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Audience Engagement; Impact; Social Documentary

Forming Partnerships to Build Audience

The Mama SherpasIn light of Facebook’s breastfeeding censoring scandal comes a documentary aiming to normalize the birthing process--"The Mama Sherpas." This documentary, by Brigid Maher, producer/director and professor in American University's School of Communication, investigates America’s rising cesarean birth rate and the midwives helping solve this obstetric crisis.

The film shows the outstanding work nurse-midwives do in providing optimal maternal-child health care. Yet, the challenge for Maher, like many filmmakers, comes in actually convincing audience’s to alter their previous attitudes about the role of midwives in modern society.   Read more...

Class Dismissed: Engaging Dropouts and Communities on Public Media

American GraduateWhen the Corporation for Public Broadcasting threw down the American Graduate challenge, Catherine Stifter and friends in California’s Central Valley took it on, and learned 5 key lessons in how to produce engaging public media. Read more...

Pull Focus Interview with Dawn Porter

Dawn Porter

As part of the 2013 Human Rights Film Series, filmmaker Dawn Porter recently visited the Center to share the stories behind her latest documentary project "Gideon's Army." Read more...

Robert West: Pioneer in Social Documentary

Robert WestRobert West, the co-founder with Judith Helfand of Working Films, who died June 6 of brain cancer, was a pioneer of activist engagement strategies. He never was content with goals of information and education; he wanted to see what difference that information and education could make in the world. Read more...

New Frontier at Sundance: Innovating Story

MIT PanelEach year at the Sundance Film Festival I try to answer a question: why should filmmakers pay attention to the experimental media showcased at the New Frontier exhibition? Read more...