers be given training
"outside the documentary ghetto" in order to work in fictional
and feature formats. This program has expanded from ten minute shorts,
to half hour films, and now the first features are emerging from
this project, with Ivan Sen's extraordinary new film, "Beneath
Clouds". This project has linked talented young cultural activists
from all over Australia, brought their work onto national and international
stages, and helped establish the value of putting cultural of all
sorts into the development of media in indigenous Austalian communities.
Sam Gregory
MDRI: In many of Mexico's psychiatric facilities, children were
shackled to their beds without rehabilitative care. In most cases,
once they were committed, patients had little chance of being released.
WITNESS partner, Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI) was
formed to fight widespread human rights abuses in psychiatric institutions
and mental retardation facilities around the world. As part of their
efforts, MDRI shot footage of the gross neglect and inhumane treatment
of the psychiatric patients using their WITNESS camera.
MDRI sent its footage to the Inter-American Commission on Human
Rights, prompting this important organization to make note of Mexico's
record on human rights abuses in psychiatric facilities in its annual
report.
Thanks to WITNESS' extensive network and experience working with
the media, MDRI's campaign was ultimately reported on ABC's 20/20,
CNN and Telemundo. In response to growing public outrage prompted
by this television coverage, the Mexican government appointed an
MDRI Board member to serve on a four-person panel charged with making
official recommendations for reforming psychiatric institutions.
To maintain pressure on the Mexican government, MDRI and WITNESS
edited the original footage into Forgotten People, a short video
narrated by Susan Sarandon and broadcast globally online as one
of our "WITNESS Rights Alerts". The video includes appeals
to viewers to contact the Mexican government with demands that it
fulfill its pledge to increase community-based living for its mentally
ill and retarded citizens.
And the MDRI video could have far-reaching effects for the ill or
mentally retarded in other countries. It has been incorporated into
a training video for U.S. State Department officials about reporting
on abuses of people with psychiatric illness or mental retardation,
and was featured prominently at the World Health Organization's
annual event in 2001.
Thanks to the efforts of WITNESS and (MDRI), the Mexican government
has promised to reform the treatment of mentally ill and mentally
retarded patients in Mexico's psychiatric facilities. The most abusive
facilities featured in the video materials have since been closed,
and the patients placed in community housing.NAKAMATA:
Last year WITNESS initiated a pilot capacity-building project in
the Philippines. A long-standing WITNESS partner, Joey Lozano, was
chosen as the first local coordinator for WITNESS projects. In this
role, Lozano is responsible for initial screening of applicant organizations,
as well as equipping and training two local groups in the first
year with WITNESS cameras and training materials. He began this
project by selecting and supporting the work of NAKAMATA, a consortium
of Philippine organizations that promote the rights of indigenous
peoples.
NAKAMATA partners have historically been brutally attacked for exercising
their legal rights to file ancestral land claims, which are protected
under the 1997 "The Indigenous Peoples Rights Act" enacted
by the Philippine Congress. Influential settlers who violently evicted
lumads (indigenous tribe people in Mindanao) in the past, have now
resorted to increased violence to keep the law from taking effect.
In August 2001, WITNESS and Lozano provided NAKAMATA with a digital
video camera. The video camera was accepted in a traditional ceremony
at sunrise by Datu (chief) Makapukauw who said: "This camera
means that someone in this world cares about us, about our struggle.
Seeing this camera here today means that we are not alone."
Lozano spent two weeks teaching camera and video advocacy techniques
to NAKAMATA activists.
Then a period of terror began for NAKAMATA. Its activists were targeted
in a string of events over a 3-month period. A NAKAMATA chieftain
was stabbed to death, other lumads were ambushed and shot to death,
their homes were riddled with bullets, and an entire NAKAMATA village—14
homes—was razed to the ground.
Lozano and NAKAMATA used the WITNESS camera to film the site of
the attacks, the last words of one of the murdered men, and the
bloody crime scene moments after the attacks. It was the only visual
evidence of what had happened.
