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Pull Focus: Pamela Yates and Paco de Onis

This year's Human Rights Film Series concluded with a packed screening of The Reckoning on October 29th. The film, directed by Pamela Yates and produced by Paco de Onis, follows Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo of the International Criminal Court (ICC) as he issues arrest warrants for the rebel leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda, puts 4 Congolese warlords on trial in The Hague, charges the President of Sudan with genocide and war crimes in Darfur, challenges the UN Security Council to have him arrested, and shakes up the Colombian criminal justice system.

Following the screening Pamela and Paco sat down for a lively Q & A session and earlier in the day they also conducted a filmmaking master class for students where they detailed some of the innovative outreach and distribution strategies they have pioneered. You can watch clips from the Q & A and master class below. In January we will be bringing you an in-depth Pull Focus interview with Pamela and Paco as well.

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Pull Focus: Jennifer Maytorena Taylor

In October, we welcomed filmmaker Jennifer Maytorena Taylor, director of New Muslim Cool, to screen her film and conduct a filmmaking master class with American University students. We also grabbed some time to talk about the film and the challenges of making it. The interview, as well as clips from the master class and the post-film Q & A, are below. Read more...

Pull Focus: Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein

Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein have become chroniclers of the Iraq war-era America. (They bring some distance to the subject; she is German and he spent 12 years in Berlin.) Their documentaries—Gunner Palace, The Prisoner, or How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair, Bulletproof Salesman, and now How to Fold a Flag—carry us from 2003 to today. Their latest film follows four of the soldiers they met in Gunner Palace back into the lives they left behind.

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Pull Focus: Laura Waters Hinson

Laura Waters Hinson is a filmmaker and photographer based in Washington, DC. She is the founder of Image Bearer Pictures and recently launched the Living Bricks Campaign, a multi-media viewer project to support reconciliation efforts in Rwanda. Laura received a master of fine arts degree in filmmaking from American University, and was the winner of a Student Academy Award for Best Documentary for her film As We Forgive, a film about the reconciliation efforts between the victims and perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. I interviewed her before a screening of her film at American University.

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Social Issue Documentary: The Evolution of Public Engagement

Documentary films are serving as the core for innovative spaces and practices that mark a new kind of public media – accessible, participatory and inclusive. This article examines the campaigns surrounding three films: Not in Our Town, Lioness, and State of Fear to uncover how emerging strategies for online and offline engagement are laying the groundwork for "public media 2.0."

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