Outreach
Kartemquin Films intends to develop a national outreach campaign that builds on the exposure from the film’s appearance at Sundance and will continue through the 2011 television broadcast and beyond. The Interrupters Community Engagement Campaign will use the documentary as the centerpiece of a two-year effort to engage audiences and communities in reflection, discussion and action around the structural causes of street violence, and creative approaches for interrupting the cycle of retaliatory violence. The campaign will begin with the development of partnerships in key cities where we will hold community screenings with a wide array of people working on a host of related issues: public health, law enforcement, education, efforts around criminal and juvenile justice reform, economic development, re-entry programs and job training, all themes that are reflected in the film.
THEATRICAL RELEASE
The Interrupters Outreach Team has connected with local violence prevention programs in cities where the film is playing theatrically, so audiences can begin to take action in their own neighborhoods. Starting at Manhattan’s IFC Center on July 31st, members from Operation SNUG, an affiliate of CeaseFire Chicago, helped organize Question and Answer panels that followed immediately after screenings of The Interrupters. These organizations were given the opportunity to not only tell captivated moviegoers what they were doing to combat the violence in New York City, but they also pushed the conversation beyond the entertainment section and onto the pages of the City Room section of The New York Times.
New York Times – Interrupting Violence, on Screen and on the Streets
On the heels of the success of the IFC Center Q&A’s, The Interrupters Outreach Team began to replicate these Q&A’s nationally. One week after the IFC Center, the film opened up at Harlem’s Maysles Cinema with a special opening night Q&A with the Crown Heights Save Our Streets organization, the same group featured in The New York Times article, and also Harlem’s own New York City Mission Society. The turnout for the Maysles Cinema Q&A’s were great, and since the weekend of that Q&A, we have been able to partner New York City Mission Society with other organizations looking to host screenings in the New York area.
As The Interrupters continues to open in cities throughout the country, we’ve been able to use this film to bring together anti-violence organizations with documentary audiences that might not otherwise know about local efforts, concerned citizens looking for someone to turn to and victims’ families that have found support groups with some of these organizations. The Interrupters post-screening Q&A’s have become an event where cities such as Denver and Los Angeles have been able to bring together local violence prevention programs with their respective cities’ mayoral representatives. On August 29th, the Advancement Project, a Los Angeles based violence prevention program, helped create a panel that featured conversations between gang intervention leaders and Los Angeles Deputy Mayor Guillermo Cespedes.
The goal for the Q&As is to connect the audience with locally-based social organizations in order to spur a more personal discussion around the issues present in the film. Organizations and community groups are seizing this opportunity to partner with The Interrupters because they want to be a part of this discussion. Working with the Oakland non-violence organization, Measure Y, and the San Francisco Wraparound Project led to sell-out screenings in both San Francisco and Berkeley.
With more Q&As in the works for upcoming cities throughout the world, our outreach team and partners organizations are doing their best to inspire audiences and reexamine the issue of urban violence with thoughtful discussion.
Thank You To All The Interrupters Q&A Partners
New York City
New York City Mission Society
King of Kings Foundation
Yonkers YMCA
Save Our Streets (S.O.S.) Crown Heights
Los Angeles
The Advancement Project
The Mayor’s Office of GRYD
Violence Prevention Coalition
Denver
The Prodigal Son Initiative
The Denver PD Gang Unit
G.R.A.S.P.
Safe City
Open Door Youth Gang Alternatives
Portland
Whitefeather Peace House
The Nonviolent Peaceforce
Miami
The Melissa Institute
Wichita
Wichita Gang Coalition
Urban League of Kansas
Wichita Crime Commission
Wichita PD Anti-Gang Unit
San Francisco
San Francisco Wraparound Project
San Francisco Community Response Network
Berkeley
Measure Y
Youth Alive
Philadelphia
Philadelphia Ceasefire
Seattle
Seattle Youth Violence Prevention Initiative
St. Louis
Ceasefire East St. Louis
More Partners in New Cities Will Be Announced In The Coming Months!
