Storytelling forges connections among people, and between people and ideas. Stories convey the culture, history, and values that unite people. When it comes to our countries, our communities, and our families, we understand intuitively that the stories we hold in common are an important part of the ties that bind.
Media Working Group filmmakers are master storytellers and they need your support. Choose a project to support.
Between the Sun and Sidewalk is a narrative-based documentary propelled by the political organizing work of Christian Garcia, Aurora Castellanos, and a cohort of a dozen energetic young adults and teens. Working together through The Organizing and Leadership Academy (TOLA), they embark on a grassroots campaign to seed and lead a health equity and soda tax initiative in Stockton, California. Christian and Aurora share a deep commitment to mentoring other young people in the art and practice of classic organizing for the purpose of creating lasting social change and positive impact in people’s daily lives. A film by Helen DeMichiel. There’s more to read here.
Love Thru Darkness A film of discovery; the story of a song, and how beatbox, jazz, and hip hop artist, Napoleon Maddox helped it come into the world. It’s a story about finding hope out of tragedy and injustice, finding Love [Thru Darkness]. The documentary follows Napoleon as he writes, records and performs a new, but difficult song. It explores the creative process and struggle as he undertakes to create his art amidst the turmoil and destruction of Cincinnati’s West End. The story shows this artist between the creative poles of his life as an artist, activist, and his life as an international touring artist. A film by Jean Donohue. Read more here.
Native Daughter CD Collins decided to come back to her childhood home in rural Kentucky after spending thirty years in Boston. She is a recognized, successful writer and musician with three books, five albums of spoken-word with music, and known for being one of the first spoken-word artists in Boston. Even with success, there was something wrong. Her relationships seem to be stages upon which the same drama of anger, terror, and feelings of powerlessness are enacted over and over. Her health is deteriorating with more and more frequent emergency room visits, panic attacks, and adrenal failure. She realizes she has PTSD, but why? Is it the childhood trauma of being engulfed in a gas pipeline explosion? Or coming out in 1970s rural Kentucky, which is treacherous and life threatening. A film by Jean Donohue. Read more here.
The Network Project is a multi-platform documentary and public engagement initiative that looks at high-speed Internet style communication networks as one of the core, defining infrastructures of 21st century life in a democracy. A fundamental question of network history: how have U.S. networks, now required for effective participation in civic life, education and government, come to be controlled by a handful of mega-corporations? The Network Project examines the history of development and regulation that has shaped the emergence of these networks. It looks to the future by exploring the truly ‘high-speed’, publicly owned networks being created by local governments all over the US, despite strident opposition from the cable and telephone duopoly. Read more here.
The [Terrible] Secret of the Black Virgin is a documentary film. It explores the enigmatic black virgin an icon that perhaps represents a spiritual matrix that threatened the early formation of the early Church, and though suppressed, has shaped Western culture and consciousness. It features scholars Ean Begg, Margaret Starbird, Tim Wallace-Murphy, Julie Scott, Michel Armengaud, and alchemist Steve Kalec, and others. A film by Jean Donohue. Read more here.
Under the Southern Cross There’s been much said about Henry Faulkner’s life as a colorful local character, artist and lifelong friend of Tennessee Williams. Yet, are we appreciating Faulkner for what is most important? With recent research, we’re finding that Faulkner may be a much more important figure in the larger gay historical narrative. His friendships and influence ranged from exiled artist Edward Melcharth, the Kinsey Institute’s Alfred Kinsey, Ezra Pound, and James Herlihy which put him on the pulse of gay life in the United States from the 1940s to the early 1980s. So far the film features Bob Morgan, Dr. Jon Coleman, Gregg Clendenin, John Hockensmith, Mike Faulkner and Fred Turner, among others. Under the Southern Cross will find Henry’s place in this narrative. Read more here.
