Jeanette Millo is a Producer with 20 years of experience, born and raised in Germany, currently teaching Film Finance at USC. Her students have inspired her to write her new book, Entertainment Finance Today. We talk about what it was like to break into Hollywood as a Native German, the importance of weighing the story you want to tell against what it can make, and how to tell impactful stories.

Columbia Graduate Daniel Ragussis directed Imperium (2016), staring Daniel Radcliffe, which centers around an FBI agent who infiltrates a white supremacist group to uncover a domestic terror plot. Though initially Radcliffe's character, Nate Foster, suspects the obvious skinheads, the film offers views of other white supremacists groups and tries to give the viewer a better understanding of them. By drawing from Michael German's real life FBI cases, the portrayals of the plain neighbor next door having unsuspecting views are true to life.

On this episode of the podcast Ragussis talks about what drove him to create the film. From initial research for his short film Haber (2008), Ragussis saw that there was an unacknowledged group of White Nationalists posing a domestic threat. He talks about how he humanized the characters in the film by understanding their ideology and displaying qualities beyond just their views.

This week we're also joined by special guest (TM), a former member of the white supremacist movement from Germany who advises on how best to reform and save those on the path to radicalization. TM discusses his own experiences and how they relate to what's portrait in the film.

Chance Morrison has worked at HBO for 11 years, holding various positions and currently working in the department for Corporate Social Responsibility.

Chance is a passionate advocate for impactful cinema, serving on the board of Bowery Residents Committee as Junior Board Chairwoman, creating the Ask Chance foundation to provide young women exposure to industry professionals, and earning herself the prestigious Time Warner Richard D. Parsons Award for Community Service in 2017.

She works on impact campaigns for all HBO content, ranging from Sesame Street to Euphoria.

This week on the Cinema of Change podcast we’re talking with writer and show-runner Stacy Traub. Stacy Traub has worked as a writer and show-runner on shows like, Glee, Trophy Wife, The Real O'Neals, and Black-ish.

Welcome to the Cinema of Change podcast with Tobias Deml and Robert Rippberger. Cinema of Change is a magazine and community that challenges the conventions of film and its ability to effect change in the world. This episode is an interview with entertainment attorney Mark Litwak called, "Filmmaking Pitfalls in Deal-Making and Distribution."

Mark Litwak is a veteran entertainment attorney. As a Producer’s Representative, he assists filmmakers in arranging financing, marketing and distribution of their films. Litwak has packaged movie projects and served as executive producer on such feature films as “The Proposal,” “Out Of Line,” “Pressure,” and “Diamond Dog.” He has provided legal services or worked as a producer rep on more than 200 feature films.

Litwak is also the author of six books: Reel Power, The Struggle for Influence and Success in the New Hollywood(William Morrow, 1986), Courtroom Crusaders (William Morrow, 1989), Dealmaking in the Film & Television Industry (Silman-James Press, 1994) (winner of the 1996 Kraszna-Krausz award for best book in the world on the film business), Contracts for the Film & Television Industry (Silman-James Press, 3rd Ed. 2012), Litwak's Multimedia Producer's Handbook (Silman-James Press, 1998), and Risky Business: Financing and Distributing Independent Film (Silman-James Press, 2004).

He is an adjunct professor at the U.S.C. Gould School of Law where he teaches entertainment law.

Litwak has a B.A. and M.A. degrees from Queens College of the City University of New York. He received his J.D. degree from the University of San Diego in 1977.

We hope you find this conversation interesting and insightful. Subscribe to make sure you don’t miss an episode. Until next time, be the change that you want to see in the world. Then turn it into cinema.

Welcome to the Cinema of Change podcast with Tobias Deml and Robert Rippberger. Cinema of Change is a magazine and community that challenges the conventions of film and its ability to effect change in the world.

Joshua Lincoln Oppenheimer was born in 1974 in Austin, Texas. He is a two-time Oscar-nominated American film director based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Oppenheimer has a Bachelor of Arts-degree summa cum laude in filmmaking from Harvard University and a PhD from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts in London.

Oppenheimer spent 12 years in Indonesia and returned with two internationally praised documentaries, The Act of Killing (2012) & The Look of Silence (2014), both challenged the documentary film form and shed new light on the minds behind The Indonesian Genocide of 1965-1966.

• 01:30 How films can change both the world and the people in and behind them.
• 02:20 - The true impact of films
• 07:05 The psychology of perpetrators
• 10:40 What screenwriters and narrative filmmakers can learn about real villains
• 12:20 Advice to narrative filmmakers to have their films make more impact
• 15:15 Protecting the artist from his/her impact
• 19:00 On film criticism and understanding how a film works on an audience
• 20:35 On motivation, risk-taking and finding your path

We hope you find the conversation interesting and evocative. Subscribe to make sure you don’t miss an episode.

