Nurturing the Media Activist Ecosystem of Citizen Journalists, Mainstream Media, and Policy-Makers
2017
How do urban storytellers align themselves to amplify their messages in battling today’s entrenched public policy problems? With the advent of social media and the democratization of production tools anyone can be a civic whistleblower. The real work is in connecting and nurturing new networks that may have not had access to each other.
Q & A with filmmaker after each film.
Panelists
Omeed Mancheri (Moderator)
Filmmaker/Event Producer
TJ Johnston
Assistant Editor/Columnist, Street Sheet, a publication of the Coalition on Homelessness
Asha Richardson
Youth Radio Interactive Manager, Youth Radio, Oakland
Joe Eskenazi
Editor-at-Large, San Francisco Magazine/Columnist, Mission Local
Anne Stuhldreher
Director of the Financial Justice Project, City and County of San Francisco, Office of Treasurer and Tax Collector
Films
73 Questions
USA | 2017 | 10 mins. | Directed by Leah Nichols
This beautifully hand-drawn animated short film inverts the popular culture trope of celebrity questionnaires and uses it instead to build a soulful profile of a man whom you would never otherwise stop to get to know.
Heart of the City
USA | 2017 | 15 mins. | Directed by Jon Sadrgilany & Omeed Manocheri
Heart of the City is a documentary film and social news platform investigating San Francisco’s socioeconomic divide in the Tenderloin neighborhood and its adjacent districts. The project seeks to reimagine the fourth wall and stimulate social media discussions to integrate with the narrative of the film and other supplemental content.
The Mural
USA | 2014 | 19 mins. | Directed by Francisco Guijarro
This film follows the stories of several artists with developmental disabilities working with the non-profit The Arc San Francisco and civic artists from Free Space to paint a wall-sized mural that aims to erase barriers. The film explores the unlimited nature of art and its capacity to express freedom, even for those individuals whose lives seem to be confined to the boundaries of their disabilities.
The Ride
USA | 2017 | Documentary | 15 mins. | Directed by Jeff Adachi
Take an up close and personal ride inside criminal injustice system with one of the nation’s few elected public defenders, City of San Francisco’s Public Defender, Jeff Adachi. Adachi defends a young African American man who is charged with assaulting police officers after being falsely accused of a crime in a case with racial overtones. In this era of mass incarceration, police shootings of young African American men, and implicit bias in policing, what are the consequences for those who question police authority?