Justice and Human Rights United States Project #26174

Ignite Lasting Change with Community Film Events

by SIMA Studios

Project Report | Jun 3, 2020
June 2020 SIMA Updates

By Erinn Sullivan | CMO

SMA Studios

Thank you once again for your continued support of SIMA! We’re excited to share our most recent updates from each of our programs with you.

SIMA Awards:

Congratulations to the SIMA 2020 Winners! Selected from 365 entries from over 100 countries, this year’s 21 inspiring winners bring with them a new perspective: documentary storytelling not only has the power to enrich humanity, it also has the power to transform it. The power to re-captivate audiences (Best Documentary Short Editing Winner, NAZI VR); to reignite old motivations for social change (Best Feature Documentary Editing Winner, RADIO SILENCE); to revive and bring new life to buried stories (Best Documentary Short Director Winner, WOMEN OF THE GULAG); to re-contextualization mainstream culture (Ethos Jury Prize Winner, ALWAYS IN SEASON); to reimagine the world as you see it (Best Feature Documentary Cinematography Winner, ANBESSA); and finally, the inherent ability liberate and redirect attention back to our world’s most pressing global issues—as embodied in all of the films awarded this year.

There is, perhaps, no greater time in human history to champion these inspiring stories through a mosaic of different mediums, including the recognition of the funders and production companies that power them, like Production Company Award Winners MARIA FARINHA FILMS and IF NOT US THEN WHO and Impact Media Funder Award Winners ONE WORLD MEDIA and CHICKEN & EGG PICTURES—whose support of social impact storytelling is uniquely empowering the work of content creators worldwide.

SIMA Classroom:

SIMA Classroom is a global, ever-current and expansive streaming platform presenting the gold standard of social-issue cinematic storytelling.

In order to help support students and academic institutions across the world make the abrupt switch from in-person classes to online learning in response to public safety surrounding Coronavirus, we decided to grant free access to SIMA Classroom. Over 10,000 students and 500 new educators across 10 countries have joined the platform in only two months!

Also, we are thrilled to announce our STUDENT FILM CLUB, born to build community amongst our members, maximize student engagement, and encourage inspiring virtual exchanges between future leaders and real-life individuals working at the forefront of solution driven social impact. Every month, SIMA Classroom members watch two handpicked short documentaries on a global theme ( Climate Change, Global Health, Migration, etc), accompanied by a custom QUIZ and bonus features with curated resources. The monthly QUIZ WINNER wins a zoom call for their entire class with a thought-leader, filmmaker or expert on the featured topic, connecting our global community of students and educators to those behind the scenes and on the frontlines.

Last but not least, we are honored to welcome Hanna Dudich, the winner of this year's SIMA TEACHER AWARD to the sima family! In partnership with Qatar Foundation International, our annual global award is a recognition for outstanding accomplishments and dedication to using media resources to foster global competencies.

SIMAx:

Local leaders around the globe keep screening SIMA impact films to activate their communities around issues that matter. COVID-19 brought us and our partners new opportunities to make collective impact in the digital space, where people tuned in to learn about important issues from the comfort of their own homes. Seven films have been virtually screened since our country’s Safer at Home mandate that went into effect in March 2020. Our screening partners included Human Rights Watch Los Angeles, Human Rights Watch Chicago, and U.N. Women USA Los Angeles. Virtual audiences rallied in support of Women’s Rights (Nefertiti's Daughters), Indigenous Rights and Climate Action (Anote’s Ark), and Voting Rights and Gerrymandering in the U.S. (Slay The Dragon).

SIMA Staff Pick

Among these partner’s screenings included our monthly Staff Pick — one award-winning SIMA film available for free online each month. In March we virtually screened R.V where we explored reproductive rights in honor of International Women’s Day. In April we virtually screened The Sound Barrier where audiences met four young entrepreneurs creating inspiring solutions to major problems faced in their communities. In May we explored climate action and plastic pollution with ALBATROSS, and finally, June kicked off with a global screening of What Happened to Dujuan Armstrong?—a thought-provoking film exploring police brutality with the death of a young black man in Oakland, CA. Collectively over 3,700 audience members across the globe tuned into these virtual events.

SIMA's Fiscal Sponsorship:

Supporting projects at the intersection of creativity and social impact we have added nine new projects to our Fiscal Sponsorship Program; including four projects surrounding various topics in women’s rights, one new climate action project, one exploring the treatment of immigrants in the U.S. Justice System, another bringing community art to schools and low-income communities, a festival supporting LGBTQIA rights, and finally a feature length documentary following the stories of four marathon runners.

Links:

SIMA Studios

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Feb 6, 2020
February 2020 SIMA Updates

By Viri Pitarro | Director of Global Partnerships

Thank you once again for your continued support of SIMA! We’re excited to share our most recent updates from each of our programs with you.

SIMA Awards:

Congratulations to the SIMA 2020 Finalists! Stories from 34 countries move onto the final round of the 8th annual Social Impact Media Awards. Representing the most cutting edge social-issue filmmaking of our time, these finalists bring us face-to-face with our most pressing global issues. Winners will be announced February 7, 2020.

SIMA Classroom:

Designed as a fast track to global citizenship education, SIMA Classroom takes students on a journey from empathy and critical thinking to action. Over 1,950 educators, 51,230 students and 300 institutions globally are already using the platform.

Selected from the finalists and winners of the annual Social Impact Media Awards, SIMA Classroom is a global, ever-current and expansive streaming platform presenting the gold standard of social-issue cinematic storytelling. It provides access to a carefully curated collection of over 168 award-winning short documentaries and Virtual Reality films with learning resources and participatory skill-building lesson plans.

