News

December 13, 2011 - [ Broadcast Film Critics Association ]

The Help received 8 nominations from the Broadcast Film Critics Association:
Best Picture, Best Actress (Viola Davis), Best Supporting Actress (Octavia Spencer), Best Supporting Actress (Jessica Chastain), Best Acting Ensemble, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Costume Design, Best Song.

PAGE ONE: Inside The New York Times was nominated for Best Documentary Feature.

Awards are announced at the ceremony January 12.

Full List of nominees below:

February 2, 2012 - [ Hollywood Reporter ]

Participant developed the project and is producing with Spain's Apache, Colombia's Dynamo and XYZ Films; Summit will distribute.

Participant Media is gearing up to begin production on an untitled supernatural thriller about a Western family who moves to Colombia and learns their house is haunted.

Summit Entertainment will distribute the film worldwide per its deal with Participant; the two partners are co-financing the project with Imagenation.

January 31, 2012 - [ National Geographic News ]

Reclaimed Wastewater for Drinking: Safe But Still a Tough Sell

A new report highlights advancements in reclamation technology and predicts growth in treatment programs.

Water filtration technology has advanced to the point where wastewater can be rendered safe for drinking, according to a new report, but legislative and psychological hurdles will need to be overcome before widespread adoption can happen.

"Expanding water reuse could significantly increase the nation's water resource, particularly in coastal communities," said Rhodes Trussell, president of Trussell Technologies in Pasadena, California, and chair of the committee that wrote the report.

December 12, 2011 - [ Participant Media ]

Houston Film Critics Society has nominated the film in the categories of Best Picture, Best Actress (Viola Davis), Best Supporting Actress (Jessica Chastain & Octavia Spencer) and Best Original Song (“The Living Proof”); the winners in each category will be announced this Tuesday, 12/13.

Houston Film Critics Society included the film as one of the top 10 films of 2011.

Los Angeles Film Critics Association named Jessica Chastain Best Supporting Actress (for her work in The Help and her other 2011 films).

January 30, 2012 - [ Wall St. Journal Speakeasy Blog ]

A few years ago, filmmaker Lori Silverbush was shocked to discover a girl she was mentoring was subsisting on chips and ramen — and that’s when her family was able to buy any food at all.

To help out, Silverbush got the young girl into a private school, which inadvertently exacerbated the problem: the new school didn’t provide free lunches, so the girl was reduced to scavenging through lunchroom remains.

As the wife of chef and “Top Chef” host Tom Colicchio, Silverbush was no stranger to issues of hunger and poverty, but her visceral encounter with her mentee and her family motivated her to produce and direct Finding North, a documentary about America’s hunger crisis that debuted at the Sundance Film Festival last week.

January 30, 2012 - [ Huffington Post ]

Ava DuVernay won the Best Director award at the Sundance Film Festival for her drama Middle Of Nowhere — making her the first black woman to take home the honor.

In her acceptance speech, Duvernay said that it was important that Nowhere be seen beyond the film festival and for “filmmakers of color to see one another’s films and have them seen.” Nowhere was picked up by Participant Media for distribution last week.

January 29, 2012 - [ Screen Actors Guild ]

The Help won SAG Awards for Best Actress (Viola Davis), Best Supporting Actress (Octavia Spencer) and Best Cast Performance.

To view the full list of winners, please click on the link below.

January 27, 2012 - [ Santa Barbara International Film Festival ]

On Friday, January 27th Viola Davis was presented SBIFF's Outstanding Performance of The Year Award! Ms. Davis' heartfelt performance in The Help along with an incredible retrospective of her career energized The Arlington Theatre. Before the show we asked Ms. Davis and her co-star Academy Award Nominee Octavia Spencer some questions about their performances! Moderated by acclaimed Hollywood journalist Anne Thompson the tribute featured numerous highlights of Ms. Davis' vast career. To present her award SBIFF went all out, arranging an appearance from the iconic Civil Rights Movement Activist Myrlie Evers, who's husband Medgar Evers' murder inspired the plot of The Help. Ms. Evers was the first chairwoman of the NAACP and ran for Congress in the State of California. This truly was a night for the history books!

To watch video, click the link below.

January 27, 2012 - [ Utahns Against Hunger ]

UAH recommends a movie that just premiered at Sundance called Finding North about the interconnectedness of poverty, obesity, and food insecurity and about how the solution needs to be broader, deeper and more systemic than just emergency food.

“America has lost its way in taking care of its own. The shocking fact is that one in six Americans doesn’t get enough to eat on a regular basis. Even more disturbing is the fact that this new face of hunger is largely invisible. There are no breadlines in the streets, but increasing numbers of soup kitchens and food banks are feeding people who—though employed full-time—can’t make ends meet…”

January 26, 2012 - [ CNBC ]

Participant Media CEO Jim Berk talks about The Help’s Oscar nominations, Lincoln, SOPA and the mission of Participant.

To watch video, please click on the link below.

January 26, 2012 - [ Deseret News ]

Finding North, a poignant film about hunger in the United States, is a commendable entrant in the U.S. Documentary Competition at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

The foundational premise of Finding North is that one in six Americans doesn't get enough to eat on a regular basis. This statistic is based on the fact that 49 million Americans — including 17 million children — are "food insecure," a condition defined as "uncertain of having, or unable to acquire, enough food to meet the needs of all household members because of insufficient money or other resources for food."

