Blog posting by Brian McCormick, Film & Photo '12, FLEFF Intern, Wilbraham, MA

I'm currently in Park 220 for an ongoing meet up with FLEFF guests. Right now is new media artist and filmmaker Helen De Michiel, the brains behind the open space documentary project "Lunch Love Community." Come for any of these presentations -- it's FREE!

Here's the line-up: 10am --Rodrigo Brandão, Kino Korber Films  11--Helen De Michiel, Lunch Love Community, 1--Philip Mallory Jones, new media artist  2--Franklin Lopez, media activist , moderated by John Scott  3--Danny Schecter, moderated by Todd Schack

* * * * *

Tomorrow FLEFF will be doing the east boast premiere for Lunch Love Community (which I'll refer to as LLC), which will be a sit, watch, talk, interact screening. Now De Michiel will talk to us about her project, moderated by FLEFF co-director Patty Zimmerman.

De Michiel begins by introducing LLC by telling the story of a school in Berkley who decided to make a change toward the school lunch program.

(For further information about LLC, check out the other blogs about De Michiel's previous talks. In this blog post I'll try to cover the unique discussions during today's event.)

With LLC, there is this shift from hardcore advocacy work to more open space documentary form. De Michiel started from the beginning engaging with the community in Berkley. Just making lots of meetings and talking to different groups who are involved. It isn't supposed to be an advocacy film. "There's a very fine line," she says, "between the community people who want you to promote what they're doing, and you having the freedom to see the story as it really is."

On the project's mosaic structure and slow media idea: De Michiel wrote an essay back in early 200s about "slow film." These films that takes years to produce and give you time to go very deeply into a topic, perhaps into a story that you didn't start off with (which can be the case with many documentary films).

One audience member has been following what's going on in Berkley, working with problems of childhood obesity in California, and her work to educate kids on nutrition and how they have the tools to better their eating habits.  In an environment where there's so many extremes, she says, you need to come in and tell stories so people can find their own solutions.

De Michiel talks about how, as an artist, she needed to be sensitive to the kind of story that she wanted to tell.

To give people an idea of the project, she is showing one of the LLC webisodes off the website. After watching, an audience member says that he actually does see a strong narrative in this video, and he asks, "How do we understand this project?"

De Michiel says how there are gaps in between the pieces which have "different flavors and textures" which can incite different responses and discussions. She says how it shouldn't be dependent on the heavy persuasive qualities of a film. It should instead be a way of presenting something that can people can be surprised by or made aware of. Co-director Tom Shevory comments how you can walk away and say 'Wow, what a great idea!', from which another viewer in the room says that it is "even more persuasive than an advocacy film."

One asks De Michiel about a sequel, and she responds in her wonderfully food-linguistic dialogue: "These were only supposed to be little appetizers."

The next episode that she gives us a taste of opens with a women identifying "the cheetohs epidemic" to the laughter of the audience. This webisode contrasts wonderfully with the previous webisode, taking a very humorous and even more light-hearted approach to the video, showing the students at Berkley doing science experiments with burning Cheetohs.

What I'm finding from these quick webisodes is how much it excites the audience and gets people talking about food and issues surrounding food. That's what this project does: open up dialogue and give people ideas and awareness.

Be a part of the dialogue! Come tomorrow at 12:00 Noon with Lunch Love Community webisodes on healthy food for public schools, with film director Helen De Michiel, chef and cookbook author Julie Jordan, and public health professor Stewart Auyash.

Blog posting written by Shawn Steiner, Film, Photography, and Visual Arts '14, FLEFF Intern, Elkridge, MD

Coming to you straight from Park 220, a.k.a. the "Disco Lounge," is a party of new media artists. Right now we have Helen De Michiel, Laura Deutch, and Phillip Mallory Jones all sitting here talking with students and each other.

Their comments from the industry are enlightening. They talk about the industry, their own work, independence, and unemployment. It's hard to track when each one has such interesting things to say, but here we go.

Dr. Zimmermann provided the introductions and a short conversation before fellow blogger Shea Lynch started a long discussion about the artists' favorite subjects. Which is all you need to get these brilliant minds rolling.

