Participant Media, recently featured in Fast Company's top Most Innovative Companies, always supplements the causes featured in its movies by launching social action campaigns addressing the issues.
It followed up on the subject of its 2009 film The Informant! by hosting what it described as a "whistleblower all-star event" last Friday, which was streamed live around the world. The Informant! is a dark comedy about Mark Whitacre, an employee who blew the whistle on Archer Daniels Midland's price-fixing tactics in the early 1990s.
The event featured a panel of some of the most famous whistleblowers in history, including, among others, Colleen Rowely, an agent who exposed mishandling of information within the FBI, Daniel Ellsberg, who released the famous Pentagon Papers, Cathy Harris, who revealed racial profiling within the U.S. Customs Agency, and most famously, Frank Serpico (subject of the 1973 Al Pacino film Serpico) who exposed police corruption.
The panel is really worth seeing. Some of the most powerful moments involved Cathy Harris, who emotionally described how black foreign women in the international Miami and Atlanta airports were racially profiled, strip-searched, humiliated, and sometimes handcuffed to hospital beds for up to four days.
Also moving was Serpico's description of being shot in the face by his fellow police officers, who allegedly left him for dead. "I believe that everybody wants to do the right thing," he says. "But when you fail in doing so, there is something in your nature that has to deny it."
The panel incorporated a positive note by reflecting on the vindication whistleblowers can feel when positive change comes from their actions, even though many initially experience sacrifice, retaliation, and isolation as a result.
A thesis film from University of Southern California graduate student Gregg Helvey is garnering worldwide attention and raising awareness for the plight of slaves around the world.
The institution of slavery is far from outdated, despite common misconceptions. According to the organization Free The Slaves, 27 million people around the world are enslaved today.
Helvey's film "Kavi" is a 19-minute narrative about a young boy in India who wants to escape from the brick kiln where he is forced to work. Its powerful and surprising message earned it a Student Academy Award and a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film. Check out the trailer below, and read more about Helvey's inspiration and mission here.
Interestingly, Helvey embraces the 30-minute limit he had for his thesis. On the film's website, he says,
"I think having KAVI as a short film also makes it a powerful teaching tool to raise awareness about modern-day slavery. People are often more willing to spend 20 minutes to watch a short than investing a full 90 minutes."
Personally, as a student also making a 20-minute thesis, I completely agree. The restrictions of short films can be frustrating, but having to work within a time limit forces you to put only your best stuff forward. After all, our generation's attention span is equally limited.
To find out more about modern slavery, check out Helvey's favorite online sources here.
Entertainment thrives on conflict and controversy. This means that characters in movies must always be put into situations where they must constantly make difficult decisions.
This is why the field of bioethics is so often used to inject controversy into movies. The purpose of bioethics is to create a journey from moral intuitions into moral arguments, so putting these ideas in movies is a natural step. The result is more serious than you might think: it means that the majority of the population is not getting their ideas about bioethical issues through reading case studies or listening to lectures, but by going to the movies. We're forming our opinions about issues like abortion, cloning, and assisted suicide by watching films, and nothing is more compelling and convincing than a well-crafted film. And since, ideally, in a democracy it is the public who will make decisions about how to legislate on these issues, this influence might be more "important" than we anticipate.
The technical name for this type of narrative application to ethical issues is called "narrative bioethics." Its not necessarily a good thing; after all, the first job of a movie is to make money, not to morally educate the public. But often, movies can be the first introduction a person has to a bioethical issue. Some Hollywood movies scare audiences with "slippery slope" projects of these issues, while comedies often include them because of the endless comedic possibilities involved. Let's take a look at some movies that I believe were important in making these introductions:
10. "Baby Mama" (2008)- Artificial Reproduction Technology (ART) Yes, this comedy starring Saturday Night Live's Tina Fey and Amy Poehler is hard to take seriously. But it does look at the nuances of an issue rarely delved into in entertainment: the moral quandaries of surrogate pregnancies. The issue is taken pretty lightly, of course, but finally natural pregnancies are presented as being better.
