We are pleased to announce our first film festival selection for “After the Factory.”

The film makes its West Coast premiere at Filmanthropy Society Film Festival in Los Angeles. The festival showcases films that inspire, educate, raise awareness and motivate. All film festival proceeds go to the charities of the winning films (ours is Georgia Street Community Collective and the race track we are building). Pretty cool.

If you are in LA, check it out this weekend!

LOCATION
Bergamot Station
2525 Michigan Avenue
Building I
Santa Monica, California

SCHEDULE
Thursday, May 17, 2012
2:00pm-7:00pm: Film Screenings
7:00pm: Writer’s Boot Camp Mini-Camp
7:30pm: Premiere of “Staging Hope” followed by Q&A

Friday, May 18, 2012
2:00pm-8:00pm: Film Screenings
8:00pm-10:00pm: Speaker Panel with Andy Lauer of Reel Aid, Ben Phelan of Play It Fwd, and Josh Tickell, Green Technology Strategist and Director

Saturday, May 19, 2012
1:30pm-4:30pm: Film Screenings
6:30pm: Red Carpet
7:00pm: Torch Awards Gala Event

After a couple weeks on the road, the latest ATF mini-tour came to a smashing close last night in Brooklyn. The good folks at Playground Detroit– a NYC-based non-profit who are drawing ties between the Big Apple and the Motor City– were gracious hosts and brought in a nice crowd with all kinds of interesting questions afterwards. Once again, the Q+A lasted longer than the film itself– a sure sign that something about the film is resonating with people. After stops down south and now in the Northeast, it’s good to wrap things up with an empire state of mind, and head back to the homeland. Home is where the heart is.

Check out some photos from the road, a visual journal of the last couple weeks of our little Detroit roadshow.

Campus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

A room full of incredibly smart MIT’ers watching ATF

From big brains to the big apple. NYC!

Promo posters spotted in Bushwick for our Brooklyn screening

A blurry Brooklyn crowd. Cool venue!

Graffiti in Brooklyn. Call your mom for Mothers Day this weekend!

See you back in Detroit, can’t wait to get back home. We have some cool work to be rolling out in the next few weeks!

Been on the road the last few days screening “After the Factory” in New Orleans and Austin tonight. We’ve been having some good conversations– in NOLA, particularly about looking at the devastation via Katrina and how folks from Detroit/NOLA can learn from each other in there ability to see through the struggle. Powerful stuff. Tonight will be great to have another film added to the bill in “Lemonade: Detroit”, directed by Erik Proulx. Next week we’re in Boston (MIT!) and NYC (see all the dates here). As I move along via trains and planes, I can’t help but think about coming home and getting back to work– in a good way.

DL! has been growing up these days. What started with creative work doing projects of our own (t-shirts, murals, films, etc) has morphed in to a situation where now people are coming to us to design stuff for them. I kind of like to think of DL! these days as a creative agency and social brand. We’ve grown a ton in the last 4 months or so taking on about 300% more work than we did last year. That’s pretty cool. And it’s leading to us being able to take bigger steps in the community which is obviously important– like building that race car track for the kids at the Georgia Street Community Garden.

But all I can think about is more! MORE! How can we continue to grow, to be inventive with the way we blur the lines between a traditional creative agency and a social brand. The next step of course is getting space– an office. And all I can think about is how we can put a refresher on the traditional agency model whereby it’s not just strictly production space where we make films for clients. What if it has some sort of user-generated component? What if it had a cafe attached to it with a performance space like 1515 Broadway? What if it became a hacker space where people could dissect content from pieces we developed to fuel their own projects across a variety of disciplines? What if the “office” became some form of a new-wave civic center pairing traditional consumer behavior (buying/selling) with philanthropy (commoditizing goodness)? At the end of the day, how can we create a valuable retail and experiential model abutted to that of a traditional ad agency? I know some of this stuff is vague, and slightly unclear. But that’s by design.

Stay tuned. How will DL! grow up and stay relevant by refreshing the way we do business and perhaps inventing a new “system” for others? I ask all these questions so that all of you can hold me accountable for moving forward with it down the road. And if you’ve got some thoughts– give me a jingle.

