Campaign of the week

Undercurrents - film-makers

Dominic Murphy
Tuesday April 11, 2006
The Guardian

When much of the media is controlled by the rich and powerful, it raises the question: what about the little guy? How do ordinary people get themselves heard?

Give them a camcorder, say members of Undercurrents, a group of activists making films they think the mainstream media are either missing or don't want to cover.

Most of the output is documentary or animation, and concentrates on social and environmental issues - evidence of a factory illegally polluting a river, for example, or footage from the front line of a protest against genetically modified crops. "Our main focus is direct action," says Undercurrents' Paul O'Connor. "We're not really into films just showing problems. We are more into films about people doing something."

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Its most successful piece is probably Evolving Minds, a film by Melissa Gunasena about dealing with mental health problems. It is now used in seminars by the mental-health charity Mind.

Other footage has appeared on television news and in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, but the main audience comes from the web or screenings at film events and alternative festivals. Increasingly, however, there is demand from the growing network of digital channels such as Chapters TV, the Community Channel and Free Speech TV, which farms out footage to cable channels all over the US. O'Connor estimates that they can reach an audience of 200,000 in this way. Not quite EastEnders - but enough to get you noticed.

· Details: 01792 455900; undercurrents.org