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Our community participation process has made it possible to help communities and organizations address many diverse issues.

Our work originated with the pioneering activist media of People’s Video Theater and Survival Arts Media (PVT/SAM) in the 1970s, directed by Howard Gutstadt and Ben Levine. The video feedback approach used at Camp Jened helped spark the Disability Rights movement. The work is a significant part of the award-winning documentary Crip Camp, directed by Nicole Newnham and James LeBrecht and produced by Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground Productions, now streaming on Netflix.

Small Group and Community organizing - Training for Media Activism - Documentaries for Public Policy and Community Education - Television Campaigns

 

Training and Policy:

  • Sickle Cell Anemia Prevention

  • STD Awareness / Prevention

  • Teen Parenting

  • Health Disparities Training & Policy
    Development for Elderly

  • Transgender

  • New Immigrants

  • Homelessness

  • Addiction

  • Community Mental Health

  • Addressing Stigma

  • Parenting Education

  • Home Healthcare Training

  • Air & Water Pollution and Remediation

  • Early Childhood Education

 

Television Campaigns: Vaccination, HIV/AIDS, Drunk Driving Prevention, Child Abuse Prevention, Dental Health.

Scenes from documentaries, clockwise from top left: Educational and policy videos promoting early childhood education; a homeless man describes navigating the health care system: “I live every life to die”; breaking down health disparities for the elderly.

 

Video feedback that addressed community trauma helped revive the story of a case of sexual assault and murder of Native Americans. (From a developing documentary: Search for Justice by Ben Levine.)

The same approach uncovered and helped address community trauma from the terrorism of the KKK against French-Canadian immigrant communities in the documentary film by Ben Levine, Réveil-Waking Up French.

A community video feedback process CONDUCTED BY PEOPLES VIDEO THEATER led to the retraining of an entire police force in South Orange, New Jersey for a project funded by the US Department of Justice.

Funded by: the US Center for Disease Control (CDC), the National Science Foundation (NSF), Maine Community Foundation, National Institutes for Mental Health (NIMH), the US Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services, the March of Dimes Foundation, Cornell Medical School, and the Maine Department of Health and Human Services.