9. "Multiplicity" (1992)- Cloning This is another comedy that takes a bioethical issue, cloning, and presents it lightly. The main character decides to clone himself because he he's too stressed. Things go badly for him in the end as the clones wreak havoc on his life. Although we are nowhere near being able to create replicas of fully formed humans, the scenario that humans may be created as a means to an end is very real and possible (see HLA Typing). The extreme and unrealistic portrayal of cloning complicated a lot of viewer's opinions on "therapeutic cloning" which involves stem cell research. Movies like this complicated the public perception of the term "cloning" when awareness of the term was just starting, and I think it might have had implications beyond laughter and entertainment.
8. "The Cider House Rules"(1999) - Abortion This movie features a doctor who performs illegal abortions because he is horrified by the consequences of the botched, back-alley abortions he has seen. He tries to convince his doubtful protege that he is making the moral choice. The movie spends a lot of time addressing the nuances of abortion, and the character who performs the abortions is not shown as morally reprehensible. This movie is important for the purposes of narrative bioethics because the moral status of abortion takes such a central and multi-faceted role.
7."Dirty Pretty Things"(2002) - Organ Trafficking Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, this movie is one of the only popular films to address the issue of organ trafficking. Set in London, it features an illegal operation run out of hotel where illegal immigrants sell kidneys in exchange for passports with new identities.
6. "My Sister's Keeper" (2009) - HLA Typing, Artificial Reproduction This movie is the first Hollywood film to cover the issue of human leukocyte antigent (HLA) typing, which is sometimes used with ART to save children with leukemia. An embryo "savior sibling" is implanted, who will eventually serve as a donor of stem cells and organs to the sick sibling. In this movie, the "savior sibling" sues her parents for medical emancipation.
5. "Soylent Green" (1973) - Euthanasia Euthanasia, or assisted suicide, is often debated on the world stage, and is now legal in a few European countries and in Oregon. Soylent Green is set in New York City in 2022, which is now an overpopulated dystopia where assisted suicide is legal. In the end, one of the main characters chooses this option after learning the horrible truth about the substitute food wafers fed to the people by the government. In a world of chaos and strife, his peaceful, sensuous assisted death is shown as one of the only forms of control humans have.
4. "Million Dollar Baby"(2004) -Euthanasia This movie goes even more intensely than Soylent Green in to the question of euthanasia. The main character, played by Hilary Swank, desperately wants to be euthanised after being paralyzed below the neck. Finally, her mentor and boxing trainer, played by Clint Eastwood, helps her to die by giving her a shot of adrenaline, although initially very opposed to the idea.
3. "Artificial Intelligence (AI)"(2001)- Genetic Engineering, Artificial Intelligence This memorably creepy sci-fi thriller is a modernized Pinocchio, about a little android boy manufactured to resemble a human and to virtually feel love. The film vividly dystopian style makes the audience uneasy about a future where genetically engineered robots replace humans down the slippery slope.
2. "Gattaca"(1997) - Eugenics, Artificial Reproduction Gattaca is another movie that shows the bottom of the "slippery slope" of genetic engineering, a theme very popular in science fiction. This one of the most famous. Gattaca looks at how reproductive technologies facilitate eugenics. In this dystopia, children are selected though preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) to ensure that they ahve the best hereditary traits possible. Any children not birthed with this option are destined to be janitors. Gattaca is one of the best illustrations of the issues inherent in artificial reproduction technologies, including the widening of the gap between rich and poor, social injustices, and loss of human identity.
1. "Jurassic Park" (1993)- Genetic Engineering, Cloning Scientists have created an amusement park of cloned dinosaurs by cloning genetic material found in mosquitos trapped in amber who had fed on dinosaur blood. The fictional presentation which the characters viewed that showed this information was one of the first scenes to show the public information about DNA and gene sequencing. Because the movie was adventurous and family-friendly, more people tuned in to it than to other science fiction films, and the movie was the most massive exposure to genetic engineering that the country ever had. Jurassic Park contained a dark message: powerful science leads to disaster. This is a theme that remains in our public consciousness and is repeated in other science fiction films time and time again.
