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Arts Engine is a film organization whose activities include documentary film production, film festival, and a website for filmmakers, activists, educators and students to share information.
Arts Engine was founded by Katy Chevigny and Julia Pimsleur in 1997 to focus on social issue documentaries. Their projects include 11 feature-length documentaries. The best known of these is the Emmy-nominated film Deadline. Arts Engine launched a website called MediaRights.org, a database of social issue documentaries with over 7,400 films registered. They subsequently made the Youth Media Dissemination Initiative (YMDi.org). They also developed the Media That Matters Film Festival, an early online film festival.
 | This section is written like a review .(June 2011) |
Big Mouth Films is a production company that works on feature-length, social issue documentaries.
(A)sexual (2011)
(A)sexual follows the growth of a community that experiences no sexual attraction. It uses interviews, verite footage, and animation to document David Jay and four other characters. (A)sexual premiered at the Frameline Film Festival on June 18, 2011.
Pushing the Elephant (2010)
Pushing the Elephant follows Rose Mapendo, her work as an activist, and her relationship with her daughter Nangabire, who had remained in the Democratic Republic of the Congo when Rose fled in the late 1990s. It was directed by Beth Davenport and Elizabeth Mandel. It was screened on PBS's series Independent Lens in early 2011.
Election Day (2007)
Election Day follows American voters nationwide on November 2, 2004 to document the democratic process. Election Day premiered at South by Southwest Film Festival (SXSW) in 2007.
Arctic Son (2006)
In the Arctic village of Old Crow, a father and son who come from different backgrounds are reunited after 20 years apart. Arctic Son was released on POV on August 21, 2007.
Deadline (2004)
Deadline follows Illinois Governor George Ryan as he questions the guilt of thirteen people slated for execution. Deadline won the Thurgood Marshall Journalism Award and was nominated for an Emmy.
Journey to the West (2001)
Journey to the West looks at the origins of traditional Chinese medicine, how it is used in modern-day China, and how it has been adapted in the United States. The film includes footage of traditional medical practices in the People's Republic of China and interviews of Chinese medical practitioners in the United States.
Outside Looking In (2001)
This film documents three families with trans-racially adopted children of different races, across generations. It includes the transition from natural parents to adoptive parents, and challenges of racial identity for children of one race who are raised in another.
Brother Born Again (2000)
Julia Pimsleur, a bisexual, Jewish New Yorker, travels to Alaska to reconnect with her brother, a born again Christian. He has lived with his family there for ten years since dropping out of college and converting.
Nuyorican Dream (2000)
Nuyorican Dream is the story of a New York Puerto Rican family contending with urban poverty. Clips from the movie were used in a radio story for This American Life covering the same topic.
Innocent Until Proven Guilty (1999)
James Forman, Jr. is a public defender and the son of civil rights activist James Forman. The film follows Forman's work at the Public Defender Service and at an alternative high school for juvenile ex-offenders.
The Media That Matters Film Festival is an interactive, yearlong series of short films on social issues such as immigration, global warming, fair trade, gay rights, and sustainable agriculture.
Past awards ceremonies have included presentations by Ira Glass, Byron Hurt, Tim Robbins, Al Franken, Chuck D, Woody Harrelson, Academy Award winner Barbara Kopple, David Cross, Reiko Aylesworth, and comedian Sam Seder. Past festivals have also included a live tour, distribution through Netflix, and independent screenings.
MediaRights.org is a website focused on issue-oriented media. At one point it had 26,000 registered members and hosted more than 7,400 films in its online database.
Gaylen Ross is an American director, writer, producer and actress, best known for playing Francine Parker in the 1978 horror film Dawn of the Dead and also noted for directing the 2008 documentary Killing Kasztner.
Kirby Bryan Dick is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and editor best known for directing documentary films. He received Academy Award nominations for Best Documentary Feature for directing Twist of Faith (2005) and The Invisible War (2012). He has also received numerous awards from film festivals, including the Sundance Film Festival and Los Angeles Film Festival.
Sarah Jones is an American playwright, actress, and poet.
Pamela Yates is an American documentary filmmaker and human rights activist. She has directed films about war crimes, racism, and genocide in the United States and Latin America, often with emphasis on the legal responses.
Fish and Elephant is documentary filmmaker and former TV hostess Li Yu's feature film directorial debut. The film is also often referred to as the first Chinese mainland film to broach the topic of lesbian relationships in China.
