Can Documentaries Influence Public Opinion

February 5: Can Documentaries Influence Public Opinion, a NYWIFT Panel

It's 2009 and change is in the air. What role do documentaries play when it comes to influencing public awareness?

New York Women in Film and Television has assembled a panel of filmmakers known for telling stories that expose controversial subjects and difficult points of view. Katy Chevigny, Almudena Carracedo, Sarah Gibson, Tia Lessin, Meg Mclagan and Daria Sommers will show clips from their award-winning films and discuss how to craft documentaries with strong messages -- from the treatment stage through distribution.

Panelists include:

Arts Engine's own Executive Director, Katy Chevigny, is a documentary filmmaker, entrepreneur and nonprofit manager. Chevigny founded Arts Engine and its predecessor Big Mouth Productions. In 2000, she launched MediaRights.org, a "knowledge commons" for filmmakers, activists, educators, and the general public, hosting info on over 7,000 films and the Media That Matters Film Festival, now in its eighth year. Chevigny recently directed the film Election Day (2007). She also co-directed the Emmy-nominated documentary Deadline (2004). Chevigny has produced many award-winning documentaries at Arts Engine, including: Arctic Son, Journey to the West: Chinese Medicine Today, Nuyorican Dream, Innocent Until Proven Guilty and Outside Looking In: Transracial Adoption in America.
Tia Lessin is director and producer of Trouble the Water, her feature debut about two self-described street hustlers who survive Hurricane Katrina and seize a chance for a new beginning. (www.troublethewaterfilm.com). Lessin also directed and produced the documentary short Behind the Labels in partnership with Peter Gabriel's human rights group Witness. She was awarded the Sidney Hillman Prize for Broadcast Journalism for the film, which is about labor trafficking of Chinese and Filipina women garment workers. She was a producer of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine, and worked as a producer of the series, The Awful Truth, which earned her two Emmy nominations and one arrest.

Almudena Carracedo (appearing via Skype) is the Emmy Award-winning director and producer of Made in L.A., which follows the story of Latina immigrants working in Los Angeles garment sweatshops as they embark on a three-year odyssey to win basic labor protections (www.madeinla.com). Funded by ITVS, POV and the Sundance Documentary Fund, the film premiered on POV in 2007 and was praised by The New York Times as "an excellent documentary... about basic human dignity". Her previous film Welcome, A Docu-Journey of Impressions received the Sterling Award for Best Short at Silverdocs. Almudena, who was born in Spain, is the 2008 recipient of NALIP's ESTELA Award.