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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. The site is no longer active and when you click the link below to visit the website, it opens a page of the internet archive to show the status of the page in 2007, the time when the website was the most active.
 | 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, variety of 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. [1]
Rebiya Kadeer is an ethnic Uyghur businesswoman and political activist. Born in Altay City, Xinjiang, Kadeer became a millionaire in the 1980s through her real estate holdings and ownership of a multinational conglomerate. Kadeer held various positions in the National People's Congress in Beijing and other political institutions before being arrested in 1999 for, according to Chinese state media, sending confidential internal reference reports to her husband, who worked in the United States as a pro-East Turkistan independence broadcaster. After she fled to the United States in 2005 on compassionate release, Kadeer assumed leadership positions in overseas Uyghur organizations such as the World Uyghur Congress.
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.
The Nuyorican Poets Cafe is a nonprofit organization in the Alphabet City neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It is a bastion of the Nuyorican art movement, and has become a forum for poetry, music, hip hop, video, visual arts, comedy, and theater. Several events during the PEN World Voices festival are hosted at the cafe.
Arthur Dong is an American filmmaker and author whose work centers on Asia America and anti-gay prejudice. He was raised in San Francisco, California, graduating from Galileo High School in June 1971. He received his BA in film from San Francisco State University and also holds a Directing Fellow Certificate from the American Film Institute Center for Advanced Film Studies. In 2007, SFSU named Dong its Alumnus of the year “for his continued success in the challenging arena of independent documentary filmmaking and his longstanding commitment to social justice."
Nancy Schwartzman is an American documentary filmmaker, human rights activist, member of the Directors Guild of America, and The Academy.
Miss Representation is a 2011 American documentary film written, directed, and produced by Jennifer Siebel Newsom. The film explores how mainstream media contributes to the under-representation of women in influential positions by circulating limited and often disparaging portrayals of women. The film premiered in the documentary category at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.
The history of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people in China spans thousands of years. Unlike the histories of European and European-ruled polities in which Christianity formed the core of heavily anti-LGBT laws until recent times, non-heterosexual states of being were historically treated with far less animosity in Chinese states. For a period of the modern history of both the Republic of China and People's Republic of China in the 20th century, LGBT people received more stringent legal regulations regarding their orientations, with restrictions being gradually eased by the beginning of the 21st century. However, activism for LGBT rights in both countries has been slow in development due to societal sentiment and government inaction.
Stalin K. is an Indian documentary filmmaker, media and human rights activist. His films, Lesser Humans and India Untouched, on the issue of caste and untouchability in contemporary India, have galvanized international attention to caste discrimination and won numerous film awards. He has done pioneering work on new models of community media to empower marginalized groups. His interview and clips from his film were featured in Episode 10: Dignity for All of Aamir Khan’s Satyamev Jayate TV series on the issue of Untouchability.
Brian Yang is an American actor and producer, most known for his role as Charlie Fong in Hawaii Five-0.
Shannon Fisher is a writer, social and political commentator, and the host of two talk radio shows on the Authors on the Air Global Radio Network, The Authentic Woman and Our Lives with Shannon Fisher. She is also a frequent host of the National Press Club's Update-1 Podcast. and a notable women's rights activist.
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.
Miss America is a documentary film directed by Lisa Ades that chronicle the Miss America pageant from its very beginnings in 1921 to the present-day pageant.
Christine Choy is a Chinese-American filmmaker. She is known for co-directing Who Killed Vincent Chin?, a 1988 film based on the murder of Vincent Jen Chin, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award. She co-founded Third World Newsreel, a film company focusing on people of color and social justice issues. As a documentary filmmaker, she has produced and directed more than eighty films. She is a professor at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.
Robert Rippberger is an American film director, film producer, and screenwriter. He is the director of the upcoming sci-fi movie, Renner, producer of The Inventor, writer/director of Those Who Walk Away (film) starring BooBoo Stewart, the director/producer of Strive with Oscar winner 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.
Dark Money is a 2018 American documentary film directed by Kimberly Reed about the effects of corporate money and influence in the American political system. The film uses Reed's home state of Montana as a primary case study to advance a broader, national discussion on governance in an era of super PACs and Citizens United. Dark Money premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and premiered to a Montana audience at the Big Sky Film Festival in February 2018. The broadcast rights to Dark Money were purchased by PBS distribution to air the film as part of their docu-series POV in 2018.
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).
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.
