Blogging the Making Your Media Matter Conference: The Rundown

Gordon Quinn, of Kartemquin Films, one of the speakers at the conference.

On February 12-13, the Center for Social Media (CSM) hosted its fifth annual Making Your Media Matter conference at American University's Katzen Arts Center. The event brought together nearly 300 established and aspiring filmmakers, nonprofit communications leaders, funders and students (including participants from Los Angeles, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Germany, Nigeria and Kenya) who were able to learn and share cutting edge practices in social media making.

The theme of this year's conference, “Ethics, Money and Mission,” asked panelists and participants to consider how media makers can connect their ethical and aesthetic values with their financial needs. The two-day schedule also provided ample networking time through breaks, receptions and a “Birds-of-a-Feather” lunch, which brought together participants with similar interests.

Patricia Aufderheide, CSM director, dedicated the conference to Woody Wickham, in loving memory of the public media advocate whom she described as a great mentor and colleague and “was fundamentally optimistic about what independent media could mean.”

Thursday began with an introduction by Dean Larry Kirkman of American University's School of Communication. George Stoney, an early advocate of democratic media, often cited as the father of public television, delivered a mini-keynote on ethics in social issue films, emphasizing documentary making as a collaboration between filmmakers and their subjects. Gordon Quinn, of Kartemquin Films, followed with a keynote speech on the ethics of cinema vérité, outlining filmmakers' responsibilities to the audience, to their characters, to funders and to the society at large with the aid of clips from The New Americans, Hoop Dreams, In the Family and other Kartemquin films.

The evening was wrapped up with a lively reception, which allowed participants to continue discussing the issues that the speakers raised and provided the first of several networking opportunities.

On Friday, the conference continued full steam ahead. The first panel of the day explored how to meet the demands of funders without compromising the ethics and mission of your media project. The “Money and Mission” panel featured, Danny Alpert, executive producer of See3 and Kindling Group, Julie Goldman, founder of Cactus Three Films, Sheila Leddy, executive director of the Fledgling Fund and Alyce Myatt, executive director of Grantmakers in Film and Electronic Media. The panelists shared tools and strategies for connecting with funders and defining and preserving a media project's social mission.

Before moving to the next panel, participants were given the floor to make announcements and promote their own initiatives, research projects, grants and internships.

The second panel of the day focused on the various ways that outreach and audience connection can be incorporated into social issue media, and provided new approaches in measuring impact. Serving on the panel were: Wendy Levy, director of Creative Programming of the Bay Area Video Coalition, Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar, makers of documentary film, Made in L.A., Scott Kirsner, author of Cinema Tech and Maia Ermita, director of Media That Matters Film Festival and outreach director at Arts Engine.

The third and final panel of the day asked, “What happens when you make a beautiful film about a dark subject?” Panelists engaged the audience in a discussion of how to marry the ethics of media making with the aesthetic choices required to make powerful art. On the panel were Sean Fine, filmmaker of War Dance, Cara Mertes, director of the Sundance Documentary Film Program and Thomas Allen Harris, director of Chimpanzee Productions.

The Making Your Media Matter conference ended with a reception on Friday evening full of excited participants teeming with ideas and inspiration.

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