Helen provided us with some insight into the industry and how to get started working in this difficult field. Laura was able to talk about working in the documentary field and building up trust with who she works with. Then, with some support from both Laura and Helen, Phil began his discourse.

Phillip started with, "It's internal." A great point from which to dive in. "It has to do with getting something out... What I'm always doing is getting something out of here. It's a signature." An amazing look into the mind of the artist.

Helen continued with "Art does not refer to a particular set of rules or forms or materials as it once did." It is a "sensorium that is different than domination." She urges the students to do what we want to do. However, we should know that it may not allow us to live indefinitely. We still should do it! Especially in such a fluid world. We just need to accept that "today you may be drinking wine. But, tomorrow you may be picking grapes."

Laura jumped in on the conversation to talk about how we are working in new organizational formats. The consumer based world is something that we need to work and live in. We need to take on a new form of life.

We come back to Helen. She says that we will be able to live off of the skills that we know. Even though, as Phil alerted us, we will most likely become unemployed. Working in this industry is pushing the pain boundaries. Phil even asks us, "Where do you want to take the pain? What matters?"

The conversation continued, delving deeper and deeper into everyone. All of the students are on the edge of their seats, taking in every piece of information.

It is impressive what these intellectuals are working on right now.

Laura is working on Messages in Motion, a project in which she works to create and produce the short form documentary. Helen is working on Lunch Love Community, a web series in which she documents the development of food in California public schools. Phil also explained how he is working is Second Life to help work with the qualifications of elementary school teachers through a module. All impressive pieces of work.

They continued with how everything is such a collective space. Dr. Zimmermann then educated us on Singapore and how it is a different experience from the U.S. The work more on a flat, fluid scale than the pyramid employed here.

New media is becoming the way of the future. The people themselves are becoming the market, you must learn skills and use them in order to market yourself in order to get a break. Also, leadership skills are vital to success.

Collaboration is perhaps the most important method of creating projects. They pressed the necessity of education and personal growth in this fluid world. Everything is always moving and you have to go with the flow.

Now, we have the final words of advice from each one:

Helen stuck with what she has been saying the whole time, market yourself, learn, and get leadership skills.

Phil went philosophical and said "Take your show on the road." Work with a group and get out into the world.

Laura said, just go out into the world and talk to people! Get out of your comfort zone.

I wish I could've gone even more in depth, but I myself was enthralled by the conversation. Luckily, the guests will be here for another few days and there are many opportunities to see them. Soon, I will post up a few key events that should be seen. Come back soon! We have many bloggers around doing this everywhere. FLEFF is everywhere!

Helen's screening will be Saturday at noon at Cinemapolis. She will be presenting Lunch Love Community.

Phillip is actually presenting at 4 p.m. in Studio A. So if you can go check it out!

Blog was written by Kelsey Greene, Documentary Studies and Production, '13, FLEFF intern, Buffalo, New York

Now, we are discussing the issues brought up in the film.  Some of the main topics involved are hazardous chemicals and oil drilling in the Arctic. 

This has been so fast paced!  Now, he is informing us why he went to the Arctic in the first place and his lifestyle up there.  

I don't want to give too much away because he is going to be at Cinemapolis on Sunday at 2:10 p.m.  You should go to his screening and ask questions you want answers to!  

He is very interesting and very passionate about his work.     

Blog was written by Kelsey Greene, Documentary Studies and Production, '13, FLEFF intern, Buffalo, New York

I am now in the front row watching Helen DeMichiel's presentation. 

She is telling us about how she started Lunch Love Community in 2009 with co-producer and director Sophie Constantinou.  To emphasize her great character she says, "You can't do it alone, you have to have teams of people and lots of skills," in reference to the new media documentary approach.  

Helen has had lots of experience in the media field.  She's made a feature film, made lots of installations, and knows a lot about different aspects of media.

After a brief introduction she is now showing us a short webisode called The Whole World in a Small Seed, which is about a gardening program in one of the schools in Berkley.

