American Civil Liberties Union | 2016 | 43 minutes + four 5-minute shorts
Director + D.P. + Editor
In early 2015, when local and national news outlets had turned a blind eye, I began working with the ACLU, investigative journalist Curt Guyette, and a coalition of grassroots organizations to draw attention to lead contamination in Flint’s water. In 2015, I worked with the ACLU to release four short films exposing the crisis (Hard to Swallow, Corrosive Impact, Thirst for Truth, and Circle of Lies. Here’s to Flint is the culmination of these shorts. The film is an up-to-the minute documentary that details the origins of the environmental disaster and has informed how global media outlets continue to cover the Flint Water Crisis.
Awards:
Founders Award for use of Citizen Journalism, Traverse City Film Festival, 2017
Outstanding Excellence: Social Issues Short, Docs Without Borders Film Festival, 2017
Best Documentary Feature, Big Mini Film Festival, 2016
Selected Screenings:
University Of Michigan (Archives in Real Time Conference), October 2017
Traverse City Film Festival, August 2017
Virginia Historical Society Created Equal Film Series, July 2017
Tufts University, April 2017
Loyola University Climate Change Conference, March 2017
Center for Contemporary Arts Santa Fe, November 2016
Big Mini Film Festival, November 2016
Seattle Social Justice Film Festival, October 2016
Wayne State University, September 2016
Television Showings:
Democracy Now, March 2016
CNN (excerpts), November 2015
Selected Press:
Columbia Journalism Review, November 2015
Grist, January 2016
Detroit News, March 2016
Selected Citations:
How the Flint Water Crisis Reveals a Rupture in Democracy by Greenpeace
The Emergency Manager: Strategic Racism, Technocracy and the Poisoning of Flint’s Children by Jason Stanley (Yale University)
Comparing the Flint Water Crisis to the Cryptosporidium Outbreak by Jordan Salinsky (University of Wisconsin-Madison)