ACT Human Rights Film Festival

Connecting at the intersection of culture, art, and social justice ACT elevates human rights stories and fosters community conversations. Founded in 2016 at Colorado State University, ACT curates a slate of 25–30 recent, critically acclaimed films to screen at both its annual festival and at year-round screenings. The festival helps filmmakers reach engaged audiences that include activists, NGOs, students, and academics who are motivated to network, organize, and research to take collective action and help build impact. ACT’s programming asks audience members to evaluate their complicity in systems of oppression and to consider actions they can take toward social justice – from locally to globally.

Website: actfilmfest.org

Social: @actfilmfest

Mayakov+sky Platform

Mayakov+sky Platform is an anarchist/autonomist collaborative rubric working in the fields/poetics of filmmaking/photography and music, architectural design and anarchist theory, and participating as an active member in the multifarious struggles against capital, that are unfolding in Chochenyo Ohlone land (Oakland) and the Bay Area at large.

Some of the films made by the Platform include:

LOS 33 Y ELLA: A decolonizing, experimental documentary, inspired by the incident with the 33 miners in Chile, written and performed collectively in the languages Nawat (Pipil), Quechua and Spanish.

THE CHILDREN REVOLTS: A poetic documentary that chronicles the occupation (that the Platform was also part of) of a space, that was once a free school for Black and Brown youth called Emiliano Zapata Street Academy High School and the struggles for free public education in Oakland through the lens of this autonomous space and its remarkable architectural metamorphosis into a 24-hour library and community garden that we lovingly named Biblioteca Popular Victor Martinez as an homage to the Chicano poet.

Mayakov+sky Platform films have been screened at the Emma Goldman Anarchist Film Festival (NYC Anarchist Book), Festival De Films Anarchistes (Projections Insurgées) in Montreal and various anarchist spaces in Greece and the Bay Area.

The Platform has performed as a duo or trio in the Bay Area and abroad and in the fall of 2019 it performed, first time as a free jazz quartet at the conference Unit Structures: The Art of Cecil Taylor that was organized by The Graduate Center and the Hitchcock Institute for the Study of American Music at Brooklyn College, City University of New York.

Websites:
vimeo.com/mayakovskyplatform
instagram.com/mayakov_sky_platform
youtube.com/user/M4y4kovsky

VHS Activism Archive

The VHS Activism Archive holds information and resources connected to 184 tapes first accumulated and used for teaching and research by one media scholar and video artist: The Alexandra Juhasz VHS Collection. It reflects her queer feminist media praxis with particular attention to activist and experimental media concerning AIDS, anti-racism and the art and expression of people of color, queers of many stripes, lesbians, femmes, and women, as well as documentary and video.

A small number of the tapes have been digitized with their makers’ permission. In other cases we provide access to their current homes online. We have built in some information and context for all the tapes, but always seek more.

The Archive also holds graduate student work generated by re-engaging and activating 12 of the tapes in the collection with a particular focus on AIDS, sexuality, women and people of color.

We are eager to engage the tapes’ makers and communities, as well as to encourage new uses and users. Please feel free to contact us about more resources and information, as well as documentation of your own activation of the collection. In these ways, the dead tapes can stay alive, be useful, while the collection grows to take the shape of a larger community of practice


Educational Video Center (EVC)

Founded in 1984, the Educational Video Center (EVC) is a youth media and social justice organization that teaches documentary filmmaking as a means to develop artistic, critical literacy, and career skills of historically excluded youth, while nurturing their idealism and commitment to social change. EVC is advancing the next generation of activists by building the artistic, cultural, and political power of student New Yorkers—young people who live on the front lines of racial and economic injustice—through documentary film.

Our programs are a platform where young people take the lead on their own learning and leadership, and where they create multimedia projects as part of their civic engagement on issues they care about. History has shown us that who tells the story matters–and our students’ personal lives and knowledge can remake society if we create space for telling

Website: evc.org

Eyes Infinite Films

The Eyes Infinite Foundation is a 501c3 Non Profit Organization dedicated to documenting the relationship between creativity and social change. The Foundation was responsible for the production of twelve original short documentaries made in Israel and Palestine between the years of 2004 and 2008. The Foundation has teamed up with Misfit Media to bring Eyes Infinite’s focus to include artists and projects within the United States of America as well.