January 25, 2012 - [ Center for Science in the Public Interest ]

The signature initiative of the Food, Inc. Social Action campaign was the Child Nutrition Reauthorization.  It was passed by Congress in December 2010 and we’ve been waiting for the USDA to implement the soda and junk ban that we supporterd, along with new school nutrition guidelines ever since. The nutrition standards have been a huge priority to nutrition organizations (this was the “french fries as a vegetable” controversy). We’ve posted Facebook updates and email alerts for over a year now to our supporters, and the groups we worked with acknowledged that our support was critical to spreading their message/petitions to the USDA.
 
Today, the USDA announced new nutrition guidelines which our campaign associate CSPI called “One of the Most Important Advancements in Nutrition in Decades.”

January 25, 2012 - [ Reuters ]

Documentary makers spur calls to action at Sundance

PARK CITY, Utah - Each year documentaries at the Sundance Film Festival are among the best movies here, and in 2012 nonfiction works on subjects from the healthcare crisis to the war on drugs and rape in the military are wowing crowds and spurring calls to action.

Sundance is the premiere U.S. film festival for movies made outside of Hollywood's mainstream studios, and it is among the world's elite gatherings for documentary makers. Sundance backer and activist Robert Redford, is an avid supporter of the form.

January 24, 2012 - [ OSCAR.com ]

BEST PICTURE
 
"The Artist"
"The Descendants"
"Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close"
"Hugo"
"Midnight in Paris"
"The Help"
"Moneyball"
"War Horse"
"The Tree of Life"

January 24, 2012 - [ Variety ]

With Newt Gingrich besmirching the idea of food stamps even as an estimated 49 million Americans don't know where their next meal is coming from, Finding North is a political hot potato -- an incendiary movie, despite its rather civilized facade. Serving up star power (actor Jeff Bridges, chef Tom Colicchio), a smorgasbord of statistics and an unblinking approach to the ways in which the U.S. agriculture game is fixed, the docu is red meat for the class-warfare crowd, and could generate some heat, given that it's targeted to the 99% of us.

Helmers Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush survey the various dysfunctional ways in which decent nutrition is kept out of the mouths of the needy -- $20 billion in yearly farm subsidies encourage the production of junk foods, for instance, while political gamesmanship keeps agribusiness flourishing despite the existence of "food deserts," in which people in some communities simply can't find decent sustenance because it doesn't pay to stock their stores.

January 23, 2012 - [ Los Angeles Times ]

The Sundance Film Festival is chock full of documentaries this year about the troubles besetting America, with movies examining the shortcomings of the war on drugs (Eugene Jarecki's The House I Live In), the problems with the healthcare system (Escape Fire) and the ability of corporations to evade taxation (We're Not Broke). But Finding North may rank among the most moving (or disheartening, depending on your viewpoint) in that it tackles a seemingly straightforward, solvable problem: hunger in the United States.

Lori Silverbush and Kristi Jacobson share directing and producing credits on the documentary, which focuses on three main characters: Rosie, an endearing fifth-grader from a small town in Colorado whose family relies on handouts; Tremonica, an overweight second-grader from Mississippi whose poor diet is leading to health problems, and Barbie Izquierdo, 24, a mother of two struggling valiantly to put food on the table in Philadelphia.

January 19, 2012 - [ Wall Street Journal ]

The Sundance Film Festival’s best kept secret are its documentaries. While dramatic films and celebrity casts draw the headlines and paparazzi, the Park City event has become the preeminent launchpad for the best nonfiction films in the U.S. Some of the most successful documentaries of all time ­ ”March of the Penguins,” “An Inconvenient Truth,” “Super Size Me,” “Hoop Dreams” ­ first premiered at Sundance, while recent Oscar winners “No End In Sight” and “Man on Wire” also launched in Park City. Here are 10 documentaries to watch for from this year’s lineup. Not surprisingly, a number of them deal with the fallout of the economic crisis.

“Finding North:” Exploring the problems of hunger in America, the film examines the serious economic, social and cultural implications of the country’s food crisis, asking: “Can a return to the policies of the 1970s save our future?” With celeb interviews, including Jeff Bridges and “Top Chef’s” Tom Coliccho and a musical score by T Bone Burnett and The Civil Wars.

January 19, 2012 - [ Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation ]

Circumstance has been nominated for GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) Award, category Outstanding Film - Limited Release. The full list of nominees can be viewed by clicking the link below. The awards are split between three dates for GLAAD Awards:  March 24 (NY),  April 21 (LA) and June 2 (SF).

OUTSTANDING FILM – LIMITED RELEASE

January 19, 2012 - [ Hollywood Reporter ]

ABC, 'The Help' Top Nominations for the NAACP Image Awards Columbia Records, thanks to contributions from Beyonce and Adele, leads in the recording category.

ABC, thanks to 'Grey's Anatomy' and 'Modern Family,' topped the TV side with 18 nominations, with CBS' 16 mentions coming in a close second picking up noms for 'The Good Wife' and its daytime offerings.

On the film side, 'The Help' racked up eight mentions for DreamWorks Pictures/Touchstone Pictures/Participant Media and Focus Features' 'Pariah' came in close behind with seven noms.

January 18, 2012 - [ ReelScreen.com ]

Diane Weyermann, exec VP of documentary films for Participant Media, is to be the recipient of Hot Docs’ 2012 Doc Mogul Award.

The award is handed out annually by the Canadian film festival to individuals that have made “an essential contribution to the creative vitality of the documentary industry.”

Weyermann, who is also founder of the Sundance Documentary Fund, will receive the award at a luncheon to be held on May 1 during this year’s Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival.