Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Watch the UNAFF Overview of the SFIFF... Send UNAFF Your Film!

Tomorrow is the first day of the 53rd annual San Francisco Internataional Film Festival. The festival runs from April 22 through May 6 and features over 100 international films. Pictured is a still from the French/Belgium entry "The Day God Walked Away" featuring a Tutsi woman left alone to make her way through Genocide ravaged Rwanda. If you're not of a serious mein when you hit the festival screening halls in San Francisco, there are plenty of whimsical titles including "Air Doll" and "Constantin & Elena" and live interviews with icons such as grammy award winner T Bone Burnett. Check it all out at the SFIFF website.

SEE AN OVERVIEW OF SFIFF right here on our channels! Last week in our studios we taped the annual overview of the festival produced by UNAFF's Jasmina Bojic. Jasmina interviewed several of the participating filmmakers and showed clips from their films. This is always a worthy watch. So check out upcoming times to watch and be inspired. Then run on up to the City and catch some thought-provoking films.

WANT TO PARTICIPATE? CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS! Right around the corner, the United Nations Association Film Festival, in its 13th year, seeks submissions for the festival scheduled in October. DEADLINES are May 15 for early submission, May 25 for regular submission and June 1 for late submission. UNAFF seeks films that raise our awareness of global social issues and foster our understanding of our relationship to our global community and our responsibility to ourselves and to one another in community.

UNAFF has a amazing track record and is held at venues right here in the midpeninsula and in the City. The Media Center is proud to be an official sponsor of the festival. The festival keeps growing under the steady guidance of founder Jasmina Bojic, a Stanford lecturer and film critic. And dedicated Media Center volunteer Cathy Keys somehow finds additional time to devote herself to UNAFF during festival season. UNAFF has a big mission but they accept small, quiet films as well as "big picture" films. Check out their website for all the details. And think about finishing up that film you've been working on in time for the deadline of June 1. In any case plan on attending the festival where the world comes to us in our own backyard. Don't miss it.

Friday, April 9, 2010

Girls TV makes the news!

Girls TV, a Media Center after school television elective at the 49ers Academy in East Palo Alto is featured in this month's EPA Today!

Becca Fisher runs this program twice a week, as well as Video Production and TV Production electives. Girls TV has produced two (close to) full-length shows this year that are currently running on Channel 28!

The girls were lucky enough to be able to interview Henrietta Burroughs, host of "Talking with Henrietta" produced at the Media Center and editor of the EPA Today newspaper, for a "Women in Media" segment. This segment was part of a larger curriculum aimed to get female students excited about careers that are typically male-dominated.

Follow this link to read the article.

You can also watch the full interview with Henrietta as a segment in Episode 2 of Girls TV!

Supervisor Rose Jacobs Gibson Interview



San Mateo County Supervisor Rose Jacobs Gibson spoke very candidly in an hour-long discussion we had at the Media Center studio. Gibson recently completed a two year stint as President of the Association of Bay Area Governments - a regional body made up of council members and supervisors from 9 counties and 101 cities. She commented on a number of topics including the Palo Alto City Council objections to ABAG's allocation of new housing that needs to be planned for; the financial troubles to be faced by San Mateo County over the next couple of years; and the tough decision she had to make about whether to support same sex marriage in a county resolution. Supervisor Gibson has been in public office for 18 years now and tells of her plans after her current term ends in 2012. The full interview is on our YouTube Channel at: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheMediaCenter5#p/u/18/fn-xJxw5B4Y. Also some excerpts like the one above.

The interview will play on Channel 27 next week:
Tue, Apr 13th 9:00pm
Thu, Apr 15th 9:00pm
Sat, Apr 17th 5:00pm

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Greenlight Finalists have been announced! Congratulations!

The 5th Annual Greenlight Earth Day Film Festival finalists have been announced! We had an amazing group of submissions this year and we are proud to invite you to the Film Festival on April 15th where you can congratulate them in person! Winners will be announced!
Thursday, April 15th (7-9pm)
Cubberley Theater
4000 Middlefield Road
Palo Alto, CA 94303
Complete list of finalists (in random order):

Open Category
  • Composting PSA, Produced by Ian Jones & Sagesse Graham
  • Blowing in the Wind, Produced by Robert Corpus
  • Solar Cooker Benefits, Produced by Mary Bell Austin
  • Fossil Fuel Free Film, Produced by Matt Harnack
  • Lunch in a Can, Produced by Jim Skinner
High School Category
  • The Environmentalist, Produced by Nick and Patrick Sudhaus
  • 9 Ways to Go Green, Produced by Colin Marchon, Haelin Cho, Charlotte Barry
  • It’s Time to Conserve Water, Produced by Katie Kirsch
  • The Green Life, Produced by Hamilton Yu
  • Seeds of Change, Produced by Kimberly Fletcher, Blake Bowers
Middle School Category
  • What about the Sea?, Produced by Tiana Masnaghetti
  • Green in The Mirror, Produced by Sean Jawetz, Shaun Pike, Matthew Keller
  • Singing Green, Produced by Maya Benetar, Clara Cher
  • The Costs of Littering, Produced by Simran Arora, Pooja Belur
  • JunkBusters, Produced by Margaret Rosenthal, Matthew Seligson, Emily Zhang, Brittany Nguyen

Monday, April 5, 2010

National Program, 4/6 Tue Eve, Features Palo Alto Students

Tomorrow evening (Tuesday, April 6) at 8:30 PM, a new documentary involving Palo Alto high school students, will air on cable Channel 27. (You can view the webstream in real time here.) The documentary, entitled "Communities Uniting Against Hate," was produced as part of a series called “Not In Our Town”, by the Oakland, CA – based “Working Group.” It features stories from Palo Alto, Fremont, CA, Olympia, WA, Fort Collins, CO, Cleveland, OH and Southern Missouri. The program is being distributed by Link TV.

Not In Our Town (NIOT)
is a national movement that encourages and connects people who are responding to hate and working to build more inclusive communities.

Following "Communities Uniting Against Hate," the first NIOT documentary, entitled "Not In Our Town: Billings," will air on Channel 27 at 9:00 PM. That was a PBS documentary that told the story of how people in Billings, Montana joined together to respond to a series of hate crimes in their town. This simple, powerful story of citizens banding together struck a chord with audiences, and created a model that inspired viewers around the country to hold their own campaigns against intolerance. Now in its second decade, the Not In Our Town movement continues to grow.

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