Website: eyesinfinite.com

Jump Cut

Jump Cut: A Review Of Contemporary Media is run on a nonprofit basis and is not affiliated with or supported by any institution. Begun in 1974 as a film publication, Jump Cut now publishes material on film, television, video, new media, and related media and cultural analysis. As a print publication till 2001, Jump Cut circulated 4000 copies per issue in North America and internationally to a wide range of readers including students, academics, media professionals, political activists, radicals interested in culture, film and video makers, and others interested in the radical analysis of mass culture and opposition media.

Taking an explicit political stand as a nonsectarian left, feminist, anti-racist and anti-imperialist publication, Jump Cut is committed to presenting and developing media criticism which recognizes: (1) media in a social and political context; (2) the political and social needs and perspectives of people struggling for liberation — workers, women, oppressed minorities, people in the developing world, gays, lesbians and queers; (3) the interrelationship of class, race, and gender oppression; (4) new theoretical and analytic perspectives.

We stress contemporary media but we are open to publishing material on older films, tapes, and programs when the article involves a significant reevaluation or uses a well-known example to develop a critical or theoretical point. Our range is all types and forms of media from Hollywood’s commercial dramatic narrative to independent documentary and experimental work. We are especially interested in neglected areas such as educational media, children’s programs, animation, intermedia and mixed media, new technologies, consumer formats, etc., and related areas of radical cultural analysis such as photography and popular music.

Website: ejumpcut.org

Full Spectrum Features

Full Spectrum Features logo


Full Spectrum Features is a Chicago-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization committed to increasing diversity in the independent film industry by producing, exhibiting, and supporting the work of women, LGBTQ, and minority filmmakers.

FSF’s goal is to transform the entire media landscape—from the actors on screen, to the crew behind the camera, to the people in the audience. Our mission is embodied not only in our work, but our staff and board as well. We are an ALAANA (African, Latinx, Asian, Arab, Native American) organization founded and led by people of color, women, and LGBTQ filmmakers.

Full Spectrum Features is a full-service production company and specialty distributor. Its award-winning films have screened at over 400 festivals, micro-cinemas, museums, galleries, and alternative screening venues around the world.

Notable recognitions include Grand Jury Prize at Outfest (Signature Move), Streamy Award for Best Indie Series (The T), ReFrame Stamp (Freelancers Anonymous), and Outstanding Public History Project from the National Council on Public History (The Orange Story), among others.

Website: fullspectrumfeatures.com

WITNESS


WITNESS is the global leader in human rights video, working side-by-side with local communities to harness the power of video and technology in the fight for justice. Activists have used video to garner awareness and more: to document evidence of war crimes, change discriminatory laws, secure justice for survivors of gender-based violence, and protect indigenous lands against extractive industries.

Since WITNESS’s founding in 1992, its story has been one of ceaseless innovation. In partnership with activists, tech companies, civil rights lawyers, communities, and non-governmental organizations, it has dedicated itself to maximizing the potential of the 21st century’s most powerful tools for defending human rights.

After 25 years of building networks and alliances, WITNESS is the hub of a diverse, global community, with collaboration at its heart. Partners have used its techniques, resources, and technology to help secure a warlord’s conviction at the International Criminal Court; to expose sectarian violence, sex trafficking, and forced evictions; and to establish legal protections for some of the world’s most vulnerable people, from trash pickers in Delhi to elderly Americans at risk of financial, emotional, and physical abuse.

WITNESS’s online resource library offers comprehensive instruction about how to shoot, edit, preserve and distribute human rights video for maximum impact, much of which is currently available in 24 languages.

Website: witness.org

Media Education Foundation


Media Education Foundation produces and distributes documentary films and other educational resources to inspire critical thinking about the social, political, and cultural impact of American mass media.

“Rectification of the system,” in Gore Vidal’s prophetic words, has never seemed so urgent. The specters of global climate change, dwindling resources, and endless war now haunt the very future of the planet and human civilization. Our ability to transform these current realities will depend on whether we are willing and able to imagine other possible futures. The project of the Media Education Foundation has always been informed by just this: the notion that language — and, by extension, images — define the limits, and possibilities, of human imagination and thought. Thestakes have never been higher, and the necessity for education never more crucial.

