This week marks the beginning of a new collaboration between the Independent Feature Project and the United Nations called Envision. Aimed at using documentary cinema as a tool to raise awareness for a number of the issues standing in the way of the intergovermental organizations Millenium Development Goals. it is a two day outreach effort to bring together people from filmmaking, public policy, activism and government in the hopes of creating a better world for all.. Those MDGs, a series of eight global humanitarian directives set in 2000, are rather ambitious in scope (reducing child mortality, alleviating hunger, universal primary education, sustainable energy production) and the UN is far from achieving any of them with just under six years from the date initially set as the target for these benchmarks, 2015. This year the two day event is focusing mainly on how the MDGs affect women, especially in places where these goals are still out of reach.
Over at Filmmaker, I surveyed the first day's lineup of screenings and panels.
