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[vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_column_text]Created by Laura Poitras and Charlotte Cook, Field of Vision is a filmmaker-driven documentary initiative that commissions and creates original short-form nonfiction films about developing and ongoing stories from around the globe. This showcase of short documentaries informs, inspires, and illustrates the variety of ways that films can achieve Field of Vision’s investigative and journalistic objectives.  Presented by June Jennings, Impact and Partnership Manager at Field of Vision. Nuuca (USA, 2018, 13 min)...

09 September, 2019

The Philadelphia Environmental Film Festival showcases exceptional new films that celebrate the beauty of the earth, explore challenges facing our planet, and entertain, inform and inspire personal action. This year, Committee member and PhD Candidate Megan Genovese attended the festival and wrote a critical overview. Should education or activist media be fun? I asked myself this a lot over the weekend of the Philadelphia Environmental Film Festival. On the one hand, it’s hard to get people to show up for...

25 April, 2019

[vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_column_text]This talk analyzes the spaces of media access and censorship at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. It first touches on the U.S. military’s use of movie theaters to entertain and regulate the employees and families stationed at the site, and explores how official guidelines strategically limit which films can be screened. Next, it discusses the more restricted media exhibition contexts for detainees, interrogating how the military instrumentalizes detainees’ access to entertainment...

01 March, 2019

On February 7 and 8, the Center for Media at Risk and MIT’s Global Media Technologies and Cultures Lab co-hosted a two-day “Securing MediaMakers Forum” at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. The event kicked off on Thursday evening with a full house screening of the documentary “The Feeling of Being Watched,” which investigated a decade of FBI surveillance in the Muslim-American community of Bridgeville, Illinois. The film was directed by Assia Boundaoui, an Algerian-American journalist and filmmaker, who grew up in the...

25 February, 2019

[vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_column_text]Social-issue documentary storytelling in the networked digital age serves meaningful functions as a form of civic storytelling in the context of social justice. From changing laws and policies to raising awareness of social problems to re-intepreting social issues through an artistic, creative lens, social-issue documentaries also serve as centerpieces of social change initiatives through a rise in civic engagement organizations and practices. Professor Caty Borum Chattoo's talk will introduce the intersection of documentary...

22 January, 2019

Center for Media at Risk Postdoctoral Fellow Daniel Grinberg spoke with award winning documentary filmmaker and journalist Carrie Lozano about some of the risks and challenges affecting documentarians today. Carrie currently serves as the Director of the Enterprise Documentary Fund at the International Documentary Association, which provides access to networks, information and educational enrichment for filmmakers. What aspects of risk does the IDA address? The IDA is a membership organization that supports filmmakers in a variety of ways, whether that's educational enrichment,...

17 December, 2018

 On October 16, 2018, the Center for Media at Risk hosted a screening of Thomas D. Herman’s  documentary film, Dateline-Saigon. The event was co-sponsored with the Annenberg Public Policy Center and Penn Cinema and Media Studies. The film tells the story of a group of five reporters based in Saigon at the outset of the Vietnam War and the resistance, intimidation and censorship they faced from the American government and Kennedy Administration. Herman’s film reveals important insights into our own era...

01 November, 2018

Video and transcript from the Center for Media at Risk Launch symposium: Documentary at Risk. Moderated by John Jackson, panelists include John Caldwell, Sam Gregory, Simon Kilmurry and Bryce Renninger....

20 April, 2018

We sit down with down with Dr. Paul Farber and Dr. Bethany Wiggin of the Penn Program of Environmental Humanities to explore a unique project at Data Refuge that consider the ways in which climate media is at risk in the 21st century....

15 April, 2018