From films about the commercialization of childhood and the subtle, yet widespread, effects of pornography, pop-cultural misogyny and sexism, to titles that deal with the devastating effects of rapacious consumerism and the wars for oil that it drives, the Media Education Foundation offers resources designed to help spark discussion about some of the most pressing, and complicated, issues of our time, in one of the last independent spheres left in the society: the classroom. Its aim is to inspire students to think critically and in new ways about the hyper-mediated world around them.

Website: mediaed.org

Frameline


Frameline’s mission is to change the world through the power of queer cinema. As a media arts nonprofit, Frameline’s programs connect filmmakers and audiences in the Bay Area and around the world.

Founded in 1977, the San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival is the longest-running, largest and most widely recognized LGBTQ+ film exhibition event in the world. As a community event with an annual attendance of 60,000+, the Festival is the most prominent and well-attended LGBTQ+ arts program in the Bay Area. Frameline also presents year-round exhibitions, including Frameline Encore, a free film series highlighting diverse, socially relevant works. Year-round programs also include members-only sneak previews and special events, as well as special screenings and events featuring directors, actors and other queer media icons.

Established in 1981, Frameline Distribution is the only nonprofit distributor that solely caters to LGBTQ+ film. Frameline’s collection has over 250 award winning films that we distribute globally to universities, public libraries, film festivals, and community organizations. In 2008, we launched Youth in Motion, a program that provides free LGBTQ+ films and curriculum resources to middle and high schools in all 50 states. 2011 saw the creation of Frameline Voices, a digital showcase of free, streaming content highlighting diverse LGBTQ+ stories, with an emphasis on films by and about people of color, trans and gender-expansive persons, youth, and elders.

Since 1990, more than 150 films and videos have been completed with assistance from the Frameline Completion Fund. Grants are awarded annually and provide much-needed support to filmmakers for their final editing and lab work. Once completed, these films often go on to receive international exposure. Submissions include documentary, educational, narrative, animation, and experimental projects about LGBTQ+ people and their communities.

Website: frameline.org

OtherZine


OtherZine is the ’zine manifestation of Other Cinema, microcinema par excellence for experimental film, video, and performance currently located in Mission district of San Francisco. OtherZine publishes two times yearly – Spring and Fall – in conjunction with Other Cinema’s season.

Whether avant-garde or engagé, OtherZine’s emphasis is on the radical subjectivities and sub-cultural sensibilities that find expression in marginalized cinematic genres, media-archaeological forays, urban interdisciplinary intersections of art and technology and original intermedia hybrids.

OtherZine encourages artists’ projects and cinema-related writings that critique, support, influence and produce high levels of artistic experimentation: media-culture essays, articles, interviews, reviews (art,books, films, media, events), rants, videos, illustrations, images, and other articulated brainstorms!

Website: activedistribution.org

Firelight Media


Firelight is a premier destination for non-fiction cinema by and about communities of color.

Firelight produces documentary films, supports emerging filmmakers of color, and cultivates audiences for their work.

Website: firelightmedia.tv

Chicago Underground Film Festival

The longest-running undergroudn film festival in the world, the Chicago Underground Film Festival (CUFF) is dedicated to the work of film and video makers with defiantly independent visions.

CUFF is an annual event showcasing independent, experimental and documentary films from around the world. Widely recognized as a world-class event, the festival showcases the best in new American and international cinema and providing the movie-loving public with access to some of the most critically acclaimed filmmakers and emerging talent from around the world. CUFF’s mission is to promote films and videos that dissent radically in form, technique, or content from the mainstream and to present adventurous works that challenge and transcend commercial and audience expectations. 25 programs comprised of narrative, documentary and experimental features, shorts, and music videos, representing more than 20 countries, make up the main body of the festival, along with nightly parties and live music, discussions and other networking and community building events.

Website: cuff.org

Caitlin Manning Films

Films by Caitlin Manning chronicle resistance struggles around the world. They are free for use as teaching resources, for screenings, or anything as long as it’s non-commercial and radical in intent. They are under the Creative Commons license (which means use, share, build on it! But credit us and let us know).

Website: caitlinmanningfilms.com

Media Burn

Media Burn Archive collects, restores, and distributes documentary video and television created by artists, activists, and community groups. Its mission is to use archival media to deepen context and encourage critical thought through a social justice lens.

