From the fine folks at UnionDocs.

-Mia

October Events at UnionDocs:

My Brooklyn with Kelly Anderson

Sunday, October 7 at 7:30pm

Suggested donation $9

 

My Brooklyn follows director Kelly Anderson’s journey, as a Brooklyn gentrifier, to understand the forces reshaping her neighborhood. The film documents the redevelopment of Fulton Mall, a bustling African-American and Caribbean commercial district that – despite its status as the third most profitable shopping area in New York City – is maligned for its inability to appeal to the affluent residents who have come to live around it. As a hundred small businesses are replaced by high rise luxury housing and chain retail, Anderson uncovers the web of global corporations, politicians and secretive public-private partnerships that drive seemingly natural neighborhood change. The film’s ultimate question is increasingly relevant on a global scale: who has a right to live in cities and determine their future?

 

Control Group: Shorts presented with Video Data Bank

Sunday, October 28 at 7:30pm

Suggested donation $9

 

This program of experimental videos presented by the Video Data Bank explores the natural world around us and how humans attempt to measure and control it.  The artists turn their cameras toward natural environments and human built spaces to explore the intersections between the two.

 

Upcoming September Events at UnionDocs:

 

Running Stumbled: A benefit screening for John Maringouin

Saturday, September 22 at 7

Sliding scale donation $10-20

 

Prologue with Raed Rafei

Sunday, September 30 at 7:30pm

$9 suggested donation.

A cool new project distributed by KCRW. Details and contact info below. (Note, I'm not sure what "mellow, indie publishing rates" are but KCRW has a dedicated listenership and the mag itself looks great FWIW.) -mia

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The Organist is a monthly experimental arts-and-culture program hosted and distributed by KCRW. The editors of the award-winning monthly magazine the Believer, published in San Francisco by McSweeney's, will produce ten annual episodes of the podcast, which includes richly sound designed, eccentric audio documentaries, comic radio drama, un-fusty reviews, narrative field recordings, more. The scope of the podcast will reflect that of the print edition: its contributors take a thoughtful approach to pop culture, along with an irreverent attitude toward the highbrow. From philosophy to daytime TV, from poetry to martial arts, the show scrutinizes and interrogates the world with an affectionate and rigorous intelligence. Pieces from the podcast will grow out of stories in the magazine, and vice versa. Far from functioning as a supplementary appendage of the magazine, the show aims to become a cultural institution in its own right, discovering and developing a new generation of artists and musicians, writers and comedians. Weaving together the voices of its contributors, which include the brightest talents in literature and the arts, the Organist is an elegant, impressionistic, funny, and sharp cultural magazine that itself becomes an object of inquiry, discussion, and wonder.

We're looking for contributions of between zero and twenty minutes, preferably closer to four. Four minutes is the sweet spot. Any format will be considered, but the best thing you could send would be a radio documentary that doesn't have a twee or self-serious narration that uses sound in an intelligent way that introduces us to a new corner or aspect of the world, whether that world be cultural, political, literary, sociological, artistic, scientific, musical, anthropological, cinematic, or all ten. Send a brief bio, a handful of clips, and a pitch (or link to audio) to organist@believermag.com.

The podcast will launch December 1 at KCRW.org and believermag.com and iTunes and &c &c. We will pay our contributors mellow independent publishing rates TBD.

Great film event in San Francisco………..

Join us for the 2012 September evening of Rough Cuts

Tuesday, September 25th, 2012 at 7:30 p.m.
$9 admission
Complimentary drinks and hors d’oeuvres provided
At
Ninth Street Independent Film Center
145 Ninth Street, between Mission and Howard, San Francisco

To attend, please RSVP by noon on Tuesday, September 25th to roughcutsrsvp@yahoo.com

The Idiocratic Life
Directed by Kent Kessinger

Are utopias doomed to failure? Are Thoreau and his children—Eugene V. Debs, the ‘60s, Skinner—nothing more than the stuff of textbooks barely read in undergraduate seminars?

Kent Kessinger’s “The Idiocratic Life”–a stylishly shot look at counter-culture today—attempts to answer this question, by capturing the faces, stories, and inner struggles of members of communes in America.  In the process, Kessinger shines a light on pockets of America rarely seen in film, or anywhere else, and proves that, far from the media’s spotlight, great social experiments—from egalitarianism to anarchy—continue to percolate, and, in some cases, even thrive.

Moderator: Kelly Duane de la Vega

Kelly Duane de la Vega’s documentaries have been screened in film festivals around the world and broadcast on PBS stations and on the Documentary Channel. Her Emmy nominated “Monumental: David Brower’s Fight for Wild America” opened theatrically nationwide and is part of the curriculum in more than 50 universities worldwide. Her most recent documentary “Better This World” (POV, 2011) premiered at SXSW and was awarded Best Documentary by both San Francisco International Film Festival and Sarasota Film Festival.

For more information about the evening and Rough Cuts in general, visit http://sfroughcuts.com/nextevent.html

Rough Cuts

Rough Cuts is a series of work-in-progress documentary screenings that are produced every other month at various locations throughout San Francisco. For each evening, we screen one rough cut of a long-form documentary and then moderate a conversation about the film. These post-screening discussions are designed to give the filmmaker a better, more objective sense of what is working and not working with his/her film, with particular attention paid to improving the film’s structure and narrative clarity. We hope that the series also provides a welcome space for local filmmakers, film professionals, and fans of documentary film to meet and talk.