Initially, the police were unwilling to take measures to protect
the lives of NAKAMATA members, and refused to conduct a thorough
investigation. With the emergency support to keep Joey and NAKAMATA
going during this very demoralizing and critical period, WITNESS
and its supporters were able to pursue an unrelenting advocacy campaign,
amassing a groundswell of pressure through petitions, the Internet
and media attention including an article in the influential Philippine
Daily Inquirer.
By November 2001, our efforts had forced an inquiry by National
Bureau of Investigation and a TV segment on the NAKAMATA situation,
using the WITNESS camera's on-the-spot footage, by the "Probe
Team"—equivalent to CBS's 60 Minutes in the U.S.
Footage of the incidents is being used as evidence in the ongoing
murder investigation. Lozano also edited it into an 11-minute video
to support advocacy for indigenous rights in the Philippines. In
mid-January, Joey Lozano and NAKAMATA developed a Rights Alert video,
'Rule of the Gun in Sugar land' with this footage, documenting the
attacks. The video on our website is accompanied by an "ACT
NOW" section to support NAKAMATA by urging accountability and
continued investigation into attacks upon them.
As of May 2002, the pressure had resulted in a successful investigation
by the National Bureau of Investigation that resulted in charges
being made in the murders.
Cara Mertes
Every film has a story like this, but for example, P.O.V. aired
"Take It From Me" in 2001. Filmmaker Emily Abt's first
film, it profiles four women and their families as they struggle
to move from welfare to being self-supporting. With major press
coverage, the national broadcast generated so much interest that
the filmmaker had to add something to her web site for those inquiring
how to help the women. In addition, it has been used by policy-makers
for educating their constituencies about the lived experience of
welfare.
In winter, 2001, P.O.V. broadcast "Promises," another
first film which was nominated for an Academy Award, and we organized
over 60 events nationwide with our co-presenting partners ITVS and
TRI, local stations and national partners like Elderhostel and the
National Council on Churches. The 'Talking Back' arena of the web
site is still very active, and remarkably, the film has been making
its theatrical tour of the country post-broadcast. We created a
facilitation guide and special timeline provided insights from both
the Palestinian and Israeli perspectives.
Perhaps the largest example recently was our January 2000 broadcast
of "Regret to Inform", Barbara Sonneborn's Academy-Award
nominated film about her experience as a Vietnam War widow. The
broadcast formed a piece of a larger project advocating for world
wide peace. The filmmakers organized a tour of the 'war widows'
who traveled internationally, and we were able to incorporate our
pre-broadcast events into their schedule. This film went on to form
the spine of an international organization promoting peace.
Julia Pimsleur
In 1995 I produced a short fiction film, Bintou in Paris, about
a Malian couple who emigrate to France and their conflict over whether
to perform female genital mutilation on their daughter. This was
my first experience with making a film explicitly to achieve social
change (the goal was to attempt to decrease the number of FGMs carried
out on girl children). The director and I set out to make a documentary
about the subject, but
discovered that our audience (African parents, primarily those living
in France, and a secondary audience in Africa) were somewhat turned
off by the nonfiction format from their experience with African
television, which produces a lot of this kind of programming since
it is cheaper than fiction.
Fiction, on the other hand, has a certain cachet. So we changed
our plans and made a 15 minute glossy fiction film with African
actors, shot on 35mm, with donated music by renown world music singer
Angelique Kidjo. We called it Bintou in Paris instead of a titles
like "Do Not Cut Your Daughter," which was common for
the existing films on this subject. We teamed up with a nonprofit
called the CAMS (committee to end sexual mutilation, loosely translated),
a group of lawyers working to end FGM in France. They provided about
half the funding, another 1/4 came in donated film equipment from
my film school and another 1/4 I fundraised.