Website: mediaburn.org

World Wide Film Expedition

World Wide Film Expedition is a non-profit, 501c3, film production and distribution outfit. Its film work is on a volunteer basis, and it has no salaried employees. WWFE’s films and productions are available either at cost or free to educational, grassroots and non-profit groups and individuals.

Website: worldwidefilmexpedition.org

Chicago Feminist Film Festival

The Chicago Feminist Film Festival showcases independent, international film addressing issues of gender and sexuality often missing from mainstream media. This in turn means creating inclusive public spaces for under-represented artists to share their work — particularly women, people of color, queer, and transgender folks, given their struggle for visibility in the mainstream film industry.

The films in the festival cut across genres, including social documentaries, horror, comedies, whimsical films, and romances. You will laugh, you will cry, and you will be delighted by the diversity of representations you see on screen.

Website: chicagofeministfilmfestival.com

Field of Vision

Field of Vision is a filmmaker-driven documentary unit that commissions and creates original short-form nonfiction films about developing and ongoing stories around the globe. We produce cinematic work that tells the stories of our world from new perspectives.

Inspired by past projects such as World in Action and Life magazine, our work includes individual short and feature-length films, episodic series, and thematic approaches to a single topic by multiple filmmakers, deep-dive investigations pairing filmmakers with journalists, rapid-response assignments and collaborations with artists across mediums. We are committed to short-form because it allows filmmakers to respond quickly, take creative risks, reach wide audiences, explore new ways of storytelling and make films with a faster production cycle.We are committed to making cinematic work that tells the stories of our world from different perspectives.Our films are distributed through a variety of partners including news organizations, film festivals, online platforms, broadcast, streaming and cable. We provide our filmmakers the necessary support and resources to create their films. If you have an idea for Field of Vision, visit our submission page.

Field of Vision is a project of First Look Media. Launched in 2013, First Look Media is a multi-platform media company devoted to supporting independent voices. First Look Media produces and distributes content in a wide range of forms including feature films, short-form video, podcasts, live events, interactive media and long-form journalism.

Website: fieldofvision.org

New Day Films


New Day Films is a unique, filmmaker-run distribution company, providing award-winning films to educators, community groups, government agencies, public libraries and businesses since 1971. Democratically run by more than 150 filmmaker members, New Day delivers hundreds of titles that illuminate, challenge and inspire. New Day was initially formed because the women’s movement had arrived and a group of independent filmmakers were unable to find a distributor for their feminist films—so they decided to create one.

Today, New Day members sustain the ideals that inspired the company’s formation in 1971 – partnership, great stories and changing the world – and curate its collection to encompass a wide range of subject areas. New Day functions as a participatory democracy whose organizational structure and business practices embody the values promoted by its films.

Website: newday.com

Chicago Feminist Film Festival


The Chicago Feminist Film Festival showcases independent, international film, predominantly shorts, spanning documentary, fiction, and experimental genres, and aims to address issues of gender, sexuality, race, and other forms of inequality often missing from mainstream media. This in turn means creating inclusive public spaces for under-represented artists to share their work — particularly women, people of color, queer, and transgender folks, given their struggle for visibility in the mainstream film industry. Another goal is to forge connections between local, national, and international film. The over-arching assumption behind the festival is that art plays a vital role in bringing people together and encouraging them to think deeply about issues of equality and social justice.

Website: chicagofeministfilmfestival.com

Guerrilla Girls


The Guerrilla Girls are feminist activist artists. We wear gorilla masks in public and use facts, humor and outrageous visuals to expose gender and ethnic bias as well as corruption in politics, art, film, and pop culture. Our anonymity keeps the focus on the issues, and away from who we might be: we could be anyone and we are everywhere. We believe in an intersectional feminism that fights discrimination and supports human rights for all people and all genders. We undermine the idea of a mainstream narrative by revealing the understory, the subtext, the overlooked, and the downright unfair. We have done hundreds of projects (posters, actions, books, videos, stickers) all over the world, including Bilbao, Iceland, Istanbul, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, New York, Rotterdam, Sao Paolo, and Shanghai.

Website: guerrillagirls.com

Unicorn Riot

Unicorn Riot is a decentralized, educational 501(c)(3) non-profit media organization of artists and journalists. Our work is dedicated to exposing root causes of dynamic social and environmental issues through amplifying stories and exploring sustainable alternatives in today’s globalized world.

