Film & Campaign

23/07/2024

A great opportunity to develop impact campaigns based on creative storytelling (not just docs)!

We’re chuffed to be facilitating this Storytelling Fellowship at University of the Arts London as curators, tutors & mentors – a collaboration of Khadidja Benouataf, Ben Kempas, Rachel Caplan, and Hasse van Nunen.

- Apply now!

This year we are offering up to eight fellows a free training programme in impact production. Fellows will learn the skills of impact production, routes to impact and develop impact plans and campaigns for their projects.

30/05/2024

Today, an impact tour of German cinemas begins for 'Hinter guten Türen', a very personal doc by Julia Beerhold about the violence she experienced as a child.

For this mindjazz pictures release we've been facilitating partnerships with a number of key charities:
Deutscher Kinderverein e.V.
Netzwerk Kinderrechte - National Coalition Deutschland
BilderKraft gemeinnützige UG
Tour41 e.V. - Aktionsbündnis gegen sexuelle Gewalt

More information and all tour dates in German:
https://www.hintergutentueren.de

09/05/2024

What a grande finale to our 18-month campaign for The Oil Machine which we delivered for Sonja Henrici.

A massive thank-you to everyone involved!

29/02/2024

Happy Leap Year Day, everyone!

Earlier this month, a brilliant new employee leaped into our office: Tabita Knoblauch (pictured in the centre) has joined us as a bilingual outreach coordinator to work on the impact campaigns for two German-based projects, a German-Swedish coproduction, and many more!

https://www.filmcampaign.org/team

23/12/2023

10/10/2023

The impact campaign for The Oil Machine that we've been running for over a year is entering a new dimension: Bullfrog Films and Twin Seas Media are bringing the award-winning film to North America.

All along, we've been keeping the film in the current context by producing video updates 'After THE OIL MACHINE' with key people from the film.

This week, our new impact producer Amaya Bañuelos Marco asks James Marriott of Platform - activism, education and the arts why a Scottish film about the North Sea should be of interest to audiences in the United States. His answer:

"The British North Sea is an American problem."

01/09/2023

Film & Campaign Ltd. was founded at The Melting Pot in 2014 and based there until 2019. So it was a particular pleasure to be showing The Oil Machine and talking about our impact campaign to this community of change makers last night.

21/08/2023

We’re happy to announce that Emma Davie’s award-winning feature documentary The Oil Machine, produced by Sonja Henrici Creates, is now available with full-length British Sign Language interpretation. The BSL version of the film, made by Red Bee Media, features an in-vision interpreter and is currently available to watch on demand ahead of a discussion hosted by the British Deaf Association (BDA) Scotland on Tuesday, 22 August 2023.

Lesley McGilp, Signing General Manager at Red Bee Media, explains the importance of using sign language as compared to captions:

“BSL is the Deaf community’s native language. While subtitles provide an onscreen written dialogue of what is being said, a programme’s subtitles are still read and comprehended in English, which means the majority of the Deaf audience cannot access the programme in its entirety. There are very few programmes solely in BSL in the TV schedule. As the majority of programming is in English, in-vision BSL translators enable Deaf audiences to access programmes in their own language.”

Ben Kempas at Film & Campaign Ltd, the company delivering the film's impact campaign for Sonja Henrici Creates, added:

“Having facilitated nearly 200 events with THE OIL MACHINE to date, it is a very special moment to finally be making it available with in-vision BSL to the Deaf community, thanks to the generosity of Red Bee Media. That said – this should really not be a special moment. Just like captions for the hard-of-hearing, every major production should be made available in a sign-language version by default – not just in TV broadcasting but particularly in the independent documentary sector."

Avril Hepner at the BDA Scotland has put together a panel to discuss the film, asking "Are we too late?", which will include the film's director Emma Davie. The event will be live-streamed by the BDA on Facebook this Tuesday at 7pm: https://www.facebook.com/events/702953411653480/

In the lead-up to the discussion, the BSL version of THE OIL MACHINE is available to watch at: https://www.theoilmachine.org/bsl

We’re happy to announce Emma Davie’s award-winning feature documentary THE OIL MACHINE, produced by Sonja Henrici Creates, is now available with full-length British Sign Language interpretation.

29/05/2023

We're delighted to welcome Re:wild as our NationBuilder client and have been busy building the bilingual website for Patrol: The Movie and its impact campaign.

Check it out: https://www.patrolmovie.com/

With the documentary currently premiering in Telluride, the campaign has already been making use of NationBuilder's integrated advocacy toolkit, launching a petition and an open letter to Congress. Please take a look and consider signing these, especially if you're based in the United States.

Thanks so much to graphic designer Paul Stapleton, film directors Camilo de Castro Belli and Brad Allgood, and impact producer Angie Gentile for working with us.

10/05/2023

Interested in turning your audiences into a 'nation' of supporters? We provide NationBuilder solutions for your impact campaign and help you get organised.

We're grateful to Nationbuilder's Community Manager Erica Rissi for featuring our story and our recent work on The Oil Machine.

Take a look – there's a video of our founder Ben Kempas and our impact producer Rachel Caplan, too...!

