Socially Conscious Video Games?

Forget all this Mario cart-supersmash-violent-gory-self-aggrandizing video game business.  Parents will no longer fret over their kids frozen in front of the screen, thumbing away at the controls.  Not with Eric Brown’s game, Peacemaker, which seeks to put players in the middle of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, forcing them to stop and make ethical choices instead of simply relying on reflex.  As Brown commented in the course of the panel, “Not all games are fun,” explaining that part of why he founded ImpactGames was to show that the video game medium had more to offer than Grand Theft Auto.

Video games were just one of the many mediums represented among panelists, who also included film documentary maker Gloria Greenfield, performance studies Ph.D. student Hilary Cooperman, and Visiting Crown Chair in Middle East Studies professor Elie Rekhess.  Moderator Clayton Brown of Northwestern University made a point of recognizing each panelist’s work, involvement, or expertise with the subject of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict leading into the question at hand: Is it possible to present conflict objectively when making social issue media?

Panelists Hilary Cooperman, Gloria Greenfield, Eric Brown, and Elie Rekhess

As panelists weighed in and shared their own opinions and experiences, it became clear that there is no clear answer to this question.  Defining the term “objective” presents the first challenge, as well as recognizing all the different points of view that come into play in the process of experiencing the media itself – Are the subjects of a film objective? Can a film be objective by presenting multiple points of view? Can an audience be objective? Can a creator of any type of media be objective – and for that matter, what differentiates propaganda from advocacy, and is propaganda necessarily bad?

Disagreements on these subjects arose between panelists themselves, one example being conflicting views on controversial Israeli historian Benny Morris.  Greenfield and Cooperman agreed, however, on the importance of dialoguing with an audience after controversial or emotionally provocative screenings or performances.  This, they said, allows an audience to distill their emotion and go deeper into the issue at hand, analyzing the issue with clear questions as a result of being presented with a clear history to instigate such discussion.  This, essentially, is what social issue media is all about: engaging people and inspiring them to take action and become involved in social issues. 

The panel closed with no definitive answers to some complicated questions, but as Professor Rekhess pointed out, “My goal is to confuse my students” – So perhaps the first step to being objective is to inundate oneself with all points of view on the issue at hand, making it your responsibility to sift through the information at hand and present a clear and emotionallycompelling history to raise awareness, engage people, and spur them on to action. 

And kids, the good news is that process can now start to happen by sitting down and playing a video game.

Ask BIG Questions!

There are currently about 20-some people in the lobby of McTrib participating in a discussion hosted by Ask Big Questions, a national initiative living on college campuses founded on the assumption that all human beings have in mind some common questions of ultimate concern (e.g. Who am I?) and uses these questions as a jumping point for discussion and interaction.  Ask Big Questions aims to serve as a model to renew civic engagement and re-form the fragments of our society into a more whole and peaceful commons.  Visit their website to find out more about Ask Big Questions and maybe ask them some big questions in the process!

Here are some photos of the current on-going conversation:

Allie Gross introduces Ask Big Questions and initiates the discussion.

20-some Symposium goers participate in the Ask Big Questions discussion.

Hecky’s for Lunch

Lunch provided a time for guests and students to relax and take a breather in between panels, discussions, and master classes.  Take a look at the Symposium’s lunchtime in the McCormick Tribune Center lobby…

Symposium guests and speakers get ready for food and mingling after a morning of panels and master classes

Members of the Symposium Board smile for the camera along with promotional posters featuring Ghandi, the Dalai Lama, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Students and guests enjoy lunch together

Executive Directors Allie Gross and Nick Weldon in front of student-submitted art, part of the socially conscious art exhibit in the McTrib lobby

Master Class 1: Producing Films for Social Change

Julie Dubrow, the Director of the Communications and Media Studies program at Tufts University, and Roberta Oster-Sachs, the Associate Dean for External Relations at University of Richmond Law School and Emmy Award-winning broadcast journalist, co-lead the the first master class of the day entitled “Producing Films for Social Change.”

The two guests spoke about a class they began at Tufts University to encourage students of all majors to produce films dealing with social issues. Oster-Sachs referred to the class as a “boot camp” that challenged students to develop technical, interviewing and storytelling skills necessary to create a video documentary. Students in this class have had quite an impact on the Tufts University as well as in their community.

During the master class, a clip from a film about bi- and multi-racial students at Tufts University as well as a film about an incident that occurred during a Veterans parade in Boston. Both films were examples of how students can bring about change through the use of short documentaries.

Oster-Sachs brought up an interesting idea during the master class. She said that in the production of films for social change everyone gets to participate. The director and those involved in making the film get to tell the story about what they are passionate about. The audience gets to learn more about that particular issue. And last but not least the different characters interviewed in the film get a chance to tell their story and participate in social release.

Here is a link to the films produced by the students at Tufts University. Check it out!

Northwestern student organizations at McTrib to support Inspire

Kartemquin Films, AskBigQuestions, FMO (For Members Only), and SHAPE (Sexual Health & Assault Peer Education) are at McTrib today to support the Inspire Films symposium and social issue media.  Hear these organizations talk about their involvement with some of the prominent issues of the symposium and the world at large.