Born from the Internet in 2015, our commercial-free platform operates non-hierarchically, independent of corporate or government control. Unicorn Riot spans across multiple US cities including Boston, Denver, Minneapolis, and Philadelphia. All of our financial support comes from grants and from you, our audience.

Website: unicornriot.ninja

Audio Visual Terrorism

Information is power. Misinformation is control. This is the world of corporate conglomerate controlled mass media where profit and power filter points of view to benefit the few. An autonomous alternative is necessary. Audio Visual Terrorism (AVT) enters that void. AVT is art masquerading as media. Product camouflaged as tool. Aesthetic disguised as propaganda. AVT is the anti-authoritarian assault on the philosophy fiction of fascism as freedom. AVT is the explosive strapped to the inside of this soon to be popped culture. In an absurd world AVT is not the solution, we are the problem…

Website: audiovisualterrorism.wordpress.com

First Pond Entertainment

First Pond Entertainment is a distribution firm for issue-driven documentaries and narratives depicting marginalized and underrepresented communities. Our aim is to bring international and alternative film content to audiences with increasingly diverse film tastes.

Website: firstpond.vhx.tv

Mutual Aid Media

Based out of Los Angeles, California, MUTUAL AID MEDIA is an independent production house for documentary and narrative projects. At Mutual Aid Media, we are always looking for courageous, creative stories that have a foot rooted in the social and political landscape. We hustle for content that uplifts truthtelling and creativity for the beautiful struggle. Mutual Aid Media aims to promote voices and open space for directors, producers and other key creatives who come from strong communities that are often marginalized within mainstream society and film.

Mutual Aid Media currently has two feature documentaries in production and one narrative film in post production.

Website: mutualaidmedia.com

SVLLY(wood) Magazine

SVLLY(wood) is a experimental print and digital magazine, available three times a year, geared toward building a new cinephilia through diverse themes and prisms of political ideology and aesthetic. SVLLY translates to the socialist vérité underpinnings of a new style of film writing.

Website: svllywood.com

Social Justice Film Festival

Through dozens of strategic partnerships with Pacific Northwest organizations working on issues of social justice, the Social Justice Film Festival exhibits a series of short and feature-length documentaries and narrative films broadly related to social justice, with a special focus on prisoner justice in the US. As a movement, social justice promotes a global culture where equality is achieved on all levels. This includes issues pertaining to incarceration, the environment and sustainability, oppression, race and racism, the arts, animal rights, alternative currency and lifestyles, corruption within the system, and so much more. The festival will showcase works that challenge society structures all over the globe on a macro and micro level as well as works that challenge the medium.

Website: socialjusticefilmfestival.org

Social Impact Media Awards (SIMA)

SIMA celebrates social-documentary storytelling of excellence, screens films in communities and classrooms worldwide, and connects international audiences and organizations with the best global impact cinema.

The Social Impact Media Awards (SIMA) started as the first documentary and educational media competition honoring members of both the independent film and global humanitarian industries. We set out to propel and elevate social-impact filmmaking that inspires crucial perspectives and demonstrates unique potential to enlighten, transform, and positively impact our contemporary world. Over the years, we developed a global community engagement program, SIMAx, a ground-breaking education program, SIMA Classroom, and an ever expanding film catalogue, The SIMA Collection. Through the annual SIMA AWARDS and year-round FILM PROGRAMS, we provide a catalyst for these important works, and serve as a media reserve for educators, journalists and screening partners around the globe.

Website: simaawards.org

NOW! A Journal of Urgent Praxis

NOW! A Journal of Urgent Praxis

Residing at a crossroads between film journal and radical newsreel, Now! A Journal of Urgent Praxis foregrounds films and writings made in rapid yet eloquent engagement with the here and now of political and cultural life. Now! aims to stimulate an alternate form of practice across critical writing and experimental cinema, operating in a different time signature than the academic quarterly, museum exhibition, or film festival. Now! responds to crisis. Now! offers the radical reply.

Despite changes in technology that make it easier than ever, few journals make films available as a central component of their content. Fewer still foreground new films, emphasizing the archive instead. And none focus on films that place an equal weight between formal innovation and political urgency. Now! confronts this absence directly.

