Category Archives: Documentary multimedia

As a visual storytelling startup, by far our biggest challenge is finding ways for people to see our work. The new media landscape affords us (and all storytellers, bloggers, inventors, and DIY-ers) the opportunity to self-publish and self-distribute our work. This is awesome. But believe it or not, there’s a lot of stuff on the Internet. And competing for clicks in a world full of excellent content, and surprisingly terrible content (real life Barbie, anyone?) is incredibly daunting.

Guest blogger Tricia Fulks gives II readers an inside look into “Hollow,” an interactive film and HTML5 website set to launch in May of 2013, which they are currently in the funding stage using Kickstarter. As of May 1st, they have secured nearly $15,000 of their $25,000 goal with 12 days left. I encourage you to learn more about this project and help fund it if you see fit!

“The notion of ‘home’ has shifting significance for Ed Kashi, a photojournalist who travels the world documenting social and political issues. For the past 30 years, Kashi has lived a life of intense engagement mixed with danger, anticipation, and loneliness. Encompassing nearly 20 years of photographs and journal entries to his wife, Julie, “Photojournalisms” (a supplement to Ed Kashi’s new book by the same title) is a short, experimental film by Talking Eyes Media that provides a glimpse into the life and mind of an intrepid photographer. It is a complex collage defined by sensation, tension, and passion.”

Documentary photographer Justin Cook takes readers behind the scenes in his recent advocacy piece “Family, Unfettered,” a multimedia story about two women with triplets who will be affected if North Carolina passes Amendment One on May 8th, which will enforce that one man and one woman is the only legally recognized and valid domestic union. This story is a part of a larger documentary profile project called “Commitment NC.”

I recently learned about “Moneyocracy,” a multimedia initiative consisting of a documentary, i-doc, and comic book by French photographers Gerald Holubowicz and Jean Nicholas Guillo. They are trying to raise $48,000 to fund the project via KickStarter, and currently only have a little more than $3,000 with one week left. Check out their project and if you think it warrants support, I encourage you to spread the word and/or donate. I’m always happy to promote entrepreneurial initiatives in the multimedia community, so I hope these two can get the necessary funding and pursue this project!

As I was flipping through the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal I came across the article “Can We Humanize the Web? New sites aim for story-telling that connects us.” The author details Princeton graduate and computer scientist Jonathan Harris’ New Years resolution to “deepen the Web” by increasing the amount of heartfelt, intimate stories and decreasing the amount of superficial ones. His resolution is the recently-launched website Cowbird, which he has been working on since early 2009.

The A Thousand Little Cuts Online Print Auction features signed prints from six Pulitzer Prize winners, five National Geographic photographers, six Photographers of the Year (POYi and NPPA), two Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award winners, one Guggenheim Fellow, and many legends of contemporary documentary photography. A few of the photographers you’ll find include: Ed Kashi, David LaBelle, Carolyn Cole, Stephanie Sinclair, Liz O. Baylen, Bob Sacha, Matt Eich, Scott Strazzante, Alex Harris and Barbara Davidson. Thirty-eight photographers have come together to support the documentary, A Thousand Little Cuts: a film exploring the grassroots movement to stop the highly-destructive mining process of mountaintop removal.