Ghetto Film School
Franklin turned me onto the Ghetto Film School:
In June 2000 Joe Hall founded The Ghetto Film School (GFS) to connect talented young people to artistic, educational and professional opportunities in the world of film and video. Since that time, more than 400 students have participated in GFS programs and workshops, coming from all areas of New York City to our South Bronx training facilities for hands-on production and cinema studies courses.
MISSION
The mission of The Ghetto Film School is to educate, develop and celebrate the next generation of great American storytellers.
VISION
Benefiting the World One Story at a Time.
CORE VALUES
Our core values exemplify what is truly important to GFS as an organization. These values are constant and are the foundation of GFS culture:
Story Makes Our Hearts Beat
Great storytelling inspires, informs and transforms others.
Story is the Road, is the Map to Our Lives
Great storytelling demands authenticity; it speaks from personal truth and we encourage the process with the highest degree of trust, dignity, equality and humanity.
Story Makes us Fearless
Storytelling makes us fearless in our pursuit of excellence, fearless in the challenge, the stretch, and the willingness to court doubt and grow from our mistakes.
Story Makes us Anything and Everything
Storytelling embraces the full potential of each storyteller. We cultivate this practice through asset based learning, meritocracy, providing outstanding resources, unique opportunities and high expectations and standards.
Story Unites
Storytelling gives voice and provides different lenses to gain insight into our collective humanity.
Upholding these core values, regardless of how large GFS becomes, preserves what has always been extraordinary about GFS. These core values are the soul of the organization.
Amen to all of the above! Here is a promotional video:
Part of what they do is interface young filmmakers from around the world with established professionals. Here is an hour-long Google+ Hangout Master Class with writer-director Lee Daniels:
Here is an hour-long conversation with writer-director Catherine Hardwicke:
And tonight at 7PM EDT, they debut their new master class with filmmaker Spike Jonze.
If you’re looking for a good charitable cause to support, you can go here to help out the Ghetto Film School. We need all the young, talented filmmakers and storytellers we can get, so here’s to you GFS!