Two of my favorite orgs working together to provide a residency program for YOU! Deadline November 14. Details below. -Mia

Cool fellowship opportunity – details here www.mediaideation.org/applications-open and below. -Mia

America Abroad is looking for stories about entrepreneurs and startups. Details and contact info below. -Mia

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America Abroad's turning an eye to the economy this month, and specifically towards entrepreneurs and startups. If you have a good story to tell about someone who has (or hasn't) overcome obstacles in opening a store, staying in the US, or starting up a business, we want to hear it. In particular, we're looking for stories that have not just a personal element, but also get at the policy hurdles and red tape entrepreneurs have to deal with. Please get in touch at acvaldez@americaabroadmedia.org.

The latest from UnionDocs – details on September/October events below. -Mia

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Images of Asian Music and At Sea with Peter Hutton

Sunday, September 16 at 7:30pm

$9 suggested donation. 

Peter Hutton’s unforgettable films, typically shot and exhibited on 16mm, often portray landscapes and cityscapes from around the world. Here we present his sublime, At Sea, which overviews the life cycle of a container ship (recently awarded the top spot on Film Comment’s Best of the Decade: Avant-Garde list). Proceeding this we will screen Hutton’s Images of Asian Music, which recalls his time as a US Merchant Marine in Southeast Asia in the early 1970′s.

Running Stumbled: A benefit screening for John Maringouin

Saturday, September 22 at 7:30pm

Sliding scale donation $10-20

As the film community rallies in support of beloved documentary filmmaker, John Maringouin in his ongoing battle against lung cancer, we will screen Running Stumbled to benefit the director and support his recovery. In order to help raise funds for his surgery, all revenues from the box office will be given directly to the John Maringouin Surgery Fund (click the link to donate now before campaign officially ends September 4th). Maringouin cites his inspiration for Running Stumbled to films such as the Maysles brothers’ Grey Gardens, Bela Tarr’s Sátántangó and Harmony Korine’s Julien Donkey-Boy. It premiered at the Rotterdam Film Festival and shocked audiences at CineVegas.

Prologue with Raed Rafei

Sunday, September 30 at 7:30pm

$9 suggested donation.

The current furor over dramatic shifts that continue throughout the Middle East and North Africa often obscure the significant political protest and social actions that have set the stage for contemporary revolutionary fervor. Prologue is a film that offers audiences imagined yet intimate portraits of young activists in 1974. The film collapses time and offers testimony as an aesthetic project by giving young Lebanese activists a platform to tell the story of their forebears, and reveals a complex narrative of agitation, direct action and rebellion. The film toggles between past and present, imagined history and reality, to create a platform that engenders a dialogue with the past, an action that is often marked as taboo in the Lebanese context.

My Brooklyn with Kelly Anderson

Sunday, October 7 at 7:30pm

Suggested donation $9

 My Brooklyn follows director Kelly Anderson’s journey, as a Brooklyn gentrifier, to understand the forces reshaping her neighborhood. The film documents the redevelopment of Fulton Mall, a bustling African-American and Caribbean commercial district that – despite its status as the third most profitable shopping area in New York City – is maligned for its inability to appeal to the affluent residents who have come to live around it. As a hundred small businesses are replaced by high rise luxury housing and chain retail, Anderson uncovers the web of  corporations, politicians and secretive public-private partnerships that drive seemingly natural neighborhood change. The film’s ultimate question is increasingly relevant on a global scale: who has a right to live in cities and determine their future?

 If you could help us spread the word about these events in any of your publications, we would really appreciate it. For more information about these events, please check out the linked titles. If you do end up publishing something about the events, please let us know!

Thanks,

Caitlin Dronen

Suicide has to be one of the most difficult subjects to cover as a journalist. A couple of great pieces come to mind:

This radio piece by Jake Warga: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5031520

And this documentary by Eric Steel: http://www.thebridge-themovie.com/new/index.html (filmed in part by some good friends from jschool)

The Dart Center is offering a FREE training on covering this issue. More information here http://dartcenter.org/covering-suicide-workshop and below. -Mia

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Journalists don’t often imagine themselves faced with covering a suicide. But in the last year alone suicides of celebrities and public figures, college students and teens, soldiers and veterans, have challenged reporters, news organizations and the public alike to make sense of what happened, how it might have been prevented, and what best newsroom practices should be.

The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma invites you to attend a FREE professional training workshop on covering suicide September 21-22 in Philadelphia.

This workshop — the first of its kind — will feature local and national mental health researchers and policy experts, award-winning journalists and suicide prevention advocates to address the challenging topic of suicide. It is geared towards journalists on a range of beats, including:

– Criminal justice

– Military and veterans affairs

– Education and youth

– Health

– Obituaries

– Investigative and special-projects teams

This workshop is also designed for editors, producers and other newsroom leaders, with five spaces reserved for college journalists and/or campus media advisors.

Speakers include national and local public health and clinical experts from Columbia, Harvard, Temple and Florida State; trainers from the Poynter Institute and award-winning reporters with New York magazine, Salon.com, Rolling Stone, WHYY and beyond.

Workshop participants will be eligible to apply for $500-$1500 reporting grants being offered by the Dart Center and Scattergood Foundation.

 

Program and registration details can be found at: http://dartcenter.org/covering-suicide-workshop

Feel free to forward this invitation to colleagues who may be interested.

Questions? Email me directly at kate.black@dartcenter.org

This program is made possible by funding from the Scattergood Foundation for Behavioral Health and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.