About the Episode
In our eleventh episode of the second season, Co-Host J.R. Jamison sat down with award-winning filmmaker Dawn Porter of Trilogy Films to discuss storytelling for the public good. They also make a stop off in Pop Culture Corner to talk soccer, books, and cell phones. What do these three things have in common? Community.
Guests
Dawn Porter is an award-winning filmmaker whose 2013 documentary, Gideon’s Army, won the Sundance Film Festival Editing Award, the Tribeca All Access Creative Promise Award, and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and an Emmy. The film broadcast on HBO in July 2013 and has been used to engage local communities about issues of indigent defense and socioeconomic influences on crime.
Dawn’s other films include Spies of Mississippi (2014, PBS) and Rise: The Promise of My Brother’s Keeper, a documentary film chronicling President Obama’s program to help young men and boys of color succeed. Dawn interviewed President Obama for the film, which aired nationally on The Discovery Channel and The Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) in 2015. Dawn’s latest project, Trapped, explores the impact of laws that regulate abortion clinics in the South. The film coincides with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2016 decision to rule on a constitutional challenge to Texas’ HB 2 law, which places unprecedented restrictions on abortion providers in the state. Trapped premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, where it won the Special Jury Award for Social Impact Filmmaking.
Porter has been named to Variety’s list of “10 Documakers to Watch,” and she has appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and was a returning guest on MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry Show. Dawn Porter will keynote the Campus Compact National Conference: True Stories of Engagement, March 25-28, 2018, in Indianapolis.
Your Hosts
Andrew Seligsohn
President
Emily J. Shields
Executive Director, Iowa & Minnesota Campus Compact
J.R. Jamison
Executive Director, Indiana Campus Compact