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Good Pitch Local returns to Philadelphia in partnership with PhillyCAM. This curated program highlights and supports short-form non-fiction media projects and powerful stories from community leaders addressing issues urgent and important to local communities. It culminates in a day-long event that is a model for radical collaboration, offering cross-sector support for the featured projects.
Good Pitch Local is a space for community, collaboration and creative change. Together, we will raise up stories that matter in the fight for a more open, just and vibrant Philly––and beyond–– by the artists and organizers on the front lines of social change.We invite both media makers looking for partnership and support, and leaders who are at the heart of stories that need to be told to submit projects for consideration. We carefully curate the line-up, and then help the teams prepare their project pitches. At the live event up to 16 three-minute pitches are made, expert moderators call on the collective intelligence in the room, and individuals step up to offer support of all kinds to advance the projects to fruition and impact. The day includes presentations from experts in media and impact offering good ideas and actionable insights.
Local Activists, Educators, Filmmakers, Foundations, Nonprofits, Lawyers, Media makers, Media Platforms, Philanthropists, Policymakers, Press and more.
“¡Presente!” means “I’m here” and is a popular rally cry used throughout Latin American movements. It acknowledges those whose lives have unjustly ended due to social struggles and the importance of unity in community building. ¡Presente! Media is a media production collective led by Latinx filmmakers that produce bilingual content focused on social justice. Currently working on a multimedia solutions journalism project, they utilize a community-focused journalism approach that centers the perspective and stories of those most impacted by social inequities.
12+ is an education non-profit dedicated to increasing educational equity by building school cultures that inspire academic achievement and empower students to pursue education beyond the 12th grade. In Philadelphia, only 10% of public school students go on to earn a post-secondary degree, thus limiting their economic and social prospects. They’re here to change that.
Based upon the childhood experiences of filmmaker Yolonda Johnson-Young Another Life - A Black Family in WITSEC aka the Federal Witness Protection Program (which provides for the security and safety of government witnesses). As a child in the years 1977-79, filmmaker Yolonda Johnson-Young’s family was part of that program. Following up her short doc directing debut, “Finding Elijah” (Good Pitch Local Philly 2018) Johnson-Young crafts a journey of discovery using memory, personal photographs, archival footage, and interviews that puts the pieces of her life back together.
Bonfire Media Collective is a cooperative video production company telling human stories that catalyze social change. This team of six worker-owners and seven freelancers grounded in movements for social change include filmmakers, photographers, writers, communicators, strategists, organizers, educators, musicians and artists with deep professional and personal roots in the Philadelphia region. They offer clients access to this diverse team and create new video production all sustained by a nurturing and vibrant work environment.
Participatory Defense is a movement across 33 cities. In participatory defense, community groups meet weekly and assist a person facing charges through the criminal justice process, week to week, and attend court dates. The Digital Defense Project collaborators include: staff, facilitators and volunteers of Participatory Defense hubs and PhillyCAM. They create video social biographies for people facing charges so that DAs and judges see people facing charges beyond their open case and/or criminal record.
Multi-disciplinary artist Li Sumpter explores the ‘art of survival’ through the stories of everyday escape artists, and creative problem solvers responding to structural violence, climate crisis, and now Covid-19. In the spirit of the classic mixtape, episodes are curated in a mixed media collage including musical interludes, performative PSAs and recurring thematic segments designed to engage listening audiences live in real time and offline at their leisure.
Indigenous Peoples' Day Philly, Inc. is a nonprofit organization and community that produces cultural and educational programs that are actively involving the Indigenous presence and the non-Native in the city of Philadelphia and create events that build and uplift Native traditions and history in the city. They will create a podcast series where they will invite Native dignitaries, performers, organizers, those who have participated in the “Indigenous Peoples Day Philly” festivals, and other guest speakers.
After successfully fighting to have their juvenile life sentences be cut short, four women in Philadelphia use a collaborative film process to visualize their experiences, struggles, and dreams as they face a new world upon re-entry. Each woman was sentenced to life in prison as juveniles, collectively they served over 140 years. “Life Beyond Life” will be an intimate conversation between resilient, hopeful women who have much to share with their sisters still incarcerated and the outside world.
“Midnight Oil” tells the controversial story of the explosive last days of Philadelphia’s 150 year old PES oil refinery from the inside. Former refinery worker and first-time filmmaker Bilal Motley struggles to reconcile his love and kinship for his distressed refinery brothers and his sisters and growing awareness of the surrounding communities of color, fighting for environmental justice.
The Coalition to Abolish Death by Incarceration (CADBI) is a grassroots organization led by people most impacted by mass incarceration: the men and women serving life without parole, their families, friends and advocates. They plan to use short documentaries to share their personal stories, change the dialogue around those who are harmed by mass incarceration, and change the conversation about ‘justice’ and ‘punishment.’
Inspired by the loss of his own brother to an unsolved homicide, Brett Williams’ investigates the low homicide clearance rate in Philadelphia and explores the impact of gun violence on those left behind. This project seeks to help co-victims-- the families of the deceased whose cases remain unsolved, get closure and achieve justice for their loved ones; those left in the dark.
Presenting Our Perspective on Philly Youth News (POPPYN) is presented by The University Community Collaborative at Temple University. It is run by high school and college students who seek to create a counter-narrative to mainstream news media by telling the stories of positive things youth are doing in the city of Philadelphia.
"The Inside Look" features accomplished African American elders working as artists in Philadelphia. Through a series of short video portraits, their histories, philosophies, and practices are shared with young artists. There is much to learn through their experience, perspectives, and insights. This piece is intended to highlight the role of art as a healing modality in the face of issues such as mental illness and trauma.
TTYL… Or Not! aims to shift the way people see, hear and experience G-d/ The Divine and/or Spirit. During the season of Covid-19 where folks look to process feelings and emotions around the big question, the series asks “where is G-d in all of this?” and will share stories of individuals whose spiritual practices have sustained them throughout life’s journey and how it has hindered, helped and heal.
On and offstage, performance artist Khalil Abdul Malik Raheem Munir examines his bittersweet South Philadelphia upbringing and considers the names and legacies he’s inherited from previous generations of Black men. Embracing a new life as father and husband, he feels compelled to make sense of the divergent paths blazed by the men in his family—from Jim Crow South to South Philadelphia business empire, incarceration to Islam, and streets to spotlight.
