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Community Members-in-Action: December 2009

Community Members-in-Action highlights who’s doing what in our MediaRights.org community. Let your more than 21,000 fellow community members know what you are up to. Please .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) your achievements for consideration in next month’s newsletter.

In May 2009, Richard Levien’s film, “La Migra” won the inaugural $35,000 San Francisco Film Society/Kenneth Rainin Foundation Filmmaking Grant. Levien’s first film as a director, the short fiction film “Immersion,” debuted at the Slamdance Film Festival in January 2009. It won the “No Violence” award at the Ann Arbor film festival and the Golden Gate award for Best Bay Area short film at the San Francisco International Film Festival.

Lynn True and Nelson Walker are in the final phase of editing Summer Pasture, the feature-length version of the Media That Matters film, A Nomad’s Life. Scheduled for release in early 2010, the film chronicles a young nomadic Tibetan family, and was recently awarded the International Documentary Association’s Pare Lorentz Finishing Fund. In October, True and Walker programmed the first annual Congo in Harlem series at the Maysles Cinema. True and Walker are currently programming the 2nd annual Tibet in Harlem film series, slated for March 2010.

Julia Pimsleur, Founder and President of Little Pim, has had a big year with her foreign language learning series for babies, toddlers and preschoolers. Little Pim was just named one of America’s Most Promising Startups by BusinessWeek , and was a hit at the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages convention in San Diego in November.