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Catching Up With Filmmakers From the Sixth Annual Media That Matters Film Festival

Published on May 17, 2007

As the seventh annual Media That Matters Film Festival approaches, I am reminded of last year's festival's enormous success. 2006 brought us sixteen powerful films on topics ranging from race, military recruitment, rape, and hunger, to sustainable farming and the dignity of a man who has saved himself by becoming homeless. Since then, over 500,000 people have watched the films. They've seen it online, in schools and through community organizations, and countless more have stumbled upon the films through the innumerable links that have spread throughout the web.

As one of the newest members of the Arts Engine staff, I've been learning as much as I can about the organization, and I checked in with last year's filmmakers to see what they had to say. It's been almost a year since the premiere, and since then there have been some amazing developments.

A young girl considers two dolls, one white, one black, in Kiri Davis's acclaimed short film, A Girl Like Me.

The blockbuster success of the year was Kiri Davis's short, A Girl Like Me, in which the filmmaker recreated Kenneth Clark's landmark doll test experiment, which examined the ways in which a group of African-American children assessed the "goodness" of white dolls and black dolls. In Clark's study in the 1940s, nearly every child chose the white doll for all things positive and identified the black doll with those that were negative. Remarkably, the experiment in a Harlem day care center in 2006 produced nearly the same results.

On June 1, 2006, Media That Matters began streaming A Girl Like Me and fifteen other shorts. The buzz around Davis's film in particular steadily spread online, and people around the country linked to our site. In early August, the New York Daily News found A Girl Like Me through a Google search and wrote a story about the filmmaker, which in turn drew the attention of CNN, ABC World News, Good Morning America and a host of European news outlets, sparking an international debate on the progress (or lack thereof) the country has made since Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. The audience continued to grow: tens of thousands of people watched it online and sent the link to their friends, creating an exponential circuit of viewers.

John Williams, the Executive Director of Reel Works Teen Filmmaking and producer of A Girl Like Me proclaims, "What happened with Kiri's film is just incredible. And now there's another round of press--it's growing all the time. For me, that means it changes the conversation entirely about the potential impact of youth media. This is an exemplar of what's possible. It's not going to happen all the time, but it'll happen again. And then of course, there's Chris's film." Williams is referring to another Reel Works film, Happy Ending, which was part of the fifth annual Media That Matters Film Festival. Last June, the young filmmaker, Chris Irrizarry, was awarded a Student Emmy. Chris said of his win: "When I walked on the stage, it was like, wow! I'm actually winning an Emmy. I felt noticed. I felt appreciated for the work that I did. It made me think about what other stories I could tell."

A Guatemalan family crushes rocks as their only means of survival in 2006's Bread.

Many Media That Matters filmmakers attest that the festival was an important stepping-stone into the larger documentary world. Marcelo Bukin received the Global Justice Award in last year's festival for Bread, a lyrical and heart-breaking portrait of two young Guatemalan boys who crush rocks with their father so that their family can eat. Bukin states, "Media That Matters was the first festival, and then the film went to almost thirty film festivals all over the world in the last seven months. The whole exposure was a big thing." At the festival awards ceremony, his award was presented by documentary icon Albert Maysles. Maysles loves Bukin's film: "When you capture moments like that," he says, "those experiences for the viewer become indelible. They pass them on to other people, and they remain with them. What a pleasure to able to present an award to a film that is so much more worthwhile than what the mass media produces." Bukin was extremely touched by Maysles' response. "It was great to meet him--I love him, his films, his life. His compliments were first an honor, because I am very identified with the kind of filmmaking he pioneered. Then when Media That Matters published the photo [of Maysles and me] in the press release, I copied it in my website. I think it helped a lot, because of course juries are human beings. When they have to make the final decision, they don't know who you are, so of course the support really helps."

In Transit documents women in need of vesico-vaginal fistula (VVF) repair in eastern Congo. In this region, VVF is primarily caused by an epidemic of violent rape and torture.

Nelson Walker, one of the directors of In Transit says, "Since the festival, we made a feature length version on P.O.V, and it was in Full Frame and the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival. I consider Media That Matters the launching pad for the project. It was a good venue to start thinking about ideas for the larger work and having it seen in a public forum. I was encouraged by a lot of my colleagues at the festival in terms of how to get docs off the ground. As part of the festival, we gave a talk about the process of how we came to make the film, and it gave us an opportunity to talk about the work in a more public forum. It was great to have the opportunity to talk to other filmmakers and have them watch the film, so we could get asked the challenging questions--often questions you don't get to ask yourself in the process."

Walker also explains that the festival created the opportunity for effective networking and invaluable encounters. "The support system was great. The event led us to a connection with Barbara Koppel. Also all the presenters at the festival were very receptive and open to talking to people, which often isn't the case at other festivals." Perhaps it's the intimate nature of the setting that allows for strong connections to be formed between the filmmakers and the presenters of the awards. Rather than being spread over a week or more with many people coming and going, the Media That Matters premiere and the award ceremony happen on two successive days, and everyone is focused on the same thing--using video to make a difference in the world--so this creates a great sense of community.

Created for MTV's 2004 Choose or Lose: Marriage Rights Campaign, Permission illustrates the absurdity of the double standard when it comes to same-sex marriage.

At Media That Matters, Danielle Lurie, the director of In the Morning, met up with fellow festival filmmaker Kathy Fletcher. Fletcher produced Permission and also works with Public Interest. Through this connection, Lurie was offered a job with Public Interest. She states that, "Thanks to Media That Matters, I am now working closely with Public Interest on a new animal rights campaign and hopefully other projects down the road as well, and I'm thrilled. That company is a perfect fit for me in that it does commercials that are cool, but are about issues that need awareness."

Many other filmmakers are also pleased that their films are presented in a social action context at the Media That Matters Film Festival. To them, the unique theme of the festival allows their films to inspire action. As Vasco Lucas Nunes, director of Recycle, puts it, "Winning the award for sustainability was great, because although the film had already been accepted at Sundance and won an award for cinematography at the International Cinematography Guild, the Sustainability Award was directly related to the subject matter, which was way more important than cinematography."

In addition to making films about social change, the Media That Matters filmmakers themselves grow and evolve as artists. The Meerkat Media Collective, a group of filmmakers that pool their resources to create an impressive stream of compelling videos, came to Media That Matters with their film, How Wal-Mart Came to Haslett. Meerkat Jay Sterrenberg says of this process, "Producing these pieces has been a kind of microcosm of how we want to change the world. We've been working to emphasize process over product. Now we're starting to have the collective grow up with us: among other things, we've been organizing weekly skill-share meetings, and we're soon planning on opening them up to the public as a kind of free school. So on a given day for example, someone volunteers to teach how to use a certain camera, and anyone who has that camera can come and learn." He adds, "We've also branched out a lot in terms of projects since Media That Matters. Everything up to that point was short video blogs, but now we're working on two documentary features. It all came about because of the buzz generated by the collective last year, and Media That Matters was a huge part of that."

One aspect of the Media That Matters Film Festival that makes it extremely unique among American festivals is the extension of the festival beyond the premiere screenings. Following the conclusion of the festival, all the films are available for purchase on DVD and can be watched for free online. Arts Engine encourages the films to be used in an informational or classroom context and provides study guides for each film. In addition, the website provides "take action" links for each film, providing more information on the particular social issue that the documentary confronts and facilitating a real-world response in which the audience can connect to activist groups connected with the issue. As Karen Lum, who made Slip of the Tongue says, "The website is a really easy way to get people plugged in really quick. It's helpful in terms of networking, using it as a hub to plug everyone in, like the spokes of the same wheel." And Karen Lum also says the streaming leads to unexpected audiences: "I see it crop up here and there, and just random people tell me they saw it, so it's getting good outreach."