The main focus of her presentation is to tell the story of why and how she started Lunch Love Community.

She says they started with the idea of a feature length hour documentary, but due to different challenges faced, they decided to "become part of the media revolution as artists."  She is telling us about their decision to use webisodes (she chuckles after saying the new word).  

An interesting discussion she makes is the comparison of a webisode to a segment.  

• a news segment goes in gets story and that’s it
• with the webisodes they are trying to work against that
• She is interested in slow media as a filmmaker rather than "fast media" (segments) 

She now is showing us a slide that has a chart titled "Connectors."  The chart shows shows the increase in active website users throughout four months.  She says a layering effect of sharing, offering, gifting and promotion lead to the increase in an interactive dialogue with the community and a growing internet audience.  

To wrap up, she summarizes some of the things she has learned through the project.  She said she has learned simple architecture works best for outline and it is important to recognize that not one size fits all.  

She said she is starting to see the issues the project addresses in a much deeper way.  

In her final concluding mark she says "the viewers are not viewers anymore they are users,."  Her push is to tell people to watch and share, watch and share!  

Make sure you get involved in as many ways as you can!  You can visit the Lunch Love Community website, become a fan of Lunch Love Community on Facebook, and/or see more of Helen and learn about the issues and the project here at FLEFF!  She will be participating in a discussion with Laura Deutch tomorrow at 1:10 in Park 220 and presenting at Cinemapolis on Saturday at noon.   

 Blog by Brian McCormick, Film & Photo '12, FLEFF Intern, Wilbraham, MA

Helen De Michiel is visiting the FLEFF intern class today to give a presentation on non-fiction filmmaking and talk about her open space documentary project "Lunch Love Community."

Looking around I might not be the only intern blogging right now -- so you might get a few different perspectives on this event!

Just as with the Uncorked! premiere, De Michiel encourages us to take out our mobile devices and go to her website, and engage with the media on the website while she presents. This is what it is about: innovation. As she says to us now, "You have to come up with new ways of doing things."

Now she is showing us video clips that can be found on the site of the big screen. The video is of an elementary school undergoing the lunch reform movement.

I'm doing exactly what she suggested and looking at her website lunchlovecommunity.org -- feels wrong to be web surfing in class! However, this website is amazingly engaging. Quoting from its 'About' page:

"The Lunch Love Community Documentary Project explores this community-based school lunch reform movement, and how passionate and dedicated people coming together can change the way their children eat, how they think, and how they learn in school."

She has just finished showing the webisode, and she asks questions like "How can teachers come together and change the ways they think about food that they cook and grow and how that's connected to the environment?" and "How do you change people's eating habits?"

Initially they had funding problems for Lunch Love Community during 2009 due to the recession, and they were getting funding mainly from non-profit organizations (working independently). She says to us, a group of students engaged with and/or studying film, "When you are an artist, obstacles and challenges force you to be creative." For Lunch Love Community, they went away from the idea of doing a long film and instead making short films that would be easier to get out to people, by means of the web and on mobile devices: hence, webisodes!

She is showing us now another webisode about the lunch reform movement at Berkley Unified School District, giving a behind-the-scenes look in the kitchens of how they prepare the foods and where they are getting it. The webisode is comprised of footage of the kitchens, footage of the children, and interviews with the administration and people pushing the food reform initiative.

She emphasizes that just because they make a great website does not mean people will come to it. They also are working with giving the audience an idea of "what to do next" after absorbing the intense experience of watching the documentary.

What they (De Michiel and the people behind Lunch Love Community) have found is that "connector" people are what make a real difference in the new media environment (i.e. bloggers!).

Following her presentation, De Michiel has opened up to questions from the interns. One of the questions is about how to get the webisodes to appeal to people, and De Michiel describes how all of these stories are meant to build over time, since they aren't necessarily linked. She is also hit with the money question: How does an independent documentary filmmaker spend hundreds and thousands of hours on a project and still have time to support themselves? The benefit is that she has all the creative freedom in the world, however, we still really need to look at how creative artists can put out all of this material and still sustain a living.