The finished product was a captivating short film with a message
that was not heavy handed, which we premiered at a Parisian movie
theater and used as a fundraiser for our outreach campaign. Working
with the CAMS, we did a national outreach campaign and got over
200 copies of the film into maternity wards, immigration centers,
community centers, etc. The film was shown on French television,
African television and several European stations. It also won the
French Human Rights Award. Two of the best outcomes were that African
women fighting FGM in France began using the film to raise awareness
in their communities. And we were invited to show the film at the
African Regional Conference to prepare for the 1995 World Conference
on Women in Peking.
At this gathering of over 5,000 women from the African continent
we gave away 50 free videos to women fighting FGM in their villages
all over Africa. We were also honored by the African coalition to
end FGM. About a year after our film was made, an African immigrant
was convicted of murder when her daughter died from complications
resulting from a botched FGM and the issue hit mainstream media,
in France and in the US (where a woman from Nigeria sought political
asylum after fleeing FGM in her country). The film rode this wave
and was used at many conferences and international gatherings of
activists. Because it is in French it was also very effective with
francophone Africa.
What stands out for me about this experience is three principles:
1) we defined the purpose of the film from the outset and let the
audience dictate the form 2) we partnered with a nonprofit in order
to ensure accuracy and grassroots distribution 3) our film reinforced
an existing movement (did not try to create a movement, only clarified
and reinforced issues already being addressed by activists).
Producing this film and overseeing its grassroots outreach is what
launched my interest in social media. Working with the CAMS I had
to invent the outreach strategy; I assumed that in the U.S., there
were infrastuctures in place to do this kind of work. When I returned
to NY in '97 I was surprised to learn that there was no such thing
here (this later led indirectly to my creating MediaRights.org).
I have based my social media campaigns on the Bintou experience,
always trying to stick to those 3 essential rules (let the audience
dictate the form and to some degree, the content; team up with NGOs;
make media that supports existing movements).
Briefly, I will also mention my first film I produced at Big Mouth
Productions, "Innocent Until Proven Guilty". This film
was about an African American public defender and his work in the
criminal justice system with black youth. Applying the 3 principles:
1) we were trying to reach the general public, to help people see
how young
African American men are getting trapped in a revolving door of
crime and incarceration due in part to lack of education and access
to resources. We wanted to put a human face on the "1 in 3"
statistics. Therefore, we opted to make a feature length doc that
could be shown on television and used educationally. We attempted
to work with PBS but they didn't take the film, and it wound up
on HBO Signature. In terms of the audience dictating the content,
we did take into consideration what was important politically to
communicate to our audiences. So for example when we learned from
a member of our Advisory Council from the Youth Law Center that
African American women were actually the fastest growing segment
of the prison population, we decided to include a young girl character
in the film who we had been on the fence about including.
2) We formed an Advisory Council with representatives from the Fortune
Society for ex-offenders, the Youth Law Center and the National
Center on the Death Penalty, getting us "buy in" from
those organizations at the same time.
3) We surveyed our potential grassroots audiences and made sure
they were interested in screening the film. We got very positive
responses from public defender and legal aid centers all over the
country, as well as youth mentorship programs and at risk youth
programs. By having approached them early in the process (before
the film was finished) we were able to reach them, when the film
was complete. They already knew about it and were more receptive
to ordering a copy or co-presenting a screening.
The grassroots outreach campaign for this film entailed reaching
out to public defender offices, legal aid centers, youth mentorship
programs and at risk youth programs. We set up screenings in approx
six cities where we invited local organizations to participate.
We also sold over 100 tapes at reduced cost to these kinds of organizations.
The film was also shown in high schools.
Larry Kirkman
Benton Foundation's Connectforkids.org is a public service advertising
campaign, which has received over $250 million in donated media—television,
radio, print, outdoor, and online. Launched in 1997, connectforkids.org
reinvented "fulfillment" for public service campaigns,
creating a world of knowledge and action on behalf of children,
with a weekly news service, coverage of 35 topic areas, and discussion
boards.
Connectforkids has used focus groups, useability studies, online
surveys, cookies, and email follow-up to measure its use and impact.
