Matisse Bustos Hawkes, Author at WITNESS Blog

A Look Back at a (half) Year in Video For Change You may recall that in mid-May we launched this blog. It's been just over six months now and I thought it would be useful to take stock of what we've accomplished since May and, of course, to look forward to what we hope to do in 2011 - with you. December 28, 2010
WITNESS’ Grace Lile wins 2010 Archival Achievement Award Today is UNESCO World Day for Audiovisual Heritage and so, particularly relevant to share the following great news: our Director of Operations, Grace Lile, has been awarded the 2010 Archival Achievement Award by the Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York. October 27, 2010
Three Must-See Documentaries Suggested by Abigail E. Disney This post is part of our occasional series in which winners of the WITNESS Award (which we present at Silverdocs) discuss their top 3 picks from among social justice/human rights documentaries of the year. October 11, 2010
A Nobel Peace Prize for the Internet? It's a busy day here at WITNESS! Our executive director Yvette Alberdingk Thijm and actress and activist Maggie Gyllenhaal were at the Clinton Global Initiative- announcing our commitment to campaign to end violence against women in conflict zones. You can read more about the campaign in Yvette's recent blog post. September 21, 2010
What We’re Reading + Watching, August 2 – 9, 2010 This week we tweeted: August 9, 2010
What We’re Reading + Watching, July 19-23, 2010 This week we're sharing more 'tweeted' bits of news and resources including a guide to mobile phone video journalism, a discussion about the ethics of video in the "YouTube era," an award given to our partners at HOPS in Macedonia, a new audio archive of the world's language, and a new shareable video and education campaign about how cosmetics are made, packaged and sold: July 23, 2010
What We’re Reading + Watching, July 8-16, 2010 In this round-up we're featuring more items to watch than read- a few examples of videos being used for change, satellite imagery being harnessed to identify tribal lands belonging to American Indians, some disturbing news from the International Criminal Court about the Thomas Lubanga trial, a link to video from our allies at Breakthrough and an article on gender justice. July 16, 2010
What We’re Reading + Watching, July 1-7, 2010 We are prodigious readers and watchers here at WITNESS. And whether we gain access to material via email newsletters and bulletins, Twitter, RSS feeds, or blogs and websites - our staff and interns are also sharing links to these items, often via Twitter. July 8, 2010
A Peek Behind the Digital Curtain – Discussing YouTube’s Take Down Policy As my colleagues Sameer Padania, Priscila Néri and Chris Michael who worked on The Hub can attest, curating online video is difficult to say the least. While considering questions on ethics, revictimization, consent, dignity, and security, the Hub staff at WITNESS aimed to highlight relevant human rights-related video that, at times, contained disturbing or very graphic imagery (see the example of the Neda video from Iran: 'A Woman Dies on Camera - To Post or Not to Post?') . June 2, 2010
Video Testimony from an Untelevised Trial Always on the look out for new and interesting uses of video in human rights campaigns, I came across this innovative use of testimony and video by the Courage Campaign. They're fighting to keep the proceedings of the legal challenge to Proposition 8, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, public. However, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that cameras could be barred from the trial. May 15, 2010
Introducing the New WITNESS Blog Welcome to the new WITNESS blog! As an organization, we've been blogging for about five years now, but now you can find it all in one place. May 12, 2010
On the Road with Peter Gabriel’s “Scratch My Back” Tour Our colleague Becky, who coordinates our Creative Advocacy work (that basically means getting creative types like musicians, actors, directors, artists involved with our human rights campaigns), was on the road earlier this month with our founder Peter Gabriel during his North American "Scratch My Back" tour. May 10, 2010
Two new posts about video advocacy Two of my fine colleagues have been interviewed on other blogs recently about WITNESS’ model of video advocacy. The first is an interview withProgram Director, Sam Gregory, conducted by Henry Jenkins the Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program on his personal blog after meeting Sam at the recent DIY Video Summit hosted at […] April 1, 2008
Collaborative editing tools and cool collages A quick note here on some online tools I’ve recently come across: Kaltura – a collaborative video making tool that another colleague brought to our attention (thanks Sam). I realize this is not new to bloggers and videophiles in the know – but its relatively new to us here and we’re considering ways to use […] March 14, 2008
At WeMedia: Nonprofits and media; activism online and off; telling our own stories I’m in unnaturally chilly Miami (its projected to get down to the 40s tonight) at the WeMedia Conference and am currently sitting in an afternoon session about “advocacy groups who once relied on journalists are now making the news themselves”. The session is being moderated by John Bracken of the MacArthur Foundation and the discussion […] February 27, 2008