Tomorrow there will be a meet up with De Michiel and Laura Deutch (another independent documentary filmmaker) at 1:10pm.

Saturday will be a screening of her project Lunch Love Community at Cinemapolis at noon.

Take the chance to ask her your own questions about Lunch Love Community and independent filmmaking!

Blog posting by Brian McCormick, Film, Photo & Visual Arts '12, FLEFF Intern, Wilbraham, MA

This is a reminder that THIS FRIDAY, 4/15 at 11am in Park 220, there will be a FLEFF lab meet up with new media/film director Helen De Michiel.

Taken from her FLEFF bio: "Michiel is director of the Lunch Love Community webisode open space documentary project. Her 1995 feature film Tarantella, starring Mira Sorvino, won the Audience Award at the 1996 Torino International Woman’s Film Festival. Her documentary, Turn Here Sweet Corn (1990) was seen nationally on the PBS series POV, receiving awards from Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Earthpeace International Film Festival and the American Film & Video Festival."

Don't miss this chance to meet up and engage in conversation with such a revelational artist in person!

Michiel will also be here to talk on Thursday, 4/14 at 1:10pm in Park 220. Here open space documentary "Lunch Love Community" will be playing this Saturday, 4/16 at 12:00 noon at Cinemapolis. Just look at the film's website -- it's incredible!

REMEMBER: All of these on-campus events are FREE (most Cinemapolis events charge admission), so get out there! Keep up with the on-campus schedule so you don't miss any of these gems.

There is a saying amongst past FLEFF attendees: "There has never been a FLEFF event that I did not enjoy!"

Blog posting written by Yukino Kondo, Integrated Marketing Communications & Drama, ’14, FLEFF Intern, Tokyo, Japan. 

I have not been keeping up with the blogging in a while but I am back! And this time, this is a definite!

I wanted to let you all know that there is a meet up with Helen De Michiel at 1:10 pm in Park 220 on April 14. She will not actually be there because she will be in Madagascar. However, the meet up will be a live skype with her to Madagascar!

Helen De Michiel is a director, writer, and a producer. She is a founder for Thirty Leaves, which is a production organization “to frame independent media work [she] generates and collaborate with others to create.” She is currently also a co-director at National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture. Her efforts are put into film, television and video installations. Her feature film, Tarantella was shown at the Seattle Film Festival and the Mill Valley Film Festival in 1995. She holds a MFA in film and visual arts from University of California, San Diego.

This event is quite exciting for probably most aspiring filmmakers and me because firstly, the event gives us a chance to meet up with a successful filmmaker and hear stories from her. It is always helpful to talk to those who are in the business and gain knowledge about the real world. Secondly, I am interested in how a skype conversation would work in an environment with a lot of audience. I am so used to skyping my friends one to one that I cannot imagine how it would be like with multiple people. It is an indication of how useful technology can be and how far it has come.

So, please, come to the event! It will be an interesting experience for all us, especially students who are studying film.

Blog was written by Kelsey Greene, Documentary Studies and Production, '13, FLEFF intern, Buffalo, New York

The Lunch Love Community webisodes will be screened on Saturday April 16 at Cinemapolis.  To match the subject of lunch, the event will be held at noon and food will be sold for those hungry just thinking about the topic!  Film director Helen De Michiel is coming all the way from California to take part in discussions about her website and the issues it addresses.  To deepen the discussion, chef and cookbook author Julie Jordan will be present along with Ithaca College public health professor Stewart Auyash.  If you like food and love to take part in intellectual engagement this event is for you!  

Blog post written by Gena Mangiaratti, Journalism ‘13, FLEFF Intern, Feeding Hills, Massachusetts

I recently had the opportunity to speak on the phone with Helen De Michiel, who, with fellow filmmaker Sophie Constantinou, produced and directed the Lunch Love Community. According to the film’s website, they call it their “open space documentary project.”
The documentary, released online in the form of six webisodes, explores the community-based efforts in Berkeley, California to reform the school lunch program.