In the age of YouTube, the radical newsreel awaits a spectacular, transformative re-birth. Now! is digital flint and steel.

Join us NOW!: now-journal.com

Big Noise Films

Big Noise Films is a non-profit media collective dedicated to producing beautiful, passionate, revolutionary images. Based in New York, their ground-breaking feature films, Zapatista (1998), Black and Gold (1999) and This Is What Democracy Looks Like (2000), have won awards at film festivals around the world. In 1999, as founding members of the Independent Media Center video team, they collaborated in cutting the historic daily satellite feeds from the WTO protests in Seattle. They have reported for national television news programs from Argentina, Afghanistan, Iraq, Mexico, Ecuador, Brasil, East Timor, South Africa and Palestine, where they were the only media to break the siege on the Church of the Nativity.

Their most recent film is Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield (2013).

Website: bignoisefilms.org

Brave New Films

Robert Greenwald and Brave New Films are at the forefront of the fight to create a just America, and we want you to join us. Using new media and internet video campaigns, Brave New Films has created a quick-strike capability that informs the public, challenges corporate media with the truth, and motivates people to take action on social issues nationwide. We are an organization that can produce a hard-hitting three-minute video in less than 24 hours that exposes John McCain’s double talk, for instance, and receive 9 million views around the world.

From Real McCain exposés to calling out FOX News for overt media bias, from social to economic justice, our groundbreaking online campaigns are revolutionizing traditional grassroots politics. Using YouTube, bloggers, networking sites, and strategic partnerships with both national networks and local activists, we are reaching millions and getting results.

Website: bravenewfilms.org

California Newsreel

California Newsreel

California Newsreel produces and distributes cutting edge, social justice films that inspire, educate and engage audiences. Founded in 1968, Newsreel is the oldest non-profit, social issue documentary film center in the country, the first to marry media production and contemporary social movements.

We are a leading resource center for the advancement of racial justice and diversity, and the study of African American life and history as well as African culture and politics. In 2006, we launched a new thematic focus for our work: the Global Economy, with an emphasis on the international division of labor. In the years ahead we look forward to continuing our traditions of innovation and responsible advocacy by providing films that help inform, educate and organize.

Website: newsreel.org

Chicago Anarchist Film Festival

CAFF main

CAFF was a film festival which lasted thirteen years and came out of a three year run called Matches and Mayhem. CAFF was a home for anarchists, anti-authoritarians, the anarcho-friendly and the anarcho-curious to experience radical cinema from around the world with features, shorts, documentaries, animation, and found footage. Our definition of anarchist film is that which crosses boundaries, takes risks, and subverts passivity.

Website: chicagoanarchistfilmfest.com

Chicken and Egg Pictures

Chicken and Egg

Based in New York, Chicken & Egg Pictures is dedicated to supporting women nonfiction filmmakers whose diverse voices and dynamic storytelling have the power to catalyze change, at home and around the globe. We match strategic financial support with creative mentorship offered at critical junctures of a filmmaker’s life and work, with $3.2 million in grants and 4,500 hours in mentorship given since 2005.

Website: chickeneggpics.org

Cineaste

Cineaste

Cineaste is a quarterly publication, founded in 1967, which offers a social, political, and aesthetic perspective on the cinema. We are interested in all areas of the cinema, including Hollywood films (old and new), American independent cinema, quality European films, and the cinema of developing nations.

No matter how complex the ideas or arguments advanced, we demand readability. We think it is the job of the writer to clarify his or her thoughts and not for the reader to decipher clumsy formulations. We dislike academic jargon, obtuse Marxist terminology, film-buff trivia, show-biz references, or obscure theoretical references. We do not want our writers, for example, to speak of how they have “read” or “decoded” a film, but to convey how they have viewed, analyzed, and critically interpreted a film. Discussing both the strengths and weaknesses of a film is more important to us than uncritically promoting it simply because the film’s producers or politics are agreeable.

Website: cineaste.com

Cinema Libre Studio

Cinema Libre Studio

Cinema Libre Studio is an independent film studio that handles all aspects of production, post-production, international sales and domestic distribution.

We specialize in releasing “social issue” documentaries and provocative independent features; films that can make a difference.