Connectforkids demonstrated the power of the Web as a complement
to public television documentaries by providing information and
links to action on foster care for the PBS special, Take This Heart.
In connectforkids.org, users migrate from the personal to the political
and from volunteering to voting; they often come for narrow interests
and are surprised and "empowered," they say, by how much
they can learn, and what others like them are doing.
Rhea Mokund
Appalshop's "Because of OxyContin" was produced by four
high school students during Appalshop's 13th annual summer program.
It documents the poignant stories of people from mountain communities
of Southwest Virginia and Eastern Kentucky whose lives have been
devastated by the misuse of the prescription painkiller. With the
arrival of OxyContin in the past several years, community violence,
domestic violence and overdose deaths have risen dramatically.
Sensationalized media portrayals of the hillbilly heroin have risen
correspondingly. The young people were motivated to make this piece
as a warning to other young people to stay away from the drug and
as a tool for portraying the real people behind the images that
were developing from outside interpretations of the community affected
by this drug.
After production, AMI staff and youth actively distributed the tape.
In addition to screenings across the country-the Museum of Television
and Radio's DocuJam Film Festival, the DeadCenter Film Festival,
the New York National High School Film Festival, and others- the
tape was sent to 60 high schools and community colleges in Eastern
Kentucky and Southwest Virginia along with contextualizing information
about the drug and its rise in this area of the country. The tape
was also screened at a conference of youth social service providers
which was sponsored by the Governor of Virginia's Office. The local
congressman Harold Rogers was contacted. With his support and that
of two Virginia legislators, the tape and a tool kit were distributed
to the entire House and Senate in Washington. Following this project,
every member of the Kentucky legislature also received copies of
the tape.
Alyce Myatt
The "Legacy" project began as a film (Legacy, by Tod Lending).
Substantial outreach materials were created targeting specific audiences—from
adolescent girls, to faith-based organizations, to public policy
makers. As a result, legislation is pending in congress to grant
a larger housing allowance to grandparents, receiving public housing
assistance, that are the primary caregivers of young children.
Mimi Pickering
In 1997, Appalshop taped three public forums organized by Kentuckians
for the Commonwealth and Kentucky Youth Advocates that were held
around the state of Kentucky on welfare reform issues. In the summer
of that year KFTC, KYA and other groups working together as the
Kentucky Welfare Reform Coalition developed a state bill designed
to increase access to education for welfare recipients. At Appalshop
we edited a 10 minute video from the public forum footage of a diverse
group of welfare recipients talking about the importance of education
in their efforts to be self-sufficient. Working with KFTC, we sent
this video to print, radio and TV news outlets and personally gave
state legislators copies. We played the video on a continuous loop
in the State Capitol Rotunda during the General Assembly. The video
helped KFTC members and the Kentucky Welfare Reform Coalition in
their successful efforts to convince lawmakers to pass a bill that
made it more possible for welfare recipients to receive a post-secondary
education.
Ellen Schneider
We were hired recently by two producers to create the community
engagement component for what they've called The Islam Project.
The content has "public television" written all over it
- but the actions these programs are catalyzing is some of the most
stunning we've experienced.
One of the programs, "Muslims", is a FRONTLINE, and looks
at Muslims in Turkey, the Philippines, Nigeria, and the US. It's
solid broadcast journalism. The other, "Muhammad: Legacy of
a Prophet", which tells the story of Muhammad's life and the
way that American Muslims live it every day, is beautiful but very
traditionally constructed.
We're taking these programs to 10 sites, and asking organizations
if they would be helpful tools for bridge-building between the Muslims
and non-Muslims in their communities.
Know what? Everyone said yes. We're still in the planning stages
of this, but already (in SF, LA, Atlanta, Boston and Cleveland)
ideas are being tested, exchanged, challenged, and weighed among
people (faith leaders, educators, civil rights advocates, etc) who
may have deeply held feelings about each other, even if they've
never worked together before. Some groups will use this process
simply as a safe way to begin to break through years of fear, distrust
and suspicion. Another site will use the films in the context of
civil rights education—hoping to engage mixed publics around
issues of detention, civil liberties and "security." Others
will take an interfaith approach - seizing these films and the materials
that go with them as a long overdue opportunity to consider more
formal coalitions between religious groups.