This month we want to celebrate we are scaling our impact through partnerships! Together with Participate we hosted the SDGs Film Festival for the Teach the Global Goals Community of Practice inspiring 1000+ students to learn about SDGs on a human scale and advocate for a global challenge they care about by creating a screening campaign in their classroom. We are also delighted to partner with the Ban Ki Moon Center and UNESCO-APCEIU to offer a curated selection of SIMA impact films as part of the course: Becoming Global Citizens for a Sustainable Society.Together we have empowered more than 3,600 global citizens so far!

Last but not least, we are proud to announce that our lesson plans are now aligned to the International Baccalaureate Programme, designed to prepare students to succeed in a world where facts and fiction merge in the news, and where asking the right questions is a crucial skill that will allow them to flourish.

SIMAx:

Local leaders around the globe keep screening SIMA impact films to activate their communities around issues that matter. From a co-working space in Singapore or a german non-profit to a college in the U.S, extraordinary stories such as Girl-Hearted, Voices from the Sea, Kayayo, Megalonyo and Dancing the Revolution are not only opening people’s hearts and minds, but inspiring actual change.

SIMA's Fiscal Sponsorship:

Supporting projects at the intersection of creativity and social impact we have added new projects to our Fiscal Sponsorship Program including The Youth Vote, a feature documentary in development that explores the current political system in the United States and how it prevents many young people from participation.

SIMA Staff Pick:

We are giving audiences a barrier-free entry to experiencing social impact cinema.

For this month we are featuring Forced, directed by Pep Bonet and produced by Line Hadsbjerg. This film takes you into the streets of Dhaka, where children form part of the visual landscape: an integrated part of the workforce, they work because society accepts their fate and survival dictates their limited choices. In the underworld of the brothels, behind closed doors, girls share their testimonies of having to work as sex slaves, bought and sold by brokers, shamed by society, with no escape.

As always, thank you for your invaluable contributions to helping us scale social impact through visual storytelling worldwide.

With warmth and gratitude from the SIMA Team.

Links:

SIMA Studios

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Nov 8, 2019
November 2019 SIMA Updates

By Alyssa Palmer | Digital Communications & Marketing Manager

Thank you once again for your continued support of SIMA! We’re excited to share our most recent updates from each of our programs with you.

SIMA Awards:

We have officially closed our call for entries to SIMA 2020! We are thrilled to have social impact features, shorts, and virtual reality experiences submissions from over 100 countries! The SIMA 2020 Winners will be announced in February. Stay tuned!

SIMA Classroom:

Designed as a fast track to global citizenship education, the online streaming platform takes students on a journey from empathy and critical thinking to action. Over 1,912 educators, 49,510 students and 264 institutions globally are already using the platform.

Selected from the finalists and winners of the annual Social Impact Media Awards, SIMA Classroom is a global, ever-current and expansive streaming service presenting the gold standard of social-issue cinematic storytelling. It provides access to a carefully curated collection of over 168 award-winning short documentaries and Virtual Reality films with learning resources and participatory skill-building lessons.

In order to keep scaling the scope and depth of our impact, we created new partnerships with educational platforms such as World Savvy, AFT ShareMyLesson, and SDSN Global School Program--we are proud to welcome them to the SIMA family! We are also thrilled to announce our pilot program with Teach for India, a movement of fellows working to eliminate educational inequity in India. Together we have reached over 4,000 students across the country.

Last but not least, SIMA was honored to host the workshop The Role Of Effective Digital Learning In GCED For Reconciliation during The 4th International Conference on Global Citizenship Education organized by UNESCO-APCEIU in Seoul this past September. The event gathered 600+ social innovators in education from around the globe.

SIMAx:

Together with World Merit, the second edition of our SDG Challenge reached an audience of over 1,130 people! Local leaders hosted screenings across the globe from Bangladesh to Thailand, South Africa to the UK, Malawai to Ghana, Burundi to Morocco (and more!) to inspire their communities to take action using the power of documentaries addressing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

SIMA's Fiscal Sponsorship:

Supporting projects at the intersection of creativity and social impact we have added new projects to our Fiscal Sponsorship Program including Kusunda - an interactive VR experience that immerses you in the world of the last speaker and guardian of an indigenous language-; Project Shine - the story of six diverse young men that hit rock bottom and turn to the “Conscious Outlaw” to find their inner strength to get their lives back on track-, and The Broken Key - a young gifted classical pianist and a passionate drug-dealing rapper both on the verge of life-changing success and escape from the harsh, violent realities of the inner city find hope and inspiration in each other.

SIMA Staff Pick:

We are giving audiences a barrier-free entry to experiencing social impact cinema.

For November we are featuring Tell Spring Not To Come This Year, directed by Saeed Taji Farouky & Michael McEvoy and produced by Michael McEvoy, Saeed Taji Farouky, & Elizabeth C Jones. This intimate and humanist film explores a largely unheard and misrepresented perspective, revealing the deep personal motivations, desires, and struggles of a band of fighting men on the front line.

This month we are also highlighting the incredible work of Afghan Youth for Peace, a social and nonprofit organization of Afghan young people who equips exceptional youth and educators with the skills and relationships they need to accelerate social, economic, and political changes essential for peace.

As always, thank you for your invaluable contributions to helping us scale social impact through visual storytelling worldwide.

With warmth and gratitude from the SIMA Team.

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