When I traveled to Arizona with Ishita to create Checkpoint Nation, I wrote: It was the first time I had experienced the overwhelming size of the desert sky. The sunset was magnificent, and the endless stretch of cacti and desert rocks were lit up with the last pink moments of twilight. But the sunset’s beauty [...]

December 15, 2011 by Dana Variano | Tags: Arizona, border deaths, crisis, Derechos Humanos, desert, documentary, DRUM, homepage, human rights, human rights crisis, immigrants, immigration, International Migrants Day, Mexico, migrants, No More Deaths, U.S. Mexico Border, Vamos Unidos, video | Comments Off

Tonight at 9pm/8c, Current TV will premiere This (Illegal) American Life, a one hour documentary about the millions of undocumented students and workers in the United States.  The show follows the lives of Ilse, an undocumented American Literature major at UCLA who crossed the border at the age of 3, and Filemon, a strawberry picker [...]

August 1, 2011 by Maya | Tags: Arizona, breakthrough, California, college, current tv, documentary, farmworker, immigrant, Mexico, oaxaca, premiere, struggle, students, this (illegal) american life, undocumented immigration, vanguard series | Comments Off

Check this out! News of this screening came across our office this past week: In commemoration of the 1989 student-led protests in Tian’anmen Square, Link TV partnered with Amnesty International USA and Culture Project to air a television and online broadcast of the 1994 documentary Moving the Mountain. Directed by Michael Apted and produced by [...]

June 13, 2011 by Maya | Tags: Amnesty International USA, b-listed, breakthrough, Charter 08, china, Culture Project, documentary, human rights, Larry Cox, legal reform, Link TV, Liu Xiaobo, Michael Apted, Moving the Mountain, Nobel Peace Price, political reform, protest, student protestors, students, tian'anmen square, Trudie Snyder | Comments Off

We’re a proud promotional partner of the film, Welcome to Shelbyville.  The film takes you to small town, Shelbyville, Tennessee where the community experiences transformative changes with the arrival of hundreds of Muslim Somali refugees, combined with an already rapidly developing Latino population. Longtime Shelbyville residents (both white and African American) are faced with the [...]

June 2, 2011 by Maya | Tags: active voice, African American, American, bible belt, Community, community building, documentary, human rights, immigrant, Immigrant Rights, integration, Latino, multimedia, Muslim, refugees, Religion, shelbyville, social tools, somali, welcome to shelbyville | 1 Comment »

From our friends at Witness: This post is part of our occasional series in which winners of the WITNESS Award (which we present at Silverdocs) discuss their top 3 picks from among social justice/human rights documentaries of the year. This post is by Abigail E. Disney who produced the 2008 WITNESS Award-winning film Pray the [...]

October 13, 2010 by crissy spivey | Tags: Abigal E. Disney, because we found it, Budrus, documentary, Family Affair, film, movies, Sum Come Up, The Oath, WITNESS | Comments Off

A young teacher from a modest home in Sweden sent a small donation through a school’s global education fundraiser. Years later, Hilde Back, a Holocaust survivor, discovers that her small act actually changed the lives of hundreds of children in Kenya, by changing the course of one man’s life, Chris Mburu. We were excited to [...]

July 12, 2010 by Priya | Tags: A Small Act, Ban ki-Moon, Bill Gates, Chris Mburu, documentary, education, ethnic violence, genocide, HBO, HBO docs, Hilde Back, Hilde Back Education Fund, Holocaust, homepage, human rights, Jennifer Arden, Kenya, Network for Good, poverty, Sundance Film Festival | 1 Comment »

This week, Texans are experiencing a more intimate portrait of Hurricane Katrina, within a new form of art which dismantles a film and pieces together the sounds, images, and storytelling of a documentary before a live audience. In the opening scene of “Notes on the Emptying of a City” by Ashley Hunt, a figure sits [...]

July 7, 2010 by Priya | Tags: Ashley Hunt, b-listed, breakthrough, documentary, Hurricane Katrina, journalism, Race, social justice | Comments Off

According to an article published in the Washington Post, many people believe that “we will never fix education in America until we eradicate poverty,” and go along with it. John Legend is out to reverse this concept. This six time Grammy winner will be honored with the Humanitarian  Award at the BET Awards on June [...]

June 24, 2010 by Priya | Tags: b-activists, BET Awards, Bill Gates, Brekathrough, Davis Guggenheim, documentary, education reform, global poverty, Harlem, humanitarian award, John Legend, Millenium Development Goal, Paramount Vantage, public school system, Shine, Show Me Campaign, Sundance Film Festival, Waiting for Superman, washington post | Comments Off

The film, “Every F—king Day of My Life,” showing on HBO shows how one woman, Wendy Maldonado, endured severe beatings every single day of her life, in front of her neighbors and children. The violence was so horrific, she used her children’s drawings to cover the holes in the walls. And to answer the question [...]

December 16, 2009 by crissy spivey | Tags: b-listed, Bell Bajao, culture shockers, documentary, Domestic Violence, Every F---king Day of My Life, films, HBO, Wendy Maldonado | Comments Off

Along with being a renowned actor in film and television (I’m sure there are some West Wing buffs reading this), Martin Sheen has become known for his activism, be it anti-war efforts, his support of the rights of Latinos in the US, or his non-profit environmental organization. For his newest endeavor he provided the narration [...]

November 16, 2009 by ishita | Tags: Activism, Africa, barrios, Cinema Libre Studio, documentary, Latin America, Martin Sheen, Philippe Diaz, poverty, Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, slums, solution, The End of Povery, The West Wing | Comments Off