De Michiel will be screening and discussing the Lunch Love Community at noon on Saturday, April 16 at Cinemapolis. Accompanying her will be chef and cookbook author Julie Jordan and public health professor Stewart Auyash.

I’ve divided the interview into two parts.

Part 1:

GM: Why did you decide to take on this project about lunch reform, and what were you hoping to find out?

HD: I really wanted to explore this story because it contained all really amazing elements that were really rich and kind of unknown.

If you just vaguely knew about whatever happened with school lunch in Berkeley, you would just know about a couple of heroes who people think of, [such as] Alice Waters, who started the restaurant Chez Panisse. It is really famous and kind of got the "delicious revolution" going in the 1980s. She was involved, but when I first started, I started finding out how many community members really worked hard over the years to get a food policy enacted and then make these changes.

I wanted to find out how individual citizens work together to change policies and institutions that were very entrenched.

Then I wanted to also find out how change develops out of conflict and opportunities. When there's conflict, there are also possible opportunities that open up.

I also wanted to find out how obstacles can create new ways of doing things creatively. For example: When there's a challenge, like how do we really change these horrible school lunches? Well, how do we do it creatively — given all the different obstacles that we’re coming up against? It is something I started to find out they did really interestingly in Berkeley.

Finally [I wanted to find out] how this town really is a model that can inspire other people to do it themselves.

It was a story with many many different layers to it. I really was intrigued by those different layers of the story, because when you talk about food, you talk about something that is really fundamental to people. It intercepts with politics, with pleasure, with nutrition, and heath.

Food is really a fundamental part of our lives and it intercepts with all kinds of social issues.

GM: Can you tell more about how food can be a part of social issues?

HD: The politics of food is very big right now. Even just in the news recently, the FDA is looking into what possible health hazards may come from food coloring.

Another thing that's come up recently in the last few days is how our health might be impacted by food that is held in containers that have BPA plastic. That's one level, one very fundamental level of things.

Another thing, of course, is where does your food come from? Are there food deserts in towns that people live in? Here on the west coast, even in places like the Bay Area that have an abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables all year round, in communities like Berkeley and Oakland there are still neighborhoods that are food deserts — which means the only place you could walk to, to buy anything to eat, is possibly a corner liquor store. There aren't supermarkets in the area so people are forced to eat just really horrible junk food or go and eat at a fast food restaurant. So that’s a really big issue around here politically.

Where does your food come from is another one. [From] how far away is it shipped in? How much fuel does it take?

There's a movement here to really eat locally, which I know that you have in Ithaca as well. Another thing of course is organics: Can you afford it? What does it mean?

So the politics of food can extend to all areas of our lives. When it intercepts with health and the health of children it becomes really important. Now in this recession, 25 percent of children in this country go hungry. For many of them, the food that they are served at school, especially if they're able to qualify for free breakfast and lunch, may be the only meals that they get in their day.

Another thing is, for example, in a lot of households children don't eat meals with their parents. Their parents may not even know how to cook so they are kind of forced to eat processed food or go out to, again, fast food restaurants.

GM: What is an example of a change that has been instilled as part of the lunch reform?

HD: What happens in Berkeley, in the cooking and gardening curriculum that's in the public schools, is children work in gardens as part of their academics, and they are also able to take cooking classes.

They not only learn to cook, but they learn geography [and] social studies. They learn about history, all through the cooking lessons that they have in the classroom.

Then, that same food that they cooked in the classroom reappears in different ways in the school program. So they are introduced to new kinds of eating possibilities in the classroom with their peers, and then they try it at school lunch as well — because you can't completely change people's eating habits right away. It takes a long time.

So, for example: Let’s say you're at a high school that all of a sudden had fresh organic food. Chances are, most high school students, if they hadn't been exposed to it, aren't really going to go for it. But if they had cooking and gardening classes and a nutritious school lunch program from when they were in kindergarten, it would be completely normal and they would probably be a lot more exploratory in what they try.

GM: Was there any significance to the film taking the form of internet webisodes?

HD: The full-length film is still going to be made, probably as a one-hour documentary story.

