ABOUT THE PROJECT
When Movies Go to Washington: Documentary Films & Public Policy in the United States (Volume 1) is the first in a two-volume investigation about the role of documentary films in legislative and regulatory change and influence in the United States. Volume 1 focuses on the federal level, and Volume 2 focuses on state and local levels. Both volumes were directed and written by Caty Borum Chattoo and Will Jenkins under the auspices of the Center for Media & Social Impact at American University’s School of Communication in Washington, D.C. This investigation was funded by the Fledgling Fund (www.thefledglingfund.org). For the Center for Media & Social Impact, American University graduate student fellows Kelsey Tate, Hannah Sedgwick, Nesima Aberra and Michele Alexander provided invaluable research and copyediting support. The report is available at www.cmsimpact.org.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Caty Borum Chattoo is Director of the Center for Media & Social Impact (CMSI) and Executive in Residence at the American University School of Communication in Washington, D.C. She is an award-winning producer and strategist who works at the intersection of social-change communication, media research and documentary production. Borum Chattoo’s social-change storytelling, strategy and research work has been featured in The New York Times, USA Today, NPR, Businessweek, The Huffington Post and PBS Media Shift, and her social justice documentaries have aired on the Sundance Channel, Pivot, NDTV (India), PBS World, Link TV, and KCET.
She has produced two theatrical documentary feature films (Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price and The After Party), a TV documentary and transmedia series funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (Stand Up Planet), several half-hour documentary TV specials, a seven-part documentary TV series (Sierra Club Chronicles) and PSA campaigns designed for social change on issues ranging from global poverty to climate change to HIV. As a lead strategist for the Gates-Foundation-funded ViewChange project, she produced a global poverty TV series and architected and directed social-impact campaign partnerships with international humanitarian organizations. Borum Chattoo served as an invited juror for the 2014 and 2015 international BRITDOC Documentary Impact Awards and is a regular contributor to Documentary magazine, the trade publication of the leading international association for non-fiction storytelling.
Previously, she was Senior Vice President in the Social Impact practice group at FleishmanHillard International Communications in Washington, D.C. In Los Angeles, she was a longtime collaborator with legendary TV producer and philanthropist/activist Norman Lear as a founding director of Declare Yourself, a national youth civic engagement organization; and Special Projects Director & Senior Producer at the USC Norman Lear Center, a research and public policy center that examines the social impact of entertainment on society. She also served as Program Officer in the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Entertainment Media & Public Health program, where she managed HIV-awareness partnership programs, TV specials and PSA campaigns with MTV and BET; Project Director at the Center for Media Education and Fellow in civic journalism at The Philadelphia Inquirer, funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts. She holds a master’s degree in Communication from the University of Pennsylvania (the Annenberg School for Communication) and an undergraduate degree in Communication Studies (summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) from Virginia Tech.
Will Jenkins has more than a decade of communications and policy experience at the White House, the Department of Health and Human Services, and Congress. Over the years, he has also worked with many filmmakers and media organizations to help them understand and engage in public policy. Jenkins has spoken and led workshops on films and policymaking for the South by Southwest Festival, the Tribeca Film Institute, BRITDOC/Good Pitch, SilverDocs/AFI Docs, the International Documentary Association, the Fledging Fund, Docs in Progress and Women in Film & Video.
In 2010, Jenkins wrote a guide to public policy for filmmakers for Documentary magazine (http://www.documentary.org/magazine/filmmakers-guide-capitol-hill).
In 2012, he was Policy Director for the Impact Film Festival at the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, where he coordinated screening discussions with politicians, filmmakers, celebrities, and reporters for the films Butter, Electoral Dysfunction, The House I Live In, Hunger Hits Home and The Invisible War. In 2013, he developed the American Film Institute’s first “Political Bootcamp for Filmmakers.”
During his time in the federal government, Jenkins has served as a spokesperson to local, national and foreign news outlets on a wide range of issues. He has planned high-profile events and policy rollouts featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA TODAY, and The Washington Post and managed appearances for government officials on “Meet the Press,” “Morning Joe,” and “The Colbert Report.”
Jenkins has overseen the planning and evaluation of a wide range of communications products and campaigns by multiple federal agencies. As a legislative aide in Congress, he guided from introduction to enactment the first legislation to protect American military members from the health effects of toxic burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan, which has been called “this generation’s Agent Orange.” In 2007, Jenkins founded the Democratic Communicators Network, the professional association for Democratic communications staff in Congress and the Administration, which provides mentoring, networking and training for hundreds of members every year. He was also elected to serve on the board of the Congressional Legislative Staff Association, a bipartisan staff association in Washington.
ABOUT THE CENTER FOR MEDIA & SOCIAL IMPACT
The Center for Media & Social Impact (CMSI) at American University’s School of Communication, based in Washington, D.C., is a research center and innovation lab that creates, studies and showcases media for social impact. Focusing on independent, documentary, entertainment and public media, CMSI bridges boundaries between scholars, producers and communication practitioners who work across media production, media impact, public policy and audience engagement. The Center produces resources for the field and research, convenes conferences and events and works collaboratively to understand and design media that matter. www.cmsimpact.org
