Media Impact

When filmmakers take on tough subjects, do they need to take extra precautions? Crude, Bananas!, Venus and Serena, Central Park 5 all confronted legal challenges. Other important films, such as Gasland and Hot Coffee, have faced smear campaigns. Read more...

Imagine empowering a new generation of human rights activists with a language that less than 40% of people speak in your country. “Granito: How to Nail a Dictator” tells the story of that generation in a feature-length documentary film about the thirty year struggle to bring Guatemala's ex-dictator Rios Montt to justice for genocide against the Mayan population.  Read more...

This year marked the 10^th anniversary of the Center’s annual conference, profiled in "The MTM Publication" now available online. As an emerging filmmaker, the conference stood out to me as providing a unique variety of resources for newcomers in the media industry. Topics ranged from understanding film festivals all the way to why social impact media makers should pay attention to games. Read more...

At AFI Docs, now in its second year, powerful, well-crafted social issue movies struggled to make connections with audiences committed to their issues.

The festival that grew out of Silverdocs weathered a second year, although still in search of budgetary stability after losing one presenting sponsor (Audi) and picking up another (ATT). Now positioned as a “best of fests” documentary festival, and notably U.S.-centric, it claims to “connect audiences and documentary filmmakers to policy leaders in the seat of our nation's government.” Read more...

I’ve just discovered a gem on Netflix. For a limited time, the epic Ken Burns series “The Civil War” is streaming in its entirety—all nine “Ken Burns effect” episodes of daguerreotype goodness. Even “Orange is the New Black” will have to go on hiatus for me to soak in the uninterrupted hours of PBS history bliss. Read more...