What happened was, in this recession period, it's been very difficult to raise money to make that full-length film. My partner Sophie Constantinou and I had accumulated a lot of material from 2009 and 2010.

This story, and the interest in school lunch, was really getting pretty significant in the country, especially after Michelle Obama decided that combating obesity was going to be one of her issues.

So we thought to ourselves: The internet and broadband capabilities are getting to be much more robust than they used to be, so why don't we make some small little stories — little webisodes — that can be shared?

We'll really use these connection technologies to see about new ways of distributing documentary and making documentaries.

It's really like the form followed the function. The function was, we wanted to get some short stories out there before the long film was made, build a community of people who could use these short pieces because you can take them freely and embed them on websites. You can download them; you can do whatever you want with them. So we're giving them away for free.

I used this as a research project in a way to explore how film is going to open up new possibilities on the internet, both in terms of the way that it's made and the way that it reaches people, and what people do with it afterwards. It's a very developing process right now; it’s evolving.

We're really learning right now about the limitations and the possibilities of creating short films online, and how they fit into the big picture. We have to look at the internet as a new medium where we make things differently. We have to frame the media that we make and put it out there in a different way.

To read part two, scroll down or click the link below:

Q & A with Helen De Michiel, new media producer of Lunch Love Community – Part 2

Blog post written by Gena Mangiaratti, Journalism ‘13, FLEFF Intern, Feeding Hills, Massachusetts

This is part 2 of the Q & A with Helen De Michiel, new media producer of Lunch Love Community. If you haven’t read part 1 yet, click the link below.

Q & A with Helen De Michiel, new media producer of Lunch Love Community – Part 1

Part 2:

GM: Some of your past work has also focused on local topics, such as your 1990 documentary Turn Here Sweet Corn, which was made in Minneapolis at a time you were living there. In Berkeley, where you are living now, you made the Lunch Love Community. How do you decide on which issues to cover in your documentaries?

HD: Yeah. I’m not really coming from a journalism background. I come from an art background, so I don't always just think of “covering” a story, because that's more journalism, which I could have been but didn't. So it's a very mysterious process.

I think what happens, is a person really feels connected to a particular story in some way. They really feel for it. It excites them.

This story, like I said before, was so rich and full of nuances. Plus it had so much to do with children and activism and food — and I kept finding out new things that really intrigued me.

I knew it was something I could stick with for a few years, which is really what it takes to make a film: A long time. It takes at least two years for most people, if not longer. Maybe three to five years for other people.

So you always think to yourself, do I want to live with this for five years, and if so, is there enough there that I can really drill deeply into this story?

For me, a wonderful thing about this particular project is, because it's local to where we live right now, I’m able to really get into the story slowly, and learn about people and talk to a lot of different people, and kind of understand things over time.

What I thought it was about two years ago is not what I think the story is about today.

That's very different than filmmakers or newsmakers who kind of parachute in, do a story, cover it as a segment, and then leave. The Berkeley school lunch program has been covered extensively on the major news network. They’re always doing stories about it, but really it's very superficial.

It takes a long time, just as if you were to write a long magazine article or a book about a particular story. It takes you time to get into it and understand what all the different nuances are and figure out what your storyline is, and your narrative and your theme.

That’s really why I think it’s really great to be able to live somewhere and spend a lot of time with the subject.

GM: When you are creating films about local issues, do you make a conscious effort to try to present the subject in a way that globalizes it?

HD: I think that comes with these kinds of films when you do engagement activities afterwards. In this case, what you'll see in the events in Ithaca are ways that these short little stores inspire conversation among the people in the audience.

That's really their intention — is to inspire conversations.

They say, ‘Well they may have done that in Berkley, but let's talk about a way that we can actually start things going in Ithaca.’ It gets people to open up and talk about their own world and all the different kinds of issues that they may be facing.

It's not really that the film itself is going to show you everything that's going on in the United States in terms of food reform because that's impossible to do.

Really what it's doing is just trying to get people emotionally engaged and interested in something that hadn't occurred to them, and then talk about it and see where it leads them in their real lives.

