Moving Picture Institute
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Moving Picture Institute (MPI) is a non-profit organization and production company based in Tribeca, New York, and West Hollywood, California. It was founded by human rights advocate Thor Halvorssen in 2005. Its current president is philanthropist Frayda Levy.
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[edit] Mission and Purpose
The Moving Picture Institute is dedicated to promoting the principles of American liberty. MPI nurtures developing filmmakers through a major internship program, provides crucial support to filmmakers with demonstrable capacity to succeed in the entertainment industry, and promotes narrative features, documentary features, and shorts that communicate the principles of freedom. MPI funds films from development through post-production; it also funds developing filmmakers and serves as a high-level intern placement service.
MPI was founded on the premise that film, more effectively than any other medium, can bring the idea of freedom to life. Its mission is to ensure that film becomes a center of genuinely democratic art. Its goal is to guarantee that film’s unique capacity to give shape to abstract principles--to make them move and breathe--is used to support and promote liberty.
[edit] Key Personnel
Rob Pfaltzgraff, MPI’s executive director, graduated from Tufts University with a degree in American studies. He worked with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education from its founding in 1999, where he spearheaded a variety of projects, including the construction of FIRE’s first website. He eventually became FIRE’s vice president of development, management, and marketing. Pfaltzgraff left FIRE in March 2006 to become the executive director of MPI.
[edit] Major Productions
MPI is involved in the production and promotion of the following high-profile documentary films:
- Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney's Mine Your Own Business, which initiates a discussion about the environmentalist movement and its impact on economic growth in impoverished parts of Romania, Chile, and Madagascar.
- Colin Keith Gray and Megan Raney Aarons's Freedom's Fury, which tells the story of the famous 1956 Olympic semifinal water polo match between Hungary and Russia. Better known as the "blood in the water match," the semifinal took place in Melbourne mere weeks after Russian forces brutally suppressed a Hungarian uprising. Narrated by Olympic gold medalist Mark Spitz, the film was produced by Andrew Vajna, Quentin Tarantino, Amy Sommer, Lucy Liu, Kristine Lacey, and Thor Halvorssen.
- Ben Lewis's Hammer & Tickle, which provocatively analyzes humor's role in undermining Soviet totalitarianism. In 2006, Lewis's documentary won the Zurich Film Festival's award for "Best New Documentary Film." It has since screened on British and French television.
- Evan Coyne Maloney's forthcoming Indoctrinate U, a searing exposé of ideological trends within American higher education. Hailed by The New York Sun as one of America's most promising documentary filmmakers, Maloney has assembled a scorching indictment of speech codes, doctrinaire teaching, divisive gender and racial politics, ideologically biased hiring practices, and other phenomena that undermine free expression, intellectual diversity, and academic freedom on American campuses. Early segments of Maloney's film have met with significant critical acclaim.
- James and Maureen Tusty's The Singing Revolution, which tells the story about the remarkable non-violent struggle that led t the liberation of Estonia.
