| Founder(s) | Thor Halvorssen |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2005 |
| Key people |
Thor Halvorssen, Founder Board of Directors:[1] David Zucker Cecilia DeMille Presley Rob Long Edmond Keenan Wynn Frayda Levy |
| Area served | Worldwide, focused mainly on issues within the United States |
| Focus | "Bringing the idea of Freedom to life."[3] |
| Method | film production, human rights advocacy |
| Website | http://www.thempi.org/ |
The Moving Picture Institute (MPI) is an American non-profit organization and film production company founded in 2005 by human rights advocate Thor Halvorssen. Its current executive director is Rob Pfaltzgraff, and its creative council includes June Arunga and David Zucker.
MPI produces and collaborates on both fictional films, and non-fictional, often documentary-style films. The subjects of MPI's films typically center on concepts like human rights and individual freedoms, and governmental waste and corruption. It uses its films as a medium through which these kinds of social and economic troubles are brought to public attention to shape public perceptions, and ultimately, to change society's values.[4] Public exposure to freedom-oriented ideas, they contend, will contribute to the improvement of these important issues which they feel tend to be ignored by other traditional media outlets.[3]
Contents |
Central to the MPI's mission is the promotion of what it refers to as, "freedom-oriented" ideals, through the production of films, as well as the collaboration with and lending of assistance to filmmakers whose films effectively promote similarly freedom-oriented messages that the organization regards as basic human rights: freedom of speech, and of association, and the general conservation of individual rights and freedoms in a free-enterprise system.[3] To that end, it uses its resources and expertise in the film industry to give public exposure views that might otherwise not have a voice in the mainstream media.
The type of assistance that the Moving Picture Institute provides to other filmmakers varies based on the need of the filmmaker. It facilitates developing filmmakers through a major internship program, provides support to filmmakers with demonstrable capacity to succeed in the entertainment industry, and promotes narrative features, documentary features, and shorts that communicate its principles. MPI funds films from development through post-production; it also funds developing filmmakers and serves as an intern placement service.
The Moving Pictures Institutes has been known to collaborate with individuals from a myriad of political and idealogical standpoints on projects for which their common goal is the promotion of "truth and freedom" universally in today's society. Examples of such partnerships include: the film Battle for Brooylyn with liberal filmmakers Michael Galinsky, Suki Hawley, and David Beilinson; Hammer and Tickle with Ben Lewis; and Freedom's Fury which was executive produced by Quentin Tarantino and Lucy Liu.[4]
MPI is involved in the production and promotion of the following narrative and documentary films:
| Title | Release Date | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Mine Your Own Business | 2007-2-18 | By Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney's; initiates a discussion about how the environmentalist movement has impeded economic growth in impoverished parts of the world. The film focuses particularly on Romania, Chile, and Madagascar. |
| Marina of the Zabbaleen | 2008 | By Engi Wassef; examines the life of Marina, a 7-year-old Egyptian girl living in a Zabbaleen garbage-collecting village in Cairo. |
| Freedom's Fury | 2006-8-25 | By Colin Keith Gray and Megan Raney Aarons; centers on the 1956 Olympic semifinal water polo match between Hungary and Russia. This so-called "Blood in the Water Match" took place in Melbourne, Australia weeks after Soviet forces brutally suppressed the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. The film is narrated by Olympic gold medalist Mark Spitz. |
| Hammer & Tickle | 2006-4-30 | By Ben Lewis; 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 been broadcast by the BBC in Britain and by ARTE in France, and has inspired an accompanying book. |
| The Free Market Cure | 2007-6-21 | By Stuart Browning; short film series. |
| The Libel Tourist | 2006 | |
| Indoctrinate U | 2007-4-23 | By Evan Coyne Maloney; exposes ideological conformism and political correctness in American higher education. The film addresses speech codes and other phenomena that undermine free expression, intellectual diversity, and academic freedom on American campuses. |
| The Singing Revolution | 2007-6-26 | By James and Maureen Tusty; tells the story of the peaceful protests that liberated Estonia from Soviet control |
| Do As I Say | 2008-10-2 | By Nick Tucker; American political hypocrisy |
| 2081 | 2009-5-29 | By Chandler Tuttle; a narrative film adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron story |
| An Inconvenient Tax | 2010-4-15 | By Nathaniel Thomas McGill and Vincent Vittorio; history of the income tax in the United States and the causes of its many complexities |
| The Cartel | 2009-5-30 | By Bob Bowdon; investigates public education in the United States, specifically New Jersey, and how a "widespread national crisis manifests itself in the educational failures and frustrations of individual communities." |
| Battle for Brooklyn | 2010-7-9 | By Michael Galinsky, Suki Hawley, and David Beilinson; feature-length film about the abuses of eminent domain by government and developers |
| Choice Media | Coming Soon | |
| The Rubber Room | Coming Soon | |
| U.N. Me | Coming Soon | By Ami Horowitz; the unfulfilled promises of the United Nations |
| Inside the Mind of Ayn Rand | Coming Soon | |
| Museum of Government Waste | Coming Soon |