Every week, I'm going to be posting a Top Ten List highlighting a certain genre of cause-driven filmmaking. Of course, my choices will be colored by the perspective of my generation, but I'd like to think that the same things matter to people who are older or younger.
What I'm really striving to figure out is not necessarily what makes a film entertaining, visually pleasing or profitable, but what makes it "important." This is my interpretation of what it means for a film to be "important:
- Impact on the audience. Do people who see this film actually go out and change anything about their lives? - Staying power. Are people still talking about it more than 15 minutes after seeing it? - Popularity. Unfortunately, change can hinge on how many people see a film, which is why these lists might not contain less famous, smaller films that are equally good. - Actual change taking place. Whether the film revolutionizes its entire field or gets one innocent man released from prison (see The Thin Blue Line), I believe that the full potential of the medium is finally realized when change takes place in the wake of a film.
So here we go, with one of my pet causes:
The Top Ten Most Important Environmental Films (So Far)
10. Winged Migration (2001) I was babysitting my professor's three-year-old son the other day, who is a big animal lover, and he was completely entranced by this detailed French documentary about the migrations of numerous species of birds across the hemispheres. Its gorgeous photography and empathic portrayal of the peculiarities of birds made a significant impact on audiences worldwide.
9. March of the Penguins (2005) This documentary, also originally in French, also about the migration of birds, won the Academy Award in 2005 for Best Documentary Feature. The movie presented the struggles of the penguins in a very human way, squeezing empathy from its audience. Although it didn't have an overtly environmental message, it was a vivid representation of the intricacies of animal life at the far ends of the earth, and a great reminder of all that we have to lose.
8. The Cove (2009) See my post below for a more detailed explanation of why I appreciate The Cove so much. Most importantly for these purposes, this documentary about dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Japan, showed that environmental documentaries can be made in fresh, exciting ways. Its spy-thriller feel and adventurous tone did something entirely new with the genre.
7. Wall E (2008) Surprisingly, Wall E's director, Andrew Stanton, maintains that he never set out to make an environmental film with this blockbuster animation from Pixar. Yet the message is undeniable in the film's powerful visuals of an Earth devastated and abandoned by the unsustainable actions of humans. It is a cautionary tale that reached both young and old audiences.
6. Food, Inc. (2008) Food, Inc., which was just nominated for an Academy Award, is more than just an environmental film. It tackles the entire corrupt industry of food production in America, effectively disgusting audiences throughout the country with its portrayal of factory farming. However, I think the side effect of its message will be that more people will be eating sustainably, locally, organically and even vegetarian. And this could be one of the most important environmental changes we see.
5. The Day After Tomorrow (2004) This blockbuster is kind of a silly film, showing an extremely exaggerated alternate reality in which the projected effects of global warming happen in a couple of days. But the apocalyptic images of Manhattan sinking under the ocean and most of America perishing in cataclysmic storms made a vivid impression on a lot of viewers who might not previously have been able to imagine climate change as a physical manifestation.
4. Avatar (2009) Avatar, the highest grossing film in history, is the only environmental movie on this list that actually doesn't take place on Earth. Unlike Andrew Stanton, director James Cameron was fully aware of the environmental message in his movie, and has called attention to our loss of biodiversity and the effects of climate change. Check out my last post to see how the plot of the movie is being played out on Earth. Avatar is important because its revolutionary visuals conveyed the most realistic and tangible sense of environmental beauty yet (ironically, because the plants don't actually exist), and also because so very many people saw it.
3. Erin Brokovich In Erin Brokovich, we are shown how environmental issues can affect humans very directly and very intensely. In the movie, based on a true story, Julia Roberts' uncovers the industrial poisoning of a small town's water supply, which severely threatens the health of the entire community. Her award winning performance drew viewers around the world, who learned to be more aware of the reality of industrial pollution.
2. An Inconvenient Truth (2006) This documentary by Al Gore is probably the most famous environmental film of our time (and the most lucrative, bringing in an unprecedented $50 million for a documentary). The polarizing scientific evidence it contained brought the climate change debate to a head and is almost always cited, either with derision or in awe, when the issue comes up. Without it, it is hard to say where the climate change movement would be today.
1. FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992) This might seem like a surprising pick for a list with so many hard-hitters, but hear me out. If you mention the name "FernGully" in a room full of 20-somethings today, you will get the same positive and nostalgic reaction everywhere. Kids loved this animated movie about a fairy trying to save her rainforest home from both a lumber company and an evil spirit named Hexxus who gains power from pollution and resembles oil sludge. This was a highly popular movie with a strongly environmental message that came out to young audiences before the "green" movement was anticipated. The 20-somethings that were wowed by FernGully when they were impressionable children absorbed the message that forests, biodiversity and conservation are good, and that pollution, destruction and greed are bad. This movie effectively primed my generation to now look at movies like Avatar and An Inconvenient Truth with the mental framework of nature being inherently good and important to preserve. Fern Gully wasn't alone in this; movies like The Lion King and Pocahontas had a more subtle pro-nature lean. Yet FernGully was alone in personifying pollution as arguably one of the scariest, evil villains of animated entertainment. For a lot of people my age, seeing FernGully was the first time we were ever lead to think about conservation and the importance of a world outside of our human one.
You have probably heard by now that James Cameron's hit movie Avatar is now the highest-grossing movie in history. Of the top 20, (mostly starring Harry Potter, Jack Sparrow, and the Lord of the Ring's hobbits, with Batman and Spiderman thrown in), Avatar is one of the only that can be said to present a straightforward cause-driven message: Greedy industries looking for profit should not ruin the cultures and homes of defenseless indigenous people.
The movie is set on the fictional, whimsical planet of Pandora, but the issues it addresses are anything but alien. The U.K.-based charity Survival International, which supports tribal people worldwide, has brought attention to the eerie similarity between the predicament of Pandora’s Na’vi and the plight of Earth’s Dongria Kondh tribe in India, whose story you can watch below:
The charity describes how the sacred forests of the Dongria Kondh, just like those of the imaginary Na’vi, are under threat by a mining company, in this case Vedanta Resources. The mountain, which the Dongria Kondh describe as a form of deity, contains a rich stream of the mineral bauxite, or aluminum ore. According to Amnesty International, and to the video above, the local communities are already threatened by the air and water pollution perpetrated by the company. Amnesty is urging the Indian government to withdraw the clearance granted for the mine until measures are taken to uphold their international human rights obligations.
Vedanta has defended its project in the area, claiming that it will serve to stimulate the economy and uplift the rural community. But the people in the video “Mine – Story of a Sacred Mountain,” don’t seem very uplifted.
Survival posted an advertisement in the Hollywood entertainment magazine Variety, saying, “Appeal to James Cameron. Avatar is fantasy…and real.” We’ll have to wait and see whether the message of this film proves to be more than just Pocahontas in Space.
My faith in the power of documentaries to change the world has been flagging lately. As a film student on the documentary track, this is pretty unfortunate.Even really great films seem to stick with my peers for only about 10-15 minutes before fading into the media-filled abyss that is the consciousness of my generation.
But every once in a while, a film comes a long to challenge my disillusion.2009’sThe Cove is one of those, and I’m happy to see it be nominated for an Academy Award.This film from Roadside Attractions and Participant Media gained fame for pulling off a unique and cool spy thriller feel in what otherwise might have been just another preachy nature documentary.The Cove is about the international dolphin capture and slaughter trade as practiced in Taiji, Japan, and centers around a team of animal advocates and filmmakers intent on getting footage of the dolphin murders.And they do, which makes The Cove one of the most disturbing horror movies I’ve ever seen.
Yet what is important about The Cove, and its widespread success, is that it actually had a tangible, real-world effect on the cause that it was exposing. Although dolphin capture still took place in Taiji, the town announced its intention to release the dolphins not selected for captivity instead of slaughtering them.Because of The Cove, Taiji was under the scrutiny of animal lovers around the world, and really didn’t have any other choice.
So what can we learn from this real-world success? What ingredients does The Cove have that other, less effective documentaries don’t?