See you in Austin tonight if you can make it for the screening of “After the Factory” and “Lemonade: Detroit.” Tickets and info on the event (tonight, 7pm) here.

Ohhh baby, you wanna talk excitement? We’re hitting the road again with “After the Factory.” First stop? Tomorrow– in the culture capital of the south, no less. New Orleans! So pumped to be playing at the Zeitgeist Theatre, of which we found thanks to Alan at Civic Center– a really great organization doing some pretty unique and innovative stuff in NOLA.

After a stint in NOLA, we’re headed to Austin-town, Texas where we are more than honored to be screening as a double feature alongside the likes of Erik Proulx, director of “Lemonade: Detroit“, the film you’ve certainly heard about in the last year. We are screening at Austin Studios, part of the Austin Film Society, on May 2 at 7pm. Tickets are only $5 so if you are in the area, you should really consider coming.

Then it’s off to see the big dogs at MIT where we will be doing a special screening on May 8 with various faculty members and students at one of the most prestigious research universities in the country. Again, we are so honored to even have the opportunity to screen the film and connect with some of the brightest minds that higher education can offer. After Boston and MIT, you guessed it, we’re off to the Big Apple.

If you can make it in NYC, you can make it anywhere, right? Well, we’re trying. We’re doing two screenings in the city, the first of which being at the offices of ?What if!, a really innovative consulting and creative agency that helps companies develop their brands and come up with cool ideas to roll out products. We are screening at their offices with a convo to follow about innovative distribution models in the film industry right now. Hopefully we’ll get some cool ideas on ways in which we can push the film forward. That following night we are then screening again alongside Erik Proulx and “Lemonade: Detroit.” Follow all the details at afterthefactoryfilm.com.

How’s that for some action. Ready, steady, GO!

I have really stayed mum on this topic, mostly because it’s so deep and complex that I struggle with the “proper” narrative. And so instead of suggesting the merits of an EFM versus reaching some sort of consent agreement, I think it’s best to follow the process on your own and establish a position on the issue for yourself. Whatever the case, our city is at a crucial moment.

This afternoon– actually, right now– City Council is discussing the consent agreement. The meeting started at 1pm. Follow Steve Neavling via Twitter (@Freepreporter) for the best up-to-date play by play of the meeting that Pugh is holding. The Thursday deadline looms where a decision MUST be made by the state. If a consent agreement isn’t reached by that time, then the EFM could come in at that time. Of course, beyond that, there are many complications that make it such a complex issue– but those are the basics.

Stay tuned.

A confluence of thought leaders, foundations and media partners have come together to launch the Urban Innovation Exchange. The effort is geared towards placing a value on social capital and capturing the impact that such ventures create with a goal of proliferating models and various types of innovation to further the reach and encourage growth of social innovation in Detroit. We are a very proud media partner in this endeavor, developing film content that will be used in profiling hundreds of social innovators over the next year.

In a similar fashion to the way we’ve been developing content for the Speakers Bureau, we will be releasing two new videos a month for the Urban Innovation Exchange. Each video will focus on an individual and their particular social innovation. The first four we have prepared for the launch of UIX discuss social innovation with Bobby Smith (En Garde! Detroit), Delphia Simmons (THRIVE Detroit), Jordi Carbonell (Cafe Con Lecche) and Amy Kaherl (Detroit SOUP). Each short film tries to capture a sense of impact. How does starting a fencing club lead to the growth of a city, and its people? How does a street newspaper empower others to see a better day? How can a micro-funding dinner lead to the growth of influential community leaders? How does a coffee shop serve as crossing ground and cultural point for an entire neighborhood? These are the answers we are searching for, and this is what we will continue to do over the next year alongside the Urban Innovation Exchange.

Onward.

Oh, and here are all the videos we did for the launch, but go ahead and check out the site in its full glory, it is filled with vibrant images, editorials and community-led thoughts about the forward movements of our city. See the brand new site here: UIXDetroit.com.