The intensity of this project (we're less than half way into it)
has already surprised us. One of the lessons: "Social media"
(I have mixed feelings about the label, by the way) doesn't have
to look like the Sundance line-up nor sound like agit-prop. It can
be beautifully shot and leisurely paced. It can be solid broadcast
journalism complete with omniscient male voice over. Timing, framing
and context can make it social and purposeful, not necessarily the
form. (A really interesting offshoot of this and similar projects
is the [creative] tension that arises when journalists realize that
audiences are finding new meaning and uses in the docs. Fascinating!)
Angel Shaw
Through our quarterly media arts journal, "CineVue", annual
Asian American International Film Festival and its subsequent tour
of selected works from the Festival, Asian CineVision continues
to have the opportunities to outreach to various constituents about
social and cultural issues represented in the films and videos we
screen as well as through the articles, interviews and essays written
in "CineVue". Our Festival audiences are diverse and have
had an attendance of roughly 9,000 people in the past two years.
CineVue reaches the same amount of people. ACV is an organization
committed to the inclusion of various forms of "social action
media" projects in the screenings of films, workshops and special
events. Over the past 24 years, our Festival audiences have expressed
gratitude that they have a chance to see Asian/Asian American works
that represent Asian and Asian American experiences in all societal
contexts.
As a teacher, after 9.11, many of my students in a war course I
was teaching were asked to analyze mainstream media coverage in
relation to the media coverage of wars in Asia with the United States.
They had to conduct a media study for their final projects. These
projects literally brought tears to my eyes. Out of this course,
I formed a small group of non-filmmakers to work with to create
four short pieces addressing the construction of nationalism, patriotism,
and enemies. The process has been incredible thus far.
Robin Smith
"We Are Not Who You Think We Are" was produced in the
early 1990s. Tracy Huling, then director of the Women in Jail and
Prison Project at the NY Correctional Association, had been working
intimately with incarcerated women at a maximum security facility
in upstate New York, listening to their stories and chronicling
patterns of violence, addiction and crime that cycle from generation
to generation. Three years into her study, the women decided they
wanted an opportunity to share their experiences (and insights)
with an audience beyond the prison walls.
Video/Action was invited in and our camera recorded intense conversations
among the women—a dialogue inspired by the self-discovery
they were learning as part of a pilot family violence prevention
program inside the prison. The first "audience" for the
short video being produced was to be their daughters. "My mother
was a junkie, and now here I am," Debra told me. "I don't
want my daughter to go through what I've gone through."
The impact of this project is still being felt today. First, and
most importantly, it transformed the women themselves by validating
their experiences. One woman who appears in the tape for less than
one minute with a wrenching story about trying to tell her teacher
that her father was abusing her watched herself on tape recount
what happened and exclaimed, "Now someone will believe me!"
Once the project was completed, the women (who named the video)
encouraged us to distribute the program as widely as possible. Tracy
Huling traveled extensively with the tape, building panel discussions
and workshops at conferences around screenings. Her efforts snowballed,
as other activists concerned about intergenerational violence—many
who attended the conferences—requested copies to host their
own community-based screenings. Corrections officials used the video
establish Family Violence Prevention Programs based on the model
profiled in our video in facilities across the country and Canada.
Almost one decade later, the powerful stories shared in the video
continue to offer courage to support groups and personal insights
to those seeking solutions to the escalating problem of women and
crime.
Jass Stewart
In January 1999, Blackside Inc., producers of the public television
series "Eyes on the Prize", premiered the six-hour documentary
film series "I'll Make Me A World: A Century of African-American
Arts". By leveraging the excitement around I'll Make Me A World's
national public television broadcast, my outreach team orchestrated
local outreach efforts to support and promote the work of local
institutions and artists; build diverse audiences for the institutions'
artists and performers; and help them raise funds for future initiatives.
