Norman Lear Center deputy director Johanna Blakley moderated a panel of leading artists and industry professionals for a conversation about how rights on camera can be a source of both entertainment and information and a launching pad for social action on June 8 at the 2008 ACLU Membership Conference.
What role do film, television and the arts play in the national dialogue on civil liberties? Does the way vital civil liberties issues are addressed on screen, stage, canvas and the page influence how they are discussed around the dinner table? Those were the topics discussed by a panel that featured filmmakers such as: Alex Gibney (2008 Academy Award – Taxi to the Dark Side); Ricki Stern (The Trials of Darryl Hunt); Peter Gilbert (At the Death House Door); Rob Moss (Secrecy); actor Kal Penn (Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay); Anjuli Verma (ACLU Drug Law Reform Project) and acclaimed poet and playwright Ariel Dorfman (Death and the Maiden).
"Democracy is best served when individuals engage each other in well-informed discussion," ACLU executive director Anthony D. Romero said. "The discussions encouraged by Rights / Camera / Action aim to inform and excite audiences, as well as empower them with the resources to learn more, change more, and act more."
Blakley's panel was titled Rights / Camera / Action, which is also a project that uses the arts and popular culture as a platform for civil liberties discussions with the artists and other professionals who create entertainment, as well as with the audiences and students who are its consumers.
Through film screenings, panels, dialogue with artists, industry leaders, and civil liberties experts; and through spoken, sung, and written word, Rights / Camera / Action encourages conversations that tap into core American values that cut across the lines of political ideology, race, ethnicity, age and gender.
