Media That Matters 2012: Change for Good
This year's theme, "Change for Good," features conversations about how independent social change filmmakers can execute integrated campaigns that are strategic, action-oriented, and have enduring impact. You can check out more about this year’s presenters and register on the Center’s website.

Visiting Filmmaker Series Spring 2012 Schedule Announced
This Spring, the Center for Social Media welcomes filmmakers Suzan Beraza ("Bag It!"), Gerry Wurzburg ("Wretches and Jabberers"), Julia Reichert & Steven Bognar ("A Lion In The House"), and Heather Courtney ("Where Soldiers Come From") for the Spring 2012 Visiting Filmmaker Series. Click here to learn more about these upcoming screenings and master classes.

Best of Input: Television Out of the Box - The World’s Most Provocative Public Television Programs
The Center is proud to co-sponsor The Best of INPUT. Selections from the world’s most innovative and provocative productions by public broadcasters appear at venues around Washington through February 3rd during Best of INPUT. INPUT, the International Public Television Conference, is an annual producers’ screening and discussion showcase. Held in cities around the world since 1978, the conference reviews submissions from over sixty countries. A number of the international jury-selected finalists from the May 2011 conference in Seoul will be screened and discussed. All programs are free but reservations may be required for certain screenings (see individual listings) To learn more, visit the Center for Social Media’s website.

NEW Opportunity for Filmmakers Attending Media That Matters: Designing for Impact Clinic
Media strategist and co-author of the report Social Justice Documentary: Designing for Impact, Jessica Clark, will be hosting 15 minute sessions with filmmakers to answer questions about strategic design for your project. To register for a time, please contact Jessica at jessica@buildtheecho.net. You must be registered for the conference in order to participate, so register today!

Changing More Than Change
Documentaries may not be changing change, but they're changing just about everything else. Sundance Film Festival 2012 featured a panel this weekend on "How Documentaries are Changing Change," but none of the panelists seemed to agree with the premise. CNN news anchor Soledad O'Brien led a lively discussion with Robert Redford, Nick Fraser and Sheila Nevins. Read more...

Designing for Impact Case Study - State of Fear: The Truth about Terrorism
Take a look at a case study from the Designing for Impact report by Barbara Abrash and Jessica Clark! Read more...

Center for Social Media, Assocation of Research Libraries and Washington College of Law Announce Release of Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries
The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) announces the release of the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries, a clear and easy-to-use statement of fair and reasonable approaches to fair use developed by and for librarians who support academic inquiry and higher education.  The Code was developed in partnership with the Center for Social Media and the Washington College of Law at American University. Read more...

Copyright, Free Speech, and the Public’s Right to Know: How Journalists Think about Fair  Use
The Center’s latest report, Copyright, Free Speech, and the Public's Right to Know: How Journalists Think about Fair Use, conducted in conjunction with American University's Washington College of Law, and funded by the McCormick Foundation, reveals the cost of not understanding a crucial free speech right to journalistic mission. The report results from interviews with 80 journalists, and it documents the high—and rising—price of confusion. Read more...

Art Profs, Librarians, Curators Get Their Fair Use Code
The Visual Resources Association has released its own code of best practices in fair use. It will be enormously valuable to art teachers, librarians, curators, publishers and more. Read more...

Fair Use: From Monster in the Shadows to Leveler of the Playing Field
For Kelly Nyks, director of Split: A Divided America-- a documentary film about partisan divides in American society—learning about fair use made distribution possible. Split examines a perceived political divide from the perspective of cultural factors such as religion, race and wealth, media, campaign strategies, and the erosion of civil discourse.Read more...

Elisa Kreisinger's Pick for Fair Use Video of the Month: The Yes Men
The Yes Men employed fair use to provide a critique of economic and political leaders' public pronouncements (and their actions). As the 2012 World Economic Forum began in Davos Switzerland, these Yes Men remixes (created in 2010) provided a dissident variation on the forum’s new theme: The Great Transformation: Shaping New Models. Read More...

Fair Use Question of the Month: What About Four Factor Checklists?
This month's fair use question comes from a librarian who is creating guidelines for faculty on how to use copyrighted material in their university's library on classroom Blackboard sites. This question is also featured in Reclaiming Fair Use. Read more...

Use Your Exemptions
Are you a teacher, a student, a maker, a DVD owner, an owner of a smartphone or an iPad? You may have something to say to the Copyright Office very soon. Read more...

2011's Most Intriguing Transmedia Projects
In January, CSM Senior Fellow and AIR Media Strategist Jessica Clark rounded up a year's worth of inspiring cross-platform documentary and reporting projects. Read more...