While adding tremendously to the social value of Blackside's television
series, we were also able to generate significant grass-roots support
for and awareness of I'll Make Me A World.
In Nashville, for example, we worked intensely with lead partner
N4Art, a small but active African-American artists association,
which became the first black organization in the city's history
to book the 108-year-old Rhyman Auditorium, the original home of
the Grand Ole Opry. The initiative brought in more than 1000 people
to its I'll Make Me A World premiere event, garnering significant
media coverage.
Blackside was very pleased with how we positioned "I'll Make
Me A World" as a multicultural and cross-generational project
and with their success in developing events that were cross-institutional
and spanned weeks, and in some cases, an entire year. In Blackside's
survey distributed to target and partner cities (partner cities
received less oversight from our outreach team), an overwhelming
majority reported that the community response to their programming
was extremely positive. Our eleven target cities reported organizing
225 community events. Partner cities, 48 in all, reported 125 programs.
Anuradha Vittachi
Even where there is little connectivity, poor people are getting
the information they need from the Internet, and in their own language.
How is this possible?
Pakkialouchme is a young Dalit woman, aged 24—not the sort
of person one immediately thinks of as being online. Being a woman
from the global south, and being a Dalit woman, should be enough
to exclude one from such elite male pursuits.
In fact, each morning, she goes online at a public access point
(telecentre) in the Pondicherry area of South India to collect data
from a US navy satellite that measures wave heights, which predicts
storms at sea. Then she voices the gist of this data in Tamil (the
local language) onto an audio file on the Internet—and each
afternoon, at the time the fishermen sit on the beach to check and
mend their nets, her storm warnings pour out through a series of
loudspeakers planted along the shore.
I asked someone at the telecentre whether Pakkialouchme's efforts
had made any measurable difference to the fisher families. "Well,"
he said, mildly, "there used to be five to ten deaths every
year from drowning. But in the two years she has been doing this
work, there have been no more deaths." Many of us would be
glad to say we had made that much difference in our whole lives.
Alaka Wali
An exhibition titled "Living Together" is a permanent
exhibit here at the Field Museum that opened in 1997. The exhibit
"de-exoticizes" culture and demonstrates that all people
make culture through their everyday practices-for the first time,
people from Chicago saw themselves in the Field Museum and are able
to connect their experiences with those of others around the world.
With this exhibit as a base, we are building partnerships and relationships
with other cultural institutions in Chicago to insure that these
resources are used to insure the valuation of cultural diversity.
Robert West
"Blue Vinyl", one of our primary projects, screened for
nine packed audiences at the Sundance 2002 Film Festival. As viewers
exited the theatre, they were offered a the chance to participate
in a "direct action" to influence the PVC market by signing
postcards to Intimate Brands, the parent company of Victoria's Secret
and Bath and Body Works. The postcards ("Greetings from Sundance!
I just watched 'Blue Vinyl' ...") encouraged the company to
use alternatives to PVC packaging—which are readily accessible.
By the end of our Sundance week, and 1,500 postcards later, Intimate
Brands called Greenpeace—who initiated an activist fax and
email campaign to the company in early January, netting over 6,000
messages in favor of ending PVC packaging - to discuss their PVC
policy. In a meeting on February 9, Intimate Brands committed to
100% future phase-out of PVC packaging.
Debra Zimmerman
After 9/11, Women Make Movies decided to offer all of our titles
on the Middle East, Muslim women, and those on the Japanese internment
during WWII, for free rental to any group wishing to use them for
educational purposes. We sent an email out to our customers which
then got reposted to listservs around the world. The response was
phenomenal. Hundreds of individuals and representatives of cultural,
educational and community organizations requested and screened titles
all over North America (unfortunately we could not handle the requests
from overseas). One of the best things about the initiative was
that 70 percent of the response was from groups that previously
had not used WMM films and following this initiative there has been
a significant increase in usage of these titles.
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