Website: cinemalibrestudio.com

The Film Collaborative

The Film Collaborative

THE FILM COLLABORATIVE is the first non-profit committed to the distribution, education and facilitation of independent film. Launched in early 2010, TFC offers independent filmmakers a full range of education about distribution, distribution services and marketing services including sales representation, service theatrical releases, hybrid distribution, grassroots marketing, traditional marketing, digital aggregation, distribution consultation and contract consultation.

Website: thefilmcollaborative.org

Deep Dish TV

Deep Dish TV

For 23 years Deep Dish has been a laboratory for new, democratic and empowering ways to make and distribute video. It is a hub linking thousands of artists, independent videomakers, programmers and social activists. The network has produced and distributed over 300 hours of television series that challenge the suppression of awareness, the corruption of language, and the perversion of logic that characterizes so much of corporate media.

With humor, passion, creative flair and very low budgets, Deep Dish TV artists and producers have developed provocative video series exploring issues that profoundly impact our lives.

At the heart of the Deep Dish TV network have been the public access television stations, and now the public interest channels on the satellite networks: Free Speech TV on the Dish Network and LinkTV on DirecTv.

Website: deepdishtv.org

Echo Park Film Center

Echo Park Film Center

Echo Park Film Center is a non-profit media arts organization committed to providing equal and affordable community access to film/video resources via five channels: a neighborhood microcinema space, free and nominal cost education programs, a comprehensive film equipment and service retail department, a green-energy mobile cinema & film school, and a touring film festival showcasing local established and emerging filmmakers.

We feel it is imperative that more members of marginalized and underserved communities become active, empowered participants in the creation and dissemination of experimental, documentary and narrative film in order to truly reflect the many voices and visions that make up the fabric of contemporary American life. With a special focus on “at risk” neighborhood youth, the Echo Park Film Center programs and services are positive catalysts for opportunities and interactions though the medium of film.

Website: echoparkfilmcenter.org

Films for Action

Films for Action

Films For Action is a community-powered alternative news center and learning library for people who want to change the world.

At an International Level:
Films For Action uses the power of film to raise awareness of important social, environmental, and media-related issues not covered by the mainstream news.

At the Local Level:
On the ground, our City Chapters are working to create alternative media channels that will inform, connect, and inspire action at a community level.

Our City Chapters screen documentaries at independent theaters and other venues regularly throughout the year. With most films we launch an accompanying educational and action-oriented campaign to address the issues presented by the films. Some of our chapters air films on their local public Access TV channel.

Website: filmsforaction.org

Global Labor Film Festival

Global Labor Film Festival

The Global Labor Film Festival is an international network of organisations that focus on work, workers and worker’s issues. Each year in May, those organisations coordinate a global festival dedicated to this kind of work.

The Global Labor Film Festival also hosts The Labor Film Database, an archive of over 1,700 films and videos, searchable by title, director, actors and/or keywords.

Website: laborfilms.com

Global Uprisings

Global Uprisings

Global Uprisings is an independent news site and video series dedicated to showing responses to the economic crisis from around the world.

Brandon Jourdan and Marianne Maeckelbergh have been travelling, researching, and making short films about responses to the economic crisis and current uprisings. Their short films and articles detail social movements in Spain, Greece, the UK, the US, and Egypt. These films and articles cover the riots, demonstrations and occupations in the UK, large-scale housing occupations and demonstrations in Spain, massive and continuous general strikes, and self-reduction campaigns in Greece, the ongoing revolution in Egypt, and occupy movements within the United States.

Throughout the project, they have also collaborated with collectives and media makers such as the Mosireen collective, Grit TV, Deep Dish TV, Big Noise Films, Democracy Now, and David Martinez.

Website: globaluprisings.org

Human Rights Watch Film Festival

Human Rights Watch Film Festival

Human Rights Watch is one of the world’s leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights. We work tenaciously to lay the legal and moral groundwork for deep rooted change and fight to bring greater justice and security to people around the world. Through our Human Rights Watch Film Festival we bear witness to human rights violations and create a forum for courageous individuals on both sides of the lens to empower audiences with the knowledge that personal commitment can make a difference. The film festival brings to life human rights abuses through storytelling in a way that challenges each individual to empathize and demand justice for all people.

