Water t-shirt design contest to support @WellDone & their work in #Africa. Love it! http://t.co/ndiZQVYT #water #contest
March 14, 2011 @ LA Center Studios in downtown Los Angeles
The night kicks off with a VIP event in the VORTEX DOME at 6:30 p.m. with cocktail party in the FUTURE LOUNGE, a conceptual installation hosted by VORTEX IMMERSION MEDIA. The theater program begins at 7:30 pm with two shorts, the Global Girl Media Showcase and SLAP, continues with the feature film 9,000 Needles and concludes with a panel discussion on film, media and social change. The evening concludes with a networking reception in the lobby ending at 10:30 pm.
The feature film, 9,000 Needles, directed by Doug Dearth, is an inspiring story of hope and courage documenting one family’s unconventional journey through stroke recovery. The film is a semi-finalist for the Global Social Change Film Festival taking place April 13-17, 2011 in Ubud, Bali.
Shorts
Feature Film Presentation
Semi-Finalist of 2011 Global Social Change Film Festival
LEVAR BURTON – Actor/Director, Moderator & Guest Host
Actor, director and author LeVar Burton first came to prominence portraying Kunta Kinte in the 1977 award-winning ABC television miniseries ROOTS, based on the novel by Alex Haley. He is also widely known for his portrayal of Geordi La Forge on the syndicated science fiction series STAR TREK: The Next Generation and as the host of the PBS children’s series READING RAINBOW. Adding to his extensive media career, Burton is also the host and executive producer of a documentary entitled The Science of Peace. It investigates the science and technology aimed at enabling world peace. The documentary explores the forefront of both peace science and the concepts of noetic sciences, and was sponsored in part by the Institute of Noetic Sciences.
STEPHEN NEMETH – Founder & Head of Rhino Films
Stephen Nemeth formed and heads up Rhino Films, the independent film company that originated as a division of iconoclastic record label Rhino Records. He has produced ten films and executive produced fourteen others. He is also working with Amnesty International through Artists for Amnesty on developing and producing human rights related projects. His Producer credits include Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Why Do Fools Fall in Love, Dogtown and Z Boys, What We Do Is Secret , and the upcoming Radio Free Albemuth and You and I. He is in pre-production on Snake and Mongoose and The Surrogate. Nemeth executive produced the documentary War/Dance which was nominated for a 2008 Academy Award for Best Documentary; Fuel which won the Audience Award at the 2008 Sundance Film Festivall; Flow which was screened at both the Democratic and Republican Conventions, Pick Up The Mic, which premiered at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival, Climate Refugees which premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, Mr. Bitchin’ about artist Robert Williams which had its world premiere at LACMA in 2010, and Under the Boardwalk about the game of Monopoly. Nemeth is in production on numerous other documentaries including Beisbol, White Man’s Burden and films about George Plimpton and Budd Schulberg.
He serves on the boards of the Woodstock Film Festival, the Wildlife Ecostation, Wheels For Humanity, Children Uniting Nations, Shine On Sierra Leone, OneVoice, the Hollywood Film Festival, the Veggie Van Organization, the One Second Film Foundation, the advisory board of the Full Frame Documentary Festival, the dean’s board of UC Santa Cruz’s School for the Arts, and is a consultant for Admetech, a prostate cancer research foundation at the Harvard Medical School.
MIKKI WILLIS – Founder & CEO of Elevate Films
September 11th, 2001 marked a turning point in Mikki Willis’ life and career. Having been inside the twin towers just hours before they fell he helped to organize and lead a group of civilians who risked their lives to aid rescue workers. It was atop the rubble of the World Trade Center that the mission of Elevate was born. Since then Mikki Willis has dedicated his life to serving at the forefront of the conscious revolution. As the founder of Elevate Studios and Elevate Film Festival he is known as a pioneer and one of the most prolific creators of socially and environmentally conscious films and media.
Committed to walking-the-talk, Mikki and his team live and create together from their eco-conscious community in Ojai, California. As innovators of entertainment, transformation and technology, Summer of 2011 the Elevate team is launching a revolution in digital media distribution.
Mikki Willis is the recipient of the Conscious Life Humanitarian Award, a member of the Transformational Leadership Council, and serves on the board of the renowned youth program, Challenge Day.
Elevate’s website URL is also it’s mission: www.elevate.us
AMIE WILLIAMS – Executive Director & Co-Founder of GlobalGirl Media
Amie founded her own production company, Bal Maiden Films, in 1992, graduating form UCLA’s MFA program in Film Production at the dawn of the “digital revolution.” Taking advantage of these new technologies, her award-winning work has focused on giving voice to the margins, exploring new ways of telling stories, and developing projects across many cultures. From labor unions to African women’s micro-finance collectives, AIDS orphans to environmental truckers, Bal Maiden Films is interested in driving creative ideologies shaped for the unique challenges facing a world in constant flux. Never content to stay put when there is a rally, protest, election, or uprising to follow, Amie has been excavating stories from Siberia to Soweto, Tokyo to Nairobi, crossing borders, building bridges and pushing boundaries, as well as her art to activate dialogue and debate.