A really interesting project put on by MOCAD has been catching my eye lately. The Facebook invite for the project more or less explains it all quite well:

“Calling all Makers, Inventors, Problem Solvers, Fabricators, Modifiers, Creators, Builders, Conjurers, Producers, Storytellers, Tinkerers, Visionaries & Hobbyists!

Post Industrial-Complex will celebrate local innovators and their wares. It is comprised of a Summer 2012 exhibition as well as a catalog that will document everything surveyed during the research phase of the exhibition, from which the exhibition is produced, as well as narrative texts and critical essays by local and national writers.

Submit via postcard (found around town and at MOCAD) or, soon, via the MOCAD website. We will post updates on Facebook throughout the month.

Deadline is April 14, 2012.”

The postcard that you can pick up throughout the city has a square space on the back that you are invited to place whatever it is that you see fit that relates to the premise of envisioning Detroit– past, present, future. All in, I think the collection of images, thoughts, ideas and words will be an interesting snapshot of not just where we are now as a city but where we might be going. And I just love that it’s a postcard and not an electronic form, although the electronic version is coming. I love the idea of people pasting photos on the postcard or line drawings and mailing it in. Electronic or otherwise, the exhibition when it’s all said and done ought to be pretty cool.

Showtime is tonight at 7pm, with doors opening for seating at 6:30pm. Buy tickets at the door or online here. We will do a Q+A after the screening to discuss the film and address any questions, and have some of the limited run of 75 film posters for sale if you want to pick one up.

Hope to see you there!

I am really excited to announce a huge project we are undertaking with the folks at the Goergia Street Community Garden. The basics: With all proceeds from the screening of After the Factory on March 22 at the Main Art Theatre in Royal Oak, we are initiating a neighborhood project on a vacant lot at the Georgia Street Community Garden. We want to use the film as a tool to create real growth and to go beyond just talking about the good things happening. We want it to be a crucial part of the movement, too.

So, a neighborhood project? We are building a remote control race car track (this photo more or less conveys what that means). There I said it. I couldn’t help it. But wait, a remote control race car track? Let me explain.

The idea is to create an attraction, something that kids are curious about and want to take part in. After all, there are no remote control race car tracks in the city of Detroit, so it will also be something very unique to them and their neighborhood. Once the track is constructed, kids will have a variety of ways in which they can earn car time– they can volunteer in the GSCC media center, they could help tutor a fellow neighbor with their math homework, they could volunteer with Mark in the garden, take part in the up and coming youth garden market, or a variety of other things. But the point is this: once they have put a little work in, they are rewarded with some good old fashioned fun at the track where they can race cars and have a good time on space that was previously derelict. But it goes significantly further than that. With enough interest we can run classes that show kids how to build their own car, and perhaps some become interested in circuitry, engineering or product design. Then the universities step in to help make that vision possible with some partial or full scholarships. But here’s the main point: we’re taking dirt, a vacant lot, some extra materials and creating a very unique form of community engagement that is easily scaled up and emulated by others.

So! Who is WE? Well, obviously Mark Covington and the folks in the vicinity of Georgia Street Community Garden, then us here at DL!, but we’re looping in Patrick Thompson from Patrick Thompson Design to help really steer an innovative design process that involves kids and neighbors at the front end of designing this thing (learn about Patrick in a recent short film we did on him here).

Last item: We really need your help. Please buy your tickets for the screening on March 22 and support this endeavor. The more people that come, the closer we get to reaching our mark of raising at least $3,000 for this effort. If you cannot come to the screening, please tell your friends to come through Facebook and Twitter. Next, we will need some volunteers when we get to cleaning off the lot in April. So, get ready, we think this is going to be a really exciting forward movement for the folks on Georgia Street, but hopefully pave the way to creatively thinking about some new forms of neighborhood engagement. Onward.

Good news: We’ve scheduled a screening date at the Main Art Theatre in Royal Oak on March 22. The film will show at 7pm. Click here to purchase tickets in advance or buy them directly at the box office to get around service fees.

We will be making some special announcements about the screening in the coming weeks, so get your tickets while you can! In the meantime, here is the absolutely stunning photograph that Marvin Shaouni took at the world premiere of ATF at the Detroit Film Theatre.