Happy Holidays! I hope that our update finds you well and in high spirits. We’ve had a very busy fall, crisscrossing the country to show our film, Seats at the Table, at three film festivals. From Virginia to California to two stops in Florida, audiences have loved the documentary.
United Nations Association Film Festival panel discussion.
As you know, Seats at the Table is an inspiring portrait of a college class which brings together university students with residents of a juvenile correctional center.
We’re very pleased to announce that Seats is resonating with a diverse set of interest groups (and media outlets—but more on that later). Education reformers, juvenile justice groups, and university communities have all come out to watch the film and engage in lively post-screening discussions.
In fact, the sold out screening and discussion at the Virginia Film Festival included a panel of two students from the documentary (one college student and one recently-released resident of the correctional center), along with Dr. Andrew Kaufman, the teacher and creator of the course, and Andrew Block, the head of the State of Virginia's Department of Juvenile Justice.
Additionally, the film appeared at the Global Peace Film Festival in Orlando, the United Nations Association Film Festival in Palo Alto, and we held the film’s first college screening at Florida International University in Miami.
Now we are focused on continuing the efforts of sharing the film as we go forward, and using the film to inspire the replication of this work to bring transformative educational opportunities for both our incarcerated and university youth.
Seats has earned a lot of great media coverage over the last few months. In the coming weeks, our friends in Virginia can expect to hear an NPR piece about the film and Virginia Film Festival panel discussion, and last month C-Ville Weekly featured us as their cover story.
As the project is still in quite a bit of debt, we do need financial support through your charitable donations. Your tax-deductible gift will allows us to fulfill our mission of changing more lives through the example presented in the film.