GM: You made the independent feature film Tarantella in 1995. Can you tell me about the differences between making feature films and making documentaries?

HD: If you're making feature films in the United States right now you really have to make a decision to be in the film industry. You would probably make a decision to live in Los Angeles, maybe work in television or film, and really specialize in a specific area of feature filming making. You might be a director of photography. You might be a producer. You might be a writer. You might be an editor.

But you have to live in the urban environment where everybody else is working in this industry.

If you make documentary films… it's really wide open and different, in a lot of ways, from fiction filmmaking. It's not so tied to an industry, per say, which has a lot of particular pathways from the creation all the way through the distribution.

Because it's very complex, you have a few more opportunities to live in different places, to find stories that haven't really been told before. I also think you use these other new communication technologies to create work that can be really groundbreaking and different.

I think you can do that with fiction film making as well. It can happen independently, but it's much stronger when it happens within the frame of professionals who work in feature filmmaking rather than just trying to do it on your own.

But with documentary there are communities all over the country of filmmakers who have been doing really amazing work and not needing to live in Los Angeles or New York.

So I think it's a little wider open. At least, it has been for me creatively.

GM: What advice would you offer to college students, especially those who are studying film?

HD: I would say to college students now you're really lucky because the future, for now, online is yours to create.

So I would say there’s a few things.

Don't take the internet for granted. It's free and open now for experimentation and doing these kind of really interesting transmedia projects where you can …do all kinds of mixed media projects, because that's really what people are getting used to.

That’s what they want, and you can affect people all over the world through very strategic use of social media. That's for you to create.

At the same time, we all have to remember that the internet may not always be free. One really important thing is, in order to keep its freedom for you to create and experiment and make projects that really connect people, we have to work on making sure that the internet remains free, and that we always have network neutrality, and the corporations don't try to snatch it away and hold it themselves so that we have to go through gates and pay. If that’s the case, then projects like Lunch Love Community won't be able to exist.

Just think. Think about it because, for example, if we did not have free internet and we only had to go through iTunes, you’d be paying for every single one of these webisodes — even if I didn't want you to pay for them, because that’s the way it's going to be set up.

It's just something to keep in mind for your generation. You want to know a lot about policy. You want to understand where the corporations are headed. You want to make your views known in order to be able to create freely, and construct the next infrastructure that the digital 21st century is going to have.

-----

Save the date!: 12 pm on Saturday, April 16 at Cinemapolis, De Michiel will be screening and discussing the Lunch Love Community, along with chef and cookbook author Julie Jordan and public health professor Stewart Auyash.

Blog was written by Kelsey Greene, Documentary Studies and Production, '13, FLEFF intern, Buffalo, New York

As the FLEFF week approaches, my calendar is filling up with events I want to attend.  There will be so many different opportunities to take part in!

If you have been following the intern blog, you may notice several of the interns have written blogs about their top five film choices on campus or down at Cinemapolis.  Since I am studying different forms of documentary and new media in Dr. Zimmerman's class this semester, I have a strong interest in the new media artists who will be visiting.  

To go along with the concepts involved with new media, I do not want to stick to the traditional "top five" list.  Instead, I have chosen four new media artists that I am looking forward to.  I also will not number them because I do not believe I have the right to rank them at this point without attending their presentations or discussions.  

• Helen De Michiel- I am fond of her Lunch Love Community project because I have academic interests in the fields of agriculture, nutrition, and education.
• Laura Deutch- Her project Messages in Motion seems very appealing to me.  I love the notion of teaching youth how to use use film in a positive and productive way.
• Phillip Mallory Jones- Based on his bio, he seems very educated and experience in the new media field.  I believe I could learn a lot from listening to him.  
• Monica Haller- Her project Riley and His Story has an interesting concept and goal.  The intellectual preparation behind her works seem intriguing to me.  

This list is merely a small, categorized sample of the guests I am looking forward to seeing at FLEFF.  I believe every experience I am able to have with the film festival will expand my intellectual horizon.  I cannot wait for the events to begin!