For Immediate Release Contact: Robin Canfield, Curator of Good robin@actualitymedia.o rg Phone: 503-208-5042 Fax: 503-334-2844
TELLING STORIES TO ACCOMPLISH GOOD Students Making Documentaries To Change The World Portland, OR – A second year of documentary outreach programs has come to a close with the successful production of nine short documentaries about changemakers doing good works in different parts of Central America, made by students from many far parts of the world. Not only are these changemakers doing great work to help developing communities, but each and every Actuality Media crew member – usually university students or recent graduates – are on a track to change the world for the better. The dream of many filmmakers may be fame and glory, or more tangibly, film festivals, but the crews that recently came to Guatemala, Costa Rica and Nicaragua in 2012 came primarily to promote positive media and social change. This hasn't kept participants from their dreams – “Our Daughters For Sale,” is a short documentary made earlier in 2012 by an Actuality Media crew in Thailand. The video is about an organization trying a new approach to stop child sex trafficking, and it was recently selected by the ATOM Awards for the Best Tertiary Education Resource category. The entire crew for “Our Daughters For Sale,” was made up of students who had traveled north from Australia, while a usual documentary outreach crew has students from all over the world. So far this year film crew participants have been from Canada, The United States, Venezuela, South Korea, Australia, Russia, New Zealand, Taiwan, China and the United Kingdom. To reach a broader audience of filmmakers that can be ushered into the world of social enterprise and positive media, Actuality Media holds programs throughout the year with a focus on school breaks – especially the summer breaks of both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. The 2013 production schedule will see student crews making films on four different continents, with the 2013 Siem Reap outreach up next on the list, starting in January, 2013 in Cambodia. Actuality Media is a social enterprise that creates positive media. Actuality Media outreaches take top students to developing communities around the world to produce short documentaries that tell stories that matter about changemakers working to solve chronic social problems. For more information visit www.actualitymedia.org. ###