Be the change that you want to see in the world. Then, turn it into cinema.

Welcome to the Cinema of Change podcast with Tobias Deml and Robert Rippberger. Cinema of Change is a magazine and community that challenges the conventions of film and its ability to effect change in the world.

Glenn Sparks wrote one of the most used textbooks for media studies titled: Media Effects Research: A Basic Overview. Over the past 30 years, Glenn has become one of the foremost experts in how media effects individuals and society. In his career in academia, his lectures took him around the world from Canada to Ethiopia. We are pleased to have him join us at Cinema of Change.

We hope you find the conversation interesting and evocative. Subscribe to make sure you don’t miss an episode.

Be the change that you want to see in the world. Then, turn it into cinema.

Welcome to the Cinema of Change podcast with Tobias Deml and Robert Rippberger. Cinema of Change is a magazine and community that challenges the conventions of film and its ability to effect change in the world.

Professor Paige teaches at the UC Berkeley French Department and has published a number of papers and books focusing mostly on seventeenth and eighteenth-century French literature and culture. What makes him so unique to us is that he is on of the foremost experts on the French New Wave - and the magazine that came with it, the “Cahiers du Cinema.” This period in 1960s French Cinema sparked a revolution in filmmaking worldwide. How could a few french intellectuals change the face of cinema? We’re about to find out.

• 00:25 - Intro: The French New Wave (FNW)
• 01:23 - How does a film movement form and become successful?
• 05:50 - Did the "Cahier du Cinema" magazine dictate the course of the French New Wave?
• 10:12 - How did the FNW filmmakers transition from critic to creator?
• 13:45 - How does a journalistic background influence a filmmaker?
• 19:46 - When do film revolutions happen - and how can we forecast them?
• 24:35 - Is a cultural shift usually preceded by a generational shift?
• 27:39 - What's the next revolution that makes us rethink cinema?
• 35:12 - Can films properly portray the existential questions of life?

We hope you find this conversation interesting and evocative. Subscribe to make sure you don’t miss an episode. Until next time, be the change that you want to see in the world. Then turn it into cinema.

Welcome to the Cinema of Change podcast with Tobias Deml and Robert Rippberger. Cinema of Change is a magazine and community that challenges the conventions of film and its ability to effect change in the world.

Lee Mun Wah is an internationally renowned Chinese American documentary filmmaker, author, poet, Asian folkteller, educator, community therapist and master diversity trainer. For more than 25 years he was a resource specialist and counselor in the San Francisco Unified School District. He has produced several documentaries discussing the impact of race relations in America. His list of works includes Last Chance for Eden which isa three part documentary about racism and sexismas well as his most famous film The Color of Fear. Lee Mun Wah is now the Executive Director of Stirfry Seminars & Consulting, a diversity training company that provides educational tools and workshops on issues pertaining to cross-cultural communication and awareness, mindful facilitation, and conflict mediation techniques.

• 00:28 - Intro: Cinema and Race
• 01:27 - Why did you use a film for communicating race relations?
• 05:20 - Experiencing other racial viewpoints through film
• 09:45 - Can identifying with a character's journey change our own world?
• 14:07 - How white privilege can become accessible through a film
• 20:11 - Using films as educational tools
• 25:54 - The community benefit of documentaries
• 28:37 - How were people and institutions changed by your films?
• 33:58 - Can fictional films be as impactful as documentaries?
• 35:54 - Films can model our behavior
• 37:03 - Advice for other impact-oriented filmmakers
• 40:24 - Outro: The camera as a tool to reach deeper truths in a subject

We hope you find this conversation interesting and insightful. Subscribe to make sure you don’t miss an episode. Until next time, be the change that you want to see in the world. Then turn it into cinema.

Welcome to the Cinema of Change podcast with Tobias Deml and Robert Rippberger. Cinema of Change is a magazine and community that challenges the conventions of film and its ability to effect change in the world.

Linda Williams is a professor in the Film and Rhetoric departments at UC Berkeley. She teaches courses on pornography, melodrama, and “body genres.” In 1989 she published a study of pornographic film entitled Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the Frenzy of the Visible (second edition 1999). More recently she published Screening Sex (Duke, 2008), a history of the revelation and concealment of sex at the movies. In 2001 Williams published Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White, from Uncle Tom to O.J. Simpson (2001, Princeton)–an analysis of racial melodrama spanning the 19th and 20th centuries of American culture.

We hope you find this conversation interesting and insightful. Subscribe to make sure you don’t miss an episode. Until next time, be the change that you want to see in the world. Then turn it into cinema.