Media Done Responsibly Virtual Film Festival

Audience members are craving and demanding equitable representation in film in an industry that has been historically white and male. As more industry executives hold themselves accountable and seek to honor inclusion riders, and as filmmakers seek platforms to have their diverse stories told, the Media Done Responsibly Film Festival stands in the gap, bridging divides and providing sustainable accessibility between worlds.

The Media Done Responsibly Virtual Film Festival ("Festival") is a program of the nonprofit, Media Done Responsibly (MDR) whose mission is to amplify the practice of social responsibility in media while providing education, voice and access to diverse media makers and consumers. MDR's Film Fest is a project of its Media Production and Media Justice pillars.

The Festival accepts entries that center the lived experiences of Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC), LGBTQIA+, disabled, immigrant, women, nonbinary/non gender conforming, intersectional or other traditionally marginalized communities. The main protagonist must fall within at least one of these categories. Submissions must reflect the complex humanity of these diverse groups and stay away from stereotypes. All genres are accepted including drama, comedy, romance, adventure, horror, science fiction, Afro Futurism, social justice, investigative journalism, and more.

The Festival's goal is to disrupt the *single story that feeds institutional racism. It grants agency to people to tell their own stories and in so doing, to reflect their fully-embodied humanity. The MDR Film Festival amplifies counterstories that center the humanity of BIPOC and traditionally marginalized communities. It centers stories of people with intersecting oppressions and shines light on their joy, their complexities, their cultures, their customs, and their contributions to our society and world.

Its mission is to provide power and platform for the repetition of our collective humanity using the mediums of art and film. We do this not to grant storytellers fleeting permission to be a shooting star in a limited purview world, but to help us recognize that we all belong to each other in a vast expanse where our destinies are intricately and tangibly linked. Its principle is Ubuntu, "I Am because We are."

The Media Done Responsibly Virtual Film Festival judges films based on both technical qualities and inclusive storytelling. It incorporates the Mediaversity scale (https://www.mediaversityreviews.com/how-we-grade) and accounts for the Bechdel Test, the Riz Test and the DuVernay Test in its judging standards.

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*In her TED Talk on "The Danger of the Single Story," Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie states, “How [stories] are told, who tells them, when they're told, how many stories are told, are really dependent on power. Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person.”