Website: ff.hrw.org

Icarus Films

Icarus Films

Icarus Films is a leading distributor of documentary films. Since 1978 the films in our collection have addressed key areas of political, social and cultural concern. We work with independent producers from around the world, to help innovative and informative films find their audiences. We release approximately 50 films a year, and now distribute 1500 titles to theatrical, non-theatrical, educational, home entertainment, online and television markets across North America.

The Icarus Films Home Video collection brings selected titles from our library to DVD, Blu-ray, and online platforms for the consumer market. These include landmark works by internationally recognized artists such as Chantal Akerman, Patricio Guzmán, Heddy Honigmann, Chris Marker, Bill Morrison, and Marcel Ophuls.

Website: icarusfilms.com

Kartemquin Films

Kartemquin Films

Kartemquin Films is a collaborative center for documentary media makers who seek to foster a more engaged and empowered society. With a noted tradition of nurturing emerging talent and acting as a leading voice for independent media, Kartemquin is building on over 48 years of being Chicago’s documentary powerhouse.

Kartemquin sparks democracy through documentary. Our films, such as The Interrupters, Hoop Dreams, and The New Americans have left a lasting impact on millions of viewers. A revered resource within the film community on issues of fair use, ethics, story and civic discourse, Kartemquin is internationally recognized for crafting quality documentaries backed by audience and community engagement strategies, and for its innovative media arts community programs.

Website: kartemquin.com

Paper Tiger Television

Paper Tiger Television

Paper Tiger has been creating fun, funky, hard-hitting, investigative, compelling and truly alternative media since 1981. The programs produced at PTTV have inspired media-savvy community productions and activism around the world. Through the distribution of our short documentary programs, media literacy/video production workshops, community screenings and grassroots advocacy, PTTV works to expose and challenge the corporate control of media. PTTV strives to increase awareness of how media can be used to affect social change, because a public that can strategically and creatively use the media is necessary for a more equitable and healthy democracy.

Website: papertiger.org

Third World Newsreel

Third World Newsreel

Third World Newsreel (TWN) is an alternative media arts organization that fosters the creation, appreciation and dissemination of independent film and video by and about people of color and social justice issues.

It supports the innovative work of diverse forms and genres made by artists who are intimately connected to their subjects through common bonds of ethnic/cultural heritage, class position, gender, sexual orientation and political identification. TWN promotes the self-representation of traditionally marginalized groups as well as the negotiated representation of those groups by artists who work in solidarity with them.

Ultimately, whether documentary, experimental, narrative, traditional or non-traditional, the importance of the media promoted by the organization is its ability to effect social change, to encourage people to think critically about their lives and the lives of others, and to propel people into action.

Website: twn.org

Women Make Movies

Women Make Movies

Established in 1972 to address the under representation and misrepresentation of women in the media industry, Women Make Movies is a multicultural, multiracial, non-profit media arts organization which facilitates the production, promotion, distribution and exhibition of independent films and videotapes by and about women. The organization provides services to both users and makers of film and video programs, with a special emphasis on supporting work by women of color. Women Make Movies facilitates the development of feminist media through an internationally recognized Distribution Service and a Production Assistance Program.

Website: wmm.com

Workers Unite Film Festival

Workers Unite Film Festival

The Workers’ Unite! Film Festival is a celebration of global labor solidarity. The Festival aims to showcase student and professional films from the United States and around the world which publicize and highlight the struggles, successes and daily lives of all workers in their efforts to unite and organize for better living conditions and social justice.

In these past two years of unprecedented attacks on workers rights to organize – in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, New Jersey and Michigan by right-wing politicians funded by corporate interests –workers continue to organize and fight back. The recent huge victories in Ohio and New Hampshire against a harsh anti-worker, anti union bill prove that labor unions and workers united still matter – they are still vital to the dignity and survival of all workers in the US and around the globe.

Website: workersunitefilmfestival.org

Working Films

Working Films

Recognizing the power of stories to inspire and transform, Working Films builds partnerships between nonfiction media-makers, nonprofit organizations, educators and advocates to advance social justice and environmental sustainability, and support community-based change. We train and consult filmmakers in audience engagement and work with NGOs to use documentaries to enhance their programs, extend their reach, and move their missions forward. Our flagship program is Reel Engagement, which uses collections of award-winning media to address major issues of our time

Website: workingfilms.org