From Challenge to Responsibility: Sundance 2011

Documentaries at Sundance did more than just challenge, they asked audiences to consider their personal responsibility, whether to history, to humanity, to women, to the environment or to people who are no longer with us. 

Making a big splash this year as a premiere in the Premiere category was Pamela Yates's latest film Granito. Great friends of the Center and award-winning documentarians, Pamela Yates and Paco de Onis gave the keynote address at last year's Making Your Media Matter conference (renamed Media That Matters for 2011). Granito takes a chilling look at the only footage of the Guatemalan army carrying out the genocide of 25 years ago that Yates captured while making her seminal 1982 film, Mountains That Tremble. As Yates pointed out herself, Granito asks audiences the question, "How does each of us weave our own responsibilities into the pattern of history?"

In many ways the sense responsibility that comes out of an engaging documentary is to continue the conversation. In Connected: An Autobiography about Love, Death and Technology, Tiffany Shlain asks audiences to start a conversation about connectedness in the 21st century. How are the major current events issues such as conflict, consumption, the (struggling) economy or the environment,  linked together, and what are the consequences?

Still another premiere in the Premiere category, The Interrupters by Kartemquin Films, follows the story of individuals who have taken responsibility for violence and conflict in their community. Former incarcerated criminals themselves, men and women stand up to the rise of violence in Chicago by intervening in the lives of kids and adults who are heading in the direction of destruction - both for themselves and for their communities. The film demonstrates for audiences what happens when we take responsibility and action for social justice. This is a powerful message for audiences engaging with media that matters.

Harry Belafonte, long time activist and one of the greatest musician of our times, is in many ways the embodiment of social responsibility and action. Sing Your Song, produced by Belafonte's own daughter, Gina Belafonte, traces the lifetime of battles for civil rights both at home and abroad, which made Harry Belafonte an international symbol for social justice and human rights. Father and daughter surprised the audience at a Tuesday screening and almost as a continuation of the film, Belafonte spoke eloquently about our responsibility to continue fighting.

Belafonte's message was also echoed by the subjects of We Were Here, remarkable persons who shared their intimate stories and experiences battling the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s in the San Francisco gay community. An audience member asked the subjects of the film to describe how it felt to reflect on what happened. Their response was that it's not yet time to look back, the epidemic isn't over and we still have battles to fight.

Documentaries and media that matter remind us of these battles. Miss Representation sent a powerful message about the battle to change perceptions of women in the media. Interviews crossed gender and party lines, talking to Condoleezza Rice and Nancy Pelosi, and a number of men and women in Hollywood and media about how women are treated, as directors, as characters and as subjects of advertising. The conclusion, by not using our incredible buying power to challenge corporate entities, we are doing our young men AND women a great disservice. We allow our children to grow in a world direly lacking in multi-dimensional female protagonists and wildly unrealistic expectations for appearance and weight. The tagline for the film is a quote from Gloria Steinem, "You can't be what you can't see." What do our young girls and boys see when they turn on the television, computer or smart phone?

This is just a sampling of the calls to action that Sundance documentaries presented to audiences. The Center for Social Media is dedicated to showcasing the strategies that keep this dialogue moving. Join us at the Media That Matters conference for a two-day experience with more filmmakers and media-makers who are presenting how their stories that matter are disseminated across multiple media platforms.