Cause v. Consumerism Panel

Panelists Melissa Mummert, Diane Rosenfeld, Andrew Nisker, Roberta Oster Sachs, and Julie Dobrow gathered at McTrib Forum to bring the issue of funding into the social media creation process.

After working as an environmental prosecutor, Co-Producer of Rape Is… gravitated toward women’s advocacy. “There’s a dearth of women who have been lucky enough to not have been victimized who have a sense of entitlement and rage,” Rosenfeld said, reffering to herself as one of the “lucky ones.”

Rosenfeld and Sachs introduced the idea of social marketing to attract attention and potential funding, sharing the newly-concocted catchy slogan, “it’s cool to be kind.” Sachs also emphasized the importance of a specific action plan and not getting lost among millions of messages. “If you want to do media for social change, what is that change? There are so many wonderful avenues but if you’re not clear you’re going to get lost..” Sachs said.

Moderator and Northwestern University senior lecturer Bill Bleich pushed forward the discussion on possible and practical ways of raising money for documentary films.

Director and writer of Garbage! The Revolution Starts at Home Andrew Nisker encountered marketing and fundraising challenges at the finish of the documentary. “My producer said everyone is my audience: every one cares about the environment. You have a massive market, how do you find this audience,” Nisker said, for instance “moms care about the environment because they care about their kids.” Nisker subsequently hired a volunteer to sift through moms’ websites and organizations to reach to one niche of that audience.

Panelists encouraged potential documentarians to ask around for grants and funding from a variety of mentors and sources, while some also suggested the Snag Films financial model of pulling revenue from commercials.

Watch for snapshots of the Panel and the Throwaway War Premiere yesterday.

Photo Film

The world premiere of Inspire Film’s “The Throwaway War” brought out about 100 people to Northwestern University’s Annie May Swift auditorium. The following photo video showcases some of those photos, along with some pictures from today’s events. You can watch it here.

Follow the Symposium on Twitter!

For those interested in keeping up on the Symposium’s activities moment-by-moment, check out our Twitter! 

Starting on Saturday, May 16, we will be updating both the blog and Twitter accounts regularly with news and updates on events throughout the day. 

We hope to see you there!

Director Alex Gibney and The Throwaway War

With guests and panelists arriving in Chicago throughout the day, anticipation mounted as the Symposium’s first weekend event drew near.  After braving flat tires and rainy weather, a crowd of students, professors, journalists, activists, filmmakers, and community members filled Northwestern’s Annie May Swift auditorium.  Alex Gibney, director of the Oscar-winning Taxi to the Dark Side (screened earlier this week on Northwestern’s campus),  gave the keynote speech for Inspire Films’ second annual Symposium on Social Issue Media.

Alex Gibney at The Throwaway War premiere

Gibney spoke about his experience creating and directing Taxi to the Dark Side, as well as his beliefs about and work in social issue media.  Social issue documentaries, Gibney explained, require a respect for both the documentary and story forms, presenting a peculiar opportunity to use entertainment value in order to have the freedom to send political messages.  It’s not enough simply to be committed to any one issue that is important; rather, something about such a film must engage people in order to become something enduring and important.  This engagement, Gibney asserted, is what differentiates the power of film from the power of the written word.  In other words, films have a unique emotional power to show something and convey why crimes are committed, becoming provocateurs for social change by giving you, the audience, the ability to help stop them from happening.  Following his speech, Gibney addressed questions from the audience on his experiences in documentary filmmaking, his methods in interviewing subjects, and how he understands his role as director in the documentary-making process.

The Throwaway War director Benjamin Singer takes questions from the audience

The Inspire Films premiere of The Throwaway War, directed by Benjamin Singer and produced by Sky Dylan-Robbins, followed Gibney’s opening speech.  A 45-minute documentary about the nation’s drug epidemic, the film follows the daily lives of formerly incarcerated drug offenders as they attempt to turn their lives around.  It asked complex questions – How can we reduce the harm drug abuse causes in our society? – demanded that we give attention to legislation focusing on punitive measures over rehabilitation for drug offenders, and provided thoughtful answers and a promising look to future reforms in the systematic approach to the drug epidemic – reforms that depend in a large part on its audience’s response to the questions and challenges the film posed.

Subjects from The Throwaway War attended the premiere and took questions after the screening

As Alex Gibney said just previously, part of the power of a social issue documentary is in the process of how it “becomes a bigger story from understanding the particulateness of one human story.”  The Throwaway War aptly illustrates his point, as it traces the lives of a few key characters struggling to overcome their pasts and work towards a brighter future on both an individual and a collective level.  Judging from the numerous and enthusiastic questions to both the crew of the film and its subjects, some of whom were present at the premiere, The Throwaway War has already started proving Gibney’s statement that documentary films with a social agenda can have a tremendous impact, and an enduring one as well.  We look forward to seeing how Inspire Films’ second annual grant recipient, The Throwaway War, continues to be used as a tool for social change.

Music for INSPIREation

A small group of Northwestern students gathered by the Rock for the student music fest.  See below for footage of  band Slow, Weird, and Melodic drumming in the spirit of the Symposium, with special guest appearance by hot dog suit dude.