Her credits include NO SWEAT, (2006) about bad-boy clothing manufacturer American Apparel, which premiered at the AFI Film Festival and was broadcast on KQED and Current TV; FALLON, NV: DEADLY OASIS (2004) about a childhood leukemia cluster, an ITVS-funded film broadcast on PBS; STRIPPED AND TEASED: TALES FROM LAS VEGAS WOMEN (2001), broadcast on Canadian television; ONE DAY LONGER: THE STORY OF THE FRONTIER STRIKE (2002); and UNCOMMON GROUND: FROM LOS ANGELES TO SOUTH AFRICA (1994). These films have won numerous awards, including the International Documentary Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Media Grant, the SONY/Streisand Award for emerging female filmmakers, Pioneer Fund, Paul Robeson Fund, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Prior to her film career, she lived and worked in Kenya as a teacher and health-communications consultant for the Ford Foundation and CARE, International and recently founded the non-profit organization, Global Girl Media, which nurtures the voice and self expression of young girls in under-served communities and developing nations with a goal to inspire and empower a future generation of female “citizen broadcast journalists” around the world to speak out about the issues that affect them most.
DOUG DEARTH – Director / Producer / Editor
Doug’s producing career started in 1999 as Associate Producer on The Jack Bull, an HBO movie of the week. Recently, Doug again teamed up with New Crime Productions to co-produce the feature Grace Is Gone. Grace is Gone premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award: Dramatic and the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award. It was then picked up for distribution by The Weinstein Company.
Doug recently finished post-production on War, Inc., a film in which he served as Co-Producer and Second Unit Director. He was highly involved with the music for the film, Supervising the production of multiple songs performed in the film by Hilary Duff and working with the film’s composer, David Robbins, to develop the score, he was also very involved with creating the soundtrack for the film.
Doug served as Director and Producer on 9,000 Needles, which is the first film produced under the banner of his new production company, One In A Row Films.
GAYLA KRAETSCH HARTSOUGH, Ph.D. – Writer / Producer
Gayla Kraetsch Hartsough, Ph.D., Writer/Producer, has written award-winning feature and short film screenplays. She tackles social and political issues in her scripts and short films, which are based on her experiences as an entrepreneur, president of a management consulting firm (that has served 200 clients in 25 states and in 7 foreign countries), a soccer mom, and her international travels to more than 50 countries.
To learn how to become a stronger screenwriter, she has written and produced three shorts in the last three years. Her first two shorts have gone to 60 festivals to date. “A Pig’s Ear” (2008) is based on a true story in Appalachia. Her second short, “Slap” (2009), stars Clancy Brown and Mel Rodriguez and is directed by Grant Barbeito. Slap had its world premier in June 2009 at Palm Springs International Short Film Festival (1 of 320 selected out of 3,200 submissions) and has also screened at Denver Starz, Worldfest Houston (Gold Remy award), and Tribeca’s “American: Now and Here”. Her third short, “Heloise” (2010), is currently being released.
Her feature script awards, include “Blood and Water,” which has been a finalist in multiple screenplay competitions, “Last Days of the Caterpillar,” placed in the top 1% (32 out of 3,200 submissions) in the BlueCat Screenwriting contest in 2009; and “Heloise,” which won the Moondance Award at Moondance in 2009 and received a “Recommend” at CAA in 2010. Two of her scripts are optioned and she has another 6 completed feature scripts that she keeps refining.
She has a BS degree, Northwestern University, School of Communication; a Masters degree, Tufts University; Ph.D. and Masters degrees, University of Virginia; and a post-doctorate fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship Program, Princeton, NJ. She has completed the two-year Peer Program at Writers’ Bootcamp and has a certificate in feature screenwriting through UCLA Extension. She served on the Northwestern University Entertainment Alliance (NUEA) Board for three years, is on the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO)-Los Angeles Board, is a Women in Film (WIF) member, and is an Advisory Council member for Earth Protect.
Her full screenwriting resume is available at IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3115190
General Seating: $25
General seating for the theater program and panel discussion is available for a $25 donation.
VIP: $100
The VIP package, which includes premiere seating for the theater program and admission to the VIP pre-event, can be reserved for a $100 donation.
Proceeds support the Global Social Change Film Festival, which aims to create a space where activists, filmmakers, and local communities come together and use the power of film to promote progressive social change and intercultural understandings. Proceeds will also benefit c:3’s project Global Arts and Media Node.
LA Center Studios
Los Angeles Center Studios
1037 West 6th Street
Los Angeles, CA 90017
(213) 534-3000
Directions and Parking instructions
http://www.c3so.com/directions.html
Our Event will take place off the W. 6th Street Entrance.
You can park at the Athena Parking Lot at:
1037 W. 6th St., 90017
Drop by Drop: Water Stories, a video contest for youth created by the Social Change Film Festival & Institute (SCFFI), Channel G and EarthvisionZ, is now accepting submissions.