Documentary storytellers harness NationBuilder’s infrastructure to transform impact documentaries into box office successes. Read more about how Film & Campaign is able to revolutionize advocacy by mobilizing committed communities.

10/02/2023

The industry is talking about a 'theatrical crisis' for documentary. Yet an impact campaign will make a difference to this.

We're so proud to have hired Rachel Caplan as an outreach coordinator a few months ago. She founded and ran the San Francisco Green Film Festival, but this became a victim of the pandemic, and Rachel is now back in Scotland, the country she grew up in. She has been working tirelessly to get audiences to turn out for The Oil Machine – and to get communities across the country to host screenings.

This is her very first blog post for us:

At a time when post-pandemic cinema audience numbers have been dwindling across the UK, and several cinemas have closed completely, new documentary THE OIL MACHINE has been drawing sell-out crowds. What is going on?

31/01/2023

Bit of a milestone in our campaign 'After The Oil Machine' tonight.

This marks 100 UK screenings since 3 November, the majority of them with discussions, and increasingly hosted by community groups across these islands.

And there are a _lot_ more to come!

13/11/2022

Remember when we were developing a campaign and helping with the 2019 Sheffield launch of Another Paradise for Clin d'oeil films? It's about the struggle of Chagos islanders, deported by the UK in the 1960s to make way for a US military base, to return to their homeland ever since.
(For more on that: https://www.filmcampaign.org/another_paradise)

Well, here's some big news. Apparently there are now negotiations about letting the people of Chagos return (if they're still able to).

Time for Part 2, Hanne Phlypo...?

Special thanks to our colleagues who worked on this at the time, Jen Stout and Christopher Silver.

08/11/2022

Meet climate lawyer & campaigner Tessa Khan, a contributor to The Oil Machine and special guest at tonight's event at Picturehouse Central in London (tix: https://www.picturehouses.com/movie-details/000/HO00012407/the-oil-machine-panel).

For our series After , we asked her on the eve of how 100 new licences for oil & gas exploration will provide 'energy security' for the UK.

03/11/2022

Today, we’re live-producing this milestone in our impact campaign for The Oil Machine. Can you join us? https://www.theoilmachine.org/launch

Ask us anything: about North Sea oil and gas, about a Green New Deal, about COP27, and how to be part of the film's release

26/10/2022

Can we break our addiction to oil and gas? THE OIL MACHINE is a high-profile documentary bringing together a wide range of perspectives – from oil executives to climate activists, from workers to investors.
Don’t miss the unique opportunity to see this immersive film on the big screen at special events across the UK – and be part of the discussions ‘After THE OIL MACHINE’.
You’re very welcome to host your own community events using the film. Either way, all you need to know is at https://www.theoilmachine.org

27/09/2022

Emma Davie - 2022 - The time when we described it as “liquid gold” may be over, but our economic, historical and even emotional connection to oil is still very much intact. Oil is in everything from the products in our kitchen cupboards to our pension funds. We are deeply dependent on oi...

25/09/2022

Friends at Nordisk Panorama - for film professionals!
Ben Kempas will be offering his ever-popular 'Outreach Clinic' to all Forum participants for the 8th consecutive year.
Simply contact the Forum Assistant to book your slot. See you?

For the eighth year running, Ben will host an outreach clinic where all Nordisk Forum participants are free to pop in for a chat about organising outreach campaigns, building communities and taking control of distribution.

22/09/2022

When you're preparing a campaign called 'After The Oil Machine' – on the need to move away from fossil fuels – and today the UK government announces they're going to open up more than 100 new licences for North Sea oil and gas exploration...

This campaign couldn’t be more timely, as its launch coincides with the new UK government’s rush to offer 100 new licences for North Sea oil and gas exploration…

05/08/2022

We're looking for an outreach coordinator – ideally someone with experience in the climate crisis movement, the documentary industry, educational outreach, or the worlds of politics, business and the third sector in the UK:
https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/3207427564/

Posted 1:47:06 PM. We are preparing outreach activities around a high-profile documentary film focusing on North Sea…See this and similar jobs on LinkedIn.

15/05/2022

Hard to believe it's been three years already... 2019 – please note: before a certain pandemic – on this single night, 20,000 people in Germany visited one of 170 cinema screens to watch a humble documentary about the results of inclusive education. While 73% of audiences saw their positive opinion confirmed (we did preach to the converted), 26% actually changed their mind and think of inclusion more positively as a result of seeing the film and participating in a community-level discussion. Oh, and it was the third most-watched film in German cinemas that night, only beaten by the new Avengers and Pokemon blockbusters...
Case study here: https://www.filmcampaign.org/die_kinder_der_utopie

Thanks a million to everyone involved!

Case study of our biggest campaign yet, with a nationwide day of action beating the blockbusters

16/09/2021

We have new face masks and a new team member! Mar Felices has joined us to work on bilingual campaign development for the Apenas el sol Film. You may know the film as it opened last year's IDFA and has been to many festivals since, and you may know Mar from her role as festival director of the IberoDocs festival in Edinburgh which she continues to run. So strange and delightful to have a human from outside the family bubble in the office. Long may it last...!