Social Documentary

Tia Lessin, a New York-based documentary filmmaker, received the 2002 Sidney Hillman Award for her work as producer and director of Behind the Labels, a film about sweatshops in Saipan that was shown on the Oxygen cable channel, before Congress and in theaters nationwide. Lessin was the supervising producer of the Academy Award-winning documentary film Bowling for Columbine and associate producer of the Academy Award-nominated Shadows of Hate. She has twice been nominated for Emmy Awards for her work in television. She co-produced Michael Moore's latest film Fahrenheit 9/11.

Co-directors Katy Chevigny and Kirsten Johnson discuss the integration of outreach plans in the production of their film Deadline, which aired on NBC's Dateline in July, 2004.

This is a course designed to familiarize students with audio-visual production for social action, including nonprofit, advocacy, institutional, and museum display. The assignments include analyzing case studies of successful work, mapping the economic and social environment for media, meeting professional media producers, and developing proposals.

This course examines the history of video activism beginning with the introduction of the porta pak in the late 1960's, the development of video collectives, activist and public access television and culminating in video's role in the WTO and the events preceding and following September 11th. Through readings, screenings and discussions, you will examine the blurring lines between art, documentary, journalism and activism. Topics include but are not limited to the infusion of identity politics (shifts created through feminist, queer and race theory), youth action in the 1990's, the act of recording as defense, movement from vérité to personal documentary, and issues of distribution.

Anne Lewis is a remarkable social action filmmaker whose career is rooted in the challenge of making films about, with and for people whose voices are not usually heard in mainstream media. In 2004, as a lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin, she was asked to describe her creative vision.