Media That Matters

The Center's conference on Jan. 31-Feb. 1 is creating echoes in the blogosphere. Check out Erica Ginsberg's blog of Robert Greenwald's keynote at http://docsinprogress.blogspot.com/ , which itself has already migrated to a few other blogs. And let us know where you're blogging about it!

Do experiments in new kinds of public media matter? Yes, according to Jeff Chester, the indefatigable dynamo who heads the Center for Digital Democracy (http://www.democraticmedia.org/). He has just issued a book-length manifesto for media reform, Digital Destiny: New Media and the Future of Democracy (The New Press). Read more...

Those of us who got to go to the Center's Making Your Documentary Matter conference met Katerina Cizek, the National Film Board of Canada filmmaker who's creating videos in collaboration with the staff of a major public hospital in Toronto. Now her website has launched, at www.nfb.ca/filmmakerinresidence, so we can track the evolution of the NFB's latest experiment in participatory media. Read more...

The latest wrinkle in public media using social networking comes from Brave New Films, which--borrowing from the idea of the AIDS quilt--is hosting an electronic "quilt" of memories about U.S. soldiers fallen in the Iraq war. This is a non-partisan site dedicated to the memory of the lives of these soldiers, composed of videos made by their friends and families. How it evolves will be one piece of evidence about how social networking can create public media sites from the grassroots. Read more...

If you’re not one of the anointed, the Sundance Film Festival is a lot about cold toes and long lines, $20 parking fees, discovering that three other people are sharing the condo living room floor and finding out that you’re on the wrong bus. What do you expect in a tiny mountain town invaded annually by more than 40,000 people, every one of them on some kind of a mission?

As the most important meeting place of independent filmmakers, though, it’s also about intersections probable and improbable. The panels, mixers and parties are at least as important as the movies. Read more...