Today, October 1, 2007, marks exactly ten years since I moved to New York from Chicago to start the organization that has become Arts Engine. My college pal, the filmmaker Julia Pimsleur, had proposed the somewhat wild idea that we leave our jobs and friends in Chicago, Illinois (me) and Paris, France (Julia), and move back to our hometown of New York City to build a film company dedicated to social issue documentaries.

Thus it was in the fall of 1997 that we worked as line producers on a German television documentary called “World Jazz” and stayed late at the office to write grant proposals and treatments for our first feature documentary, “Innocent Until Proven Guilty,” directed by the recent New York arrival Kirsten Johnson. Our first office was ever so humble—picture Julia and me perched together at a desk that was essentially obstructing the foyer of another production company’s offices (Rose Rosenblatt and Marion Lipschutz’s Cine Qua Non.) We shared one phone line and spent much of each day coordinating the timing for when we would swap the phone jack into our Mac Classics to check our email through our dial-up connection, while hoping that no one was trying to reach us by phone.

This story makes me think: Ah, youth. How different things were in Julia’s and my Web 0.5 world. I knew then that we would be have to master a wealth of knowledge about cameras, broadcasters, editing systems, film festivals and distributors. What I didn’t anticipate was how much we would need to learn about digital distribution, social networking, video downloads and high-resolution compression for video streaming. And while Julia and I hoped and intended our films to make a difference, we had yet to discover how effective the internet could be at galvanizing media makers and users to support social change.

In 1999 we began research on what became MediaRights.org and in 2001 we launched our first Media That Matters Film Festival, at a time when streaming films online was still largely a novelty. Since then, web video has gone from neat-o to necessary, but the work of promoting, protecting and creating media for social change continues to grow in importance as more people have access to these tools. Just last week, the front page of the New York Times reported on Verizon’s attempt to block text messages sent by Naral Pro-Choice America. This censorship caused such an outcry that Verizon backtracked to allow the messages to be sent, but the policy that allows companies such as Verizon and AT&T to discriminate as they choose still stands. 

At the same time, the exciting potential offered by free access to digital distribution channels exceeded anyone’s expectations and blew our minds with the Media That Matters Film Festival’s A Girl Like Me. So on the one hand, corporate communications companies may have new tools to control what messages get through to the public, while on the other hand, a 16-year-old can reach millions with her story of internalized racism among young children in Harlem.

Neither of these newsworthy events could have happened ten years ago, but to me both these examples argue for the need for vigilance and imagination in using the tools of media making and media sharing to bring the ideals of free expression to their fullest expression. No doubt we will still need people to keep it real to 2017, fight the good fight and make sure that the truth gets out there. The exciting part is that we’re going to be making creative use of new technologies to do it.