-Dolphins.Everybody has a soft spot for dolphins, and for some reason that psychologists and philosophers probably have an answer for, a lot of us are capable of feeling more empathy for them than for the flawed members of our own species.
-A subject horrible enough that the filmmakers don’t have to try to artificially prompt the emotion of the audience.Just drop the words “23,000 dolphins a year” and the image from and underwater camera flooded with blood, and we’re sold on the suspense.
-A protagonist who has repented his evil deeds and is trying to atone for them.Our historically Puritanical nation loves this kind of stuff.Richard O’Barry used to capture and train dolphins (notably for the TV show Flipper, which first sparked America’s love for performing sea animals), and now, after one of his dolphins “committed suicide” in his arms, devotes his life to preventing the capture and slaughter of dolphins around the world.
-The absence of the moralizing, lecturing tone associated with many documentaries.The Cove disguises its message in the narrative arc of a Bourne Identity- type of movie.It catches its audience by surprise and they even forget they are learning something important as they watch. For my jaded generation, at least, this is a welcome change.
-Awesome production quality.The editing is careful, the score is moody and beautiful, and the photography, especially the creepy underwater shots, is great.
-Finally, intelligent marketing. As a former Participant Media intern, I personallycalled what seemed like every surf shop in the nation and mailed them posters and promotional postcards.Participant’s Social Action Department targeted surfers and other people pre-disposed to caring about dolphins and animals in general.It was also marketed as an adventurous, righteous rampage and not a morality tale.
I think filmmakers and audiences alike can learn from what The Cove accomplished, and the fresh approach it brought to the sometimes-dry art of documentary filmmaking.I know I’ll be rooting for it at the Oscars, as well as keeping an eye on the town of Taiji for years to come.
I have always thought that film is one of the best ways to get across information about social causes.People simply retain information better when it’s communicated to them visually and emotionally.Not only are they more likely to remember it, but also they are more likely to act on it and integrate what they have learned into their daily lives if they have been emotionally inspired.
Part of this, I think, is because storytelling is our oldest form of communication of values and moral lessons. This may be obvious, but it’s an important realization as we examine what works and what doesn't work when it comes to cause-related filmmaking.
On this blog, I'll take a look at films, both narrative films and documentaries that have social awareness and social issues as their content.What companies are successfully marketing causes through their films and turning people's minds around? Which films are sticking with their audiences and having a tangible effect on the causes they address, and which aren't?
We'll talk to up and coming film-makers, investigate social justice movements through film, and take a look both at big-budget films in a theater near you, and smaller independent productions tackling issues here and abroad.
As the world of video and media changes rapidly around us, film production has to be constantly re-evaluated as accessibility changes and video content becomes increasingly viral and internet-adapted.
What matters in the end, however, is not how flashily the film is marketed or how fancy the opening credits are, but that the audience leaves the theater, the classroom, or the home to make a real, positive change in the world. And that's a lot harder to measure than the numbers coming home from the box office.
Every once in awhile you'll get into a discussion with a friend or relative about a film that you love. Your friend will say something like, "I appreciate why it's a great film, I appreciate why it's important, but it just turned me off."
I hear this often about A Clockwork Orange, a film that's certainly in my top 20 of all time, and one that's often cited in the Important But... category. So, the questions are: What makes a film important? Can a film be socially important without addressing a specific cause, such as Clockwork, or are efforts better spent on a film about a cause, such as The Cove.
I would argue that social relevance can apply to nearly any film that addresses issues of the moment. Therefore, nearly all war films have social relevance, as they are either commenting on a current war, as in The Hurt Locker, or using a previous war to make a statement about war in general, as in Paths of Glory. I feel that that's the point of this blog, to point out films that are in some way relevant to the Causecast community, whether they directly approach a present issue or simply give us a new perspective on the nature of human rights, the environment, poverty or youth activism. In this way, Children of Men and Hotel Rwanda are as socially relevant as Food, Inc.
What films do you think are particularly important? Also -- in future posts I'll be discussing what prominent social issues have been inadequately presented in film, and what kind of film you'd make about it if you could.