Localore Picks Feature Crowdsourced Docs, Collaborative Reporting, and  Gaming for Good
The Association of Independents in Radio (AIR) announced the winners of the Localore competition, a $2 million initiative designed to expand public radio and TV stations' capacity to innovate and reach new publics. Read more...

AU’s Center for Environmental Filmmaking 7th Annual Spring 2012 Film Series
Hosted by Chris Palmer and Justine Schmidt, events for the 7th Annual Spring 2012 Film Series will be held in Wechsler Theater in American University’s Mary Graydon Center. February’s speakers include Discovery Channel Shark Week’s Executive Producer Brooke Runnette, Filmmakers Keith Heyward and Jennifer Berglund of Prehensile Productions, Stephen Shackelton, top executive and Chief Ranger with the National Park Service, and Mark Breeze, the Producer of the Memorial and Museum episodes of the recent six-part Discovery Channel/Spielberg Documentary on the rebuilding of Ground Zero. To learn more, visit environmentalfilm.org.

Save-The-Date: ScraperWiki Data Journalism Conference March 30-31, 2012
American University's School of Communication, in partnership with ScarperWiki and The Washington Post, will host the two-day event in The Post’s conference center.  ScraperWiki experts will teach participants how to identify, liberate, and ‘scrape’ public data. This event is designed to help media professionals, students of journalism, community based organizers, government representatives, software coders, designers, and data scientists to gather, work with and create stories, applications and knowledge from publicly available data.

Marshall Curry Nominated for Oscar for Best Documentary Feature
We're excited to see that friend of the Center for Social Media Marshall Curry’s film If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front was nominated by the Academy for Best Documentary feature! Check out our Pull Focus interview with Marshall here.

Windfall Opening in Select Theaters February 3rd
Windfall, a documentary on wind development in the United States, is opening February 3rd at theaters in New York, Chicago, and LA, as well as on select video on demand platforms. Check out the theatrical trailer and visit the official Windfall website to learn more about this documentary that the Center for Social Media heralded as an important social-issue film in September of 2010.

More Than a Month with filmmaker Shukree Hassan Tilghman
Community Cinema, presented by the Independent Television Service (ITVS) and WHUT, Busboys and Poets, Washington DC Jewish Community Center, Center for Social Media at American University present screenings of Shukree Hassan Tilghman’s More Than a Month. Tilghman will be part of post-screening Q&A’s February 14 and February 26, and DC Youth Slam Team will present a poetic review of the film Sunday, February 12. For more information, visit www.communitycinema-dc.org

Link Media Celebrates International Women's Day
From March 1- 8, Link Media will be showcasing stories of women from around the world. Watch Iranian women activists risk their safety to confront political candidates, a Senegalese rapper using music to wage a campaign against female genital cutting, and women trading their comfortable Western lives for an experience as a tribal wife. And don’t miss the new hit series, Borgen, the only drama series currently on American airwaves that showcases a female head of state. To find more information, please visit www.linktv.org/women.

Active Voice Presents Maria Full of Hope: An Equal Voice Story
The nonprofit media strategy organization Active Voice invites you to view Maria Full of Hope: An Equal Voice Story.  The documentary, adapted from Marguerite Casey Foundation’s 2010 documentary Raising Hope: The Equal Voice Story, is the centerpiece to the Foundation's Equal Voice Youth Empowerment Project, a nationwide effort spearheaded by Active Voice. The teaser and full video are available for free online. To request a free DVD copy, host your own screening or learn more about discussion materials, please contact barrie@activevoice.net.

Media That Matters Film Festival Call for Submissions
Got a short film with a big message? Submit to the New York-based Media That Matters Film Festival today! Presented with the Center for Social media, Media That Matters is more than a film festival. It is the premiere showcase for short films on the most important topics of the day, engaging and inspiring audiences around the globe. Our call for entries will open on February 1, 2012. For more information visit mediathatmattersfest.org/submit or email us a festival@artsnegine.net

Spring 2012 Cine Golden Eagle Competition Accepting Submissions
The CINE Golden Eagle Competition, the prestigious, half-century-old competition based on peer recognition of excellence in film, television, and new media, accepts a broad range of professional, independent and student productions in a variety of categories including documentary, fiction, history, arts, science, advertising, and much more. Entries may be submitted through CINE.org or Withoutabox, and those who enter by the early bird deadline on February 15 will receive a discount. All entries are due by March 1. For more information visit www.cine.org or call the CINE office at 301.652.8714.