This extension to unplanned audiences is especially important to a film with a social action message. Gabe Cheifetz directed No Child, which exposes a shocking aspect of military recruitment. Apparently the No Child Left Behind Act guarantees military recruiters the right to go into public high schools and recruit, and even gives them access to private information about the students. Cheifetz asserts, "A common reaction from people was, 'Wow I never knew about that.' I talked to people who were experts in education, and they didn't know! To create an outlet for the piece and the message was really gratifying."

For filmmakers, in addition to the extended life of the festival, another valuable facet of Media That Matters is the relationship that is built with the MediaRights staff. Marcelo Bukin comments on this aspect of the festival: "I was very much in touch with Wendy [former Media That Matters Film Festival Coordinator]. She kept encouraging me to take the film other places. And I met these people at Human Rights Watch--I love these people--they became my very good friends. Now they are like my family. They organized a screening at the New School. The film also went to Montreal festival. Wendy inspired me to go, because she is from Montreal, so I went." Meerkat Jay Sterrenberg attests, "A big way that MediaRights supported us was driving a lot of traffic to our site. We've had a new interactive website in the works for awhile, and we finally launched it at the end of November. MediaRights put our holiday card up on their site, which led to a lot of new eyeballs on ours."

In the self-proclaimed Asparagus Capital of the Nation, residents fight for economic survival as their most valuable crop is slowly being taken away.

According to the filmmakers, another appreciated component of the Media That Matters Film Festival is the diversity of its filmmakers and subjects. Anne de Mare, director of Asparagus! (A Stalk-umentary), says, "I really like the mix of ages and cultures in the festival. So many young filmmakers, and others with much more experience, urban people, not so urban people, a really great mix. That's important, because it's us as a culture telling our story back to ourselves, and if you start to pigeon-hole people you lose that." John Williams, producer of A Girl Like Me adds, "Any time work of our kids is put in same category as adults, and not in the ghetto of a 'youth media' sidebar, it's wonderful for us. That's where we think it belongs. It's great if it reaches kids, but it also deserves to reach a wider audience."

And several filmmakers also mentioned the cash award of one thousand dollars. In a field that is notoriously under-funded and financially challenging, every contribution makes a difference. Gabe Cheifetz comments, " The one thousand dollars was really key. We used it to be able to make it out to the festival in New York, and from the point of view of someone working in youth media, that trip was huge. It made all the difference. A little bit of glamour goes a long way. Working away out here in Minnesota, it's rare to get any sort of glamorous treatment at all, and I can't overstate how much of a motivator that was. Without the one thousand dollars, we wouldn't have been able to come." Anne de Mare adds, "The one thousand dollars really helped. It enabled us to hire the editor for another two weeks to get the final mix done. Coming when it came, it was so important."

The Media That Matters Film Festival has received an extremely positive overall response from its participants. Without exception, every filmmaker contacted for this article expressed heartfelt words of appreciation for the festival and staff. "It was nothing but a wonderful experience with Media That Matters and the whole organization," comments John Williams. "It helped our very small, very young organization get much needed exposure to get attention in a very competitive field." Adds Marcelo Bukin: "I am really, really happy I was in Media That Matters. I sent an e-mail to [MediaRights staff member] Shira to say so, and I talk always about Media That Matters, because people ask me, "Which festivals have you been in?' Many of my new friends are big guys--half of them are Oscar-nominated--and most of them know that Media That Matters is a good festival. Whatever you need, I will be happy to help because everybody was so kind and helpful, and actually it did my career a lot of good."

The seventh annual Media That Matters Film Festival 2007 premieres on May 31st at the IFC Center in Manhattan. Hopefully it will meet and even exceed the success of last year's festival!

This article is available for noncommercial use under a Creative Commons license. It was originally published on MediaRights.org, a project of Arts Engine, Inc. This notice must accompany the article at all times.