Elizabeth Freya Garbus is an American documentary film director and producer. Notable documentaries Garbus has made are The Farm: Angola, USA,Ghosts of Abu Ghraib,Bobby Fischer Against the World,Love, Marilyn,What Happened, Miss Simone?, and Becoming Cousteau. She is co-founder and co-director of the New York City-based documentary film production company Story Syndicate.
Tami Kashia Gold is a documentary filmmaker, visual artist and educator. She is also a professor at Hunter College of the City University of New York in the Department of Film and Media Studies.
Nancy Schwartzman is an American documentary filmmaker, member of the Directors Guild of America, and The Academy.
Amy Ziering is an American film producer and director. Mostly known for her work in documentary films, she is a regular collaborator of director Kirby Dick; they co-directed 2002's Derrida and 2020's On the Record, with Ziering also producing several of Dick's films.
An Apology to Elephants is a 2013 documentary that explores abuse and brutal treatment of elephants. It showcases elephant training and the psychological trauma and physical damage done by living conditions in some zoos and circuses. It was premiered on HBO on April 22, 2013, also celebrated as an Earth Day. The documentary includes interviews with environmental activists and biologists, including Performing Animal Welfare Society co-founders Ed Stewart and Pat Derby. The film was dedicated to Derby, also known as an "elephant lady", who died on February 15, 2013.
Julia Pimsleur is an author, scaling coach, speaker and entrepreneur. She is the founder and CEO of Million Dollar Women, an organization dedicated to helping one million women entrepreneurs reach $1MM in annual revenue, author of the best-selling book Million Dollar Women: The Essential Guide for Female Entrepreneurs Who Want to Go Big,Go Big Now, and the founder of Million Dollar Women Network. She is also the founder and CEO of the Little Pim language education system, as well as a former documentary filmmaker. She is the daughter of Paul Pimsleur, who was a scholar of applied linguistics.
Connie Field is a director of documentary features.
Jason DaSilva is an American documentary film director, producer, writer, and disability rights activist best known for the Emmy Award-winning documentary, When I Walk. The Emmy award-winning film follows his diagnosis of primary progressive multiple sclerosis for seven years as he progresses from cane, to walker, to wheelchair. He is also the founder of the non-profit organization AXS Lab and of AXS Map, a crowd sourced Google map based platform which rates the accessibility of businesses.
Robert Rippberger is an American film director, film producer, and screenwriter. He is the writer/director of Those Who Walk Away (film) starring BooBoo Stewart, the director/producer of Strive with Danny Glover, the director of the feature documentary Public Enemy Number One (film) from Executive Producer Ice-T, and director/producer of the Hulu released documentary 7 Days in Syria. Robert executive produced with Jason Blum the feature documentary Alive and Kicking. The film was sold to Magnolia Pictures and Netflix after its debut at the 2016 SXSW Film Festival, where it received a Grand Jury nomination.
Nanfu Wang is a Chinese-born American filmmaker. Her debut film Hooligan Sparrow premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival and was shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2017. Her second film, I Am Another You, premiered at SXSW Film Festival in 2017 and won two special jury awards, and her third film, One Child Nation, won the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary Feature at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Wang is the recipient of a 2021 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Filmmaking, from the Vilcek Foundation.
Mohammed Ali Naqvi is a Pakistani filmmaker based in New York City. He is known for documentaries which shed light on the socio political conditions of Pakistan, and feature strong characters on personal journeys of self-discovery. Notable films include Insha’Allah Democracy (2017), Among the Believers (2015), Shame (2007), and Terror’s Children (2003).
The Elephant Queen is a 2018 documentary film directed by Victoria Stone and Mark Deeble, and narrated by Chiwetel Ejiofor. It tells the journey of a family of elephants in the African savannah when they are forced to leave their waterhole. The film was produced by Lucinda Englehart under the banner of Deeble & Stone.
A Thousand Cuts is a 2020 Philippine-American documentary film about Maria Ressa, the founder of the online news site Rappler. Directed by Ramona Diaz, it explores the conflicts between the press and the Filipino government under President Rodrigo Duterte.
Katy Gale Chevigny is an American documentary filmmaker. She has produced or directed more than 30 documentary films and won a number of awards for her work.
