$525,000
2020 • 2 years • Journalism & Media
Working Films is a nonprofit organization that strategically uses and deploys documentaries to increase civic engagement and shift culture at the local, state, and national levels. Working Films offers funding and in-kind support to underrepresented filmmakers and leads conversations and trainings with nonprofits to ensure that nonfiction media is effectively leveraged as a critical resource for social movement organizations' strategies for culture change. Through its Docs in Action project, Working Films fully funds short documentaries on a range of social issue topics, and curates and tours collections of short films to make an impact on the issues raised. Its Impact Kickstart program provides strategy development support for documentary film projects by filmmakers from underrepresented groups, and its StoryShift initiative is designed to create a more informed conversation on how documentary filmmakers can demonstrate accountability to the communities that their films cover. This grant supports general operations, allowing Working Films to respond to emergent opportunities to support filmmakers and social movement organizations to use nonfiction multimedia storytelling in service of a more equitable society.
$2,000
2018 • 1 month • Journalism & Media
Working Films (WF) is a national nonprofit organization that partners with grassroots and advocacy organizations on campaigns that leverage nonfiction multimedia in support of raising public awareness on issues such as climate change, energy extraction and economic inequality. Through its Docs in Action program, Working Films fully funds short films on a topic identified in collaboration with nonprofit partners and in consultation with an advisory board of filmmakers. This award supports travel and accommodation expenses for two WF staff members to attend the 2018 International Documentary Association Getting Real conference September 25-27 in Los Angeles, and to attend a daylong convening of MacArthur Foundation Nonfiction Multimedia Storytelling grantees on September 24. This will result a more representative group of attendees at both events.
$900,000
2017 • 3 years • Journalism & Media
Working Films, founded in 2000, was one of the first organizations to design and implement distribution campaigns for documentary films in collaboration with advocates and nonprofits that work full time on the issue a film explores. Since then, it has partnered with dozens of grassroots and advocacy organizations on campaigns that leverage nonfiction multimedia in support of raising public awareness on issues such as climate change, energy extraction and economic inequality. MacArthur funds support Working Films to work in more states, to fund short films about social issues from filmmakers who represent the communities most affected by an issue, and to provide early stage strategic planning support to social issue documentary filmmakers, with a special focus on filmmakers of color. The outcome is a framework through which documentary films can support coalition building and foster greater understanding on a multitude of issues in a variety of U.S. states, including rural areas.
$300,000
2010 • 4 years • Journalism & Media
In support of a project on the use and impact of documentary films to educate the public and contribute to civic engagement in public policy issues.
