Media Activism

By Students from Prof. Martin Lucas’ course IMA 741
Since the rise of corporate-owned and government-controlled mass media and the development of a global ‘culture industry’, artists, journalists, filmmakers and social activists have developed a rich set of practices that attempt to give voice to the voiceless, promote social justice, and offer a critique of the mainstream media. This course will ask students to make work while exploring the historical roots of contemporary media activism and the thinking that has informed media activists, using texts and media created by artists and activists working in film, video, still image, audio and net-based forms.

Project Description
Meredith Goncalves and Angela LaSalle
The People’s Playground A short film profiling the current struggle for the preservation of Coney Island, after a recent rezoning decision to shrink the outdoor amusement area to less than a third of its current size.

Kathy Conkwright and Prisila Neri
How To: Know what’s FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) Short PSA’s on core media literacy issues.

Tamara Gubernat and Cassie Wagler
What is the Community Board? A short video documentary that demystifies the nuts and bolts of New York City’s most local level of participatory government.

Cristina Herrera and Esy Casey
The Mexican-American Students’ Alliance (MASA) A short video for MASA’s website encouraging parents in the Mexican community whose children are doing poorly in school to take charge of their kids education, use the after school programs MASA offers and help their kids succeed in school.

Laurie Filiak and Benjamin Moss
Kiva and Kids documents how Web 2.0 technologies offer new educational possibilities. Kiva and Kids documents how high school students from St. Luke’s School becoming lenders through Kiva, a web-based micro-lending non-profit group. More importantly, it shows how Kiva’s web-site is used as a tool in the classroom to bridge barriers of space, language and culture.

Ariel Tirosh and Carolina Montalvo
Fighting LGBT Harassment in Schools

This video documentary illustrates the difference perspectives of LGBT students and their personal safety in a school environment, it also examines the indicators of youth isolation and discrimination and the observations of educators, and other youth social groups who have been involved in the implementation of new programs and policies that support a better social exchange amongst students of the LGBT community. We intent for this documentary to serve as an educational tool for both youth and educators that will allow schools and organization implement new reforms of interventional programs that can remedy the youth LGBT discrimination problem.

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