Stories That Work: Documentary as a powerful tool to spark social change
12 September 2019 at 7:15 am
In today’s fast-moving world, documentary stands-out as a unique and powerful tool to educate ourselves and spark social change.
Stories are an integral part of human culture – for thousands of years, we have used them to share our knowledge and connect with others. Amid a landscape of fake news and Twitter wars, stories that move and inspire are more important than ever.
In today’s fast-moving world, documentary stands-out as a unique and powerful tool to educate ourselves and spark social change. Documentaries are able to capture unscripted insights into humanity, contextualise situations and show us our world, raw and unfiltered. These human stories are able to create understanding, empathy and action where straight facts often fail.
Documentary Australia Foundation strives to empower independent filmmakers, philanthropists and advocates, to come together as modern day storytellers, at the forefront of social change.
Documentary Australia is committed to creating positive social change with film. That is why projects are supported by strategic outreach and impact campaigns, harnessing the emotion of these stories and transforming it into meaningful action.
Documentary Australia invites you to a day that explores documentary’s innate ability to place a human face on global issues, allowing audiences to connect with complex issues, creating powerful opportunities to incite social change.
Stories That Work is a festival of storytelling for social change on 16 October at Arts Centre Melbourne. The event features keynote addresses from recent high-impact documentaries as well as a showcase of emerging documentary storytellers. Presentations from 2040, The Staging Post and Ka-Ching Pokie Nation will examine the anatomy of successful campaigns and the ongoing social changes they are driving.
2040 is award-winning director Damon Gameau’s latest project, a documentary that follows Damon as he embarks on a journey to explore a simple premise – What could the world look like by 2040 if we implemented the best solutions available to us today?
This visual-letter to younger generations, cuts through the “doomsday” noise, showing us we have the ability to change the trajectory of the climate change crisis. This project showcases the ease of educating others through storytelling.
At Stories That Work, the team will speak about the launch of the film and the success of its impact campaign, “The Regeneration”.
The Staging Post follows two Afghan Hazara refugees, Muzafar and Khadim, as they establish the Cisarua Refugee Learning Centre, whilst stuck in Indonesia after Australia “stopped the boats”.
During the event, director Jolyon Hoff and Muzafar Ali, co-founder of Cisarua Refugee Learning Centre, will detail the educational revolution their first documentary inspired and provide insight on the many challenges they faced.
Additionally, showing first-hand that courageous people never give up, the team has never stopped filming in Cisarua and will also discuss their latest project The Staging Post 2.
The Alliance for Gambling Reform has been at the heart of Ka-Ching! Pokie Nation’s impact campaign – driving incredible reform since its launch in 2015.
Campaign director Tony Mohr will present the anatomy of their campaign, which resulted in Woolworths pulling out of the pokies industry, and outline how alignment and partnership between storytellers and advocates can have a significant impact.
Documentary Australia brings the passion of philanthropy together with powerful films to drive action. An important part of this is the support and development of filmmakers to ensure that important projects make it to screen.
On the day, guests will hear from these impact documentarians as they present their projects, demonstrate their passion and outline how they think it can drive change in their issue area.
Stories That Work is only possible with the support of Documentary Australia’s major event partners: AndyInc, Australia Communities Foundation, Australian Philanthropic Services, Film Victoria, Konica Minolta, Philanthropy Australia, Pro Bono Australia and Arts Centre Melbourne.
