Last year, we ran for President. (Kinda.) Now, Blights Out is running for Mayor! (Sort of!) While Blights Out isn’t planning a collective occupation of the Mayor’s office (yet), we are launching a year-long creative campaign called ‘Blights Out for Mayor’––a series of 12 billboards and 5 yard sign designs that call for and suggest entry points into a Truth and Reconciliation process that would redress the racist/classist/disaster capitalist policies and values imposed after Katrina. These messages seek to expand the horizon of our political imaginary, calling us to reevaluate our society’s relationship to property, land, and money. It is a call to action, a call to #PutHousingFirst.Click here to change this text
Archive for category: storytelling
Photography Expanded at Magnum Foundation
By Hanul Bahm
On Thursday, June 8, Magnum Foundation presented Photography Expanded, a daylong presentation and panels on collaborative documentary practices.
Ford Foundation: The Art of Democracy: Creative Expression and American Greatness
By Darren Walker
Good evening, everyone. Thank you, Thelma Golden, for your gracious introduction—and, more importantly, for your groundbreaking, visionary leadership at the Studio Museum in Harlem. And thank you, all, for this extraordinary honor: the privilege of delivering this 30th annual lecture in tribute to the incomparable Nancy Hanks.
Filmmaker Mag: Five Questions with Water Warriors Director Michael Premo
By Paula Bernstein
I saw Water Warriors in February, just a month after Donald Trump’s inauguration, during its world premiere at Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula, Montana.
BroadwayWorld: Arts Organizations on the Importance of the National Endowment for the Arts
By Alexa Criscitiello
The overall assumption regarding an interest in the arts seems to be one of partisan politics. Its value is an often-debated topic in a divided nation whose idealistic chasm grows wider by the day.
This Fine Day We Wake With The Poets
By Wendy Levy
On Monday, January 30, award-winning poet Kaveh Akbar posted poems on his Twitter account by poets from nations banned by the immigration block. Libya, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen—incredible words of vision, hope, truth.
IndieWire: Stories of Trump’s America: How Documentary Filmmakers Plan to Escape the Liberal Bubble
By Anthony Kaufman
On November 12 of this year, Impact Partners executive director and documentary producer Dan Cogan wrote a powerful call to action on Facebook. “The last 4 days have been a horror. The next 4 years will be worse,” he wrote. “And yet my pulse is quickening, because there is so much to be done, and we, the documentary film community, are in pole position to make a huge difference.”
Let Us Cover the World in Gold
By Myah Overstreet
When I first began working on this project, to curate an inspiring collection of media created by youth in 2016, I didn’t know where to start—I didn’t know who to contact, what artists to recruit, or what kind of media I was really going for. The only thought that truly gave me inspiration was the thought, the vision, of living in a world transformed by art that young minds created, and how much I yearned to create this world.
NAMAC Joins the Conversation at ArtChangeUS REMAP: Detroit
NAMAC Executive Director Wendy Levy participated in REMAP: Detroit and was inspired by the conviction of the communities in the rooms, the fearless examination of the challenges, and the celebration of the arts, in the broadest view, as an engine for transformation.
#DocsSoWhite: A Personal Reflection
By Renee Tajima-Peña
I once considered documentary to be a fallback for filmmakers of color who were shut out of the fiction universe. I was wrong. As it turns out, we may be more under-represented in nonfiction filmmaking. Sundance estimates the proportion of documentary directors of color screening at the festival to be around 15 percent. The Directors Guild of America estimates 82 percent of its narrative members are white males; it doesn't even bother to calculate documentarians.