Laurie Jones of Brave New Films comes on the program to talk about the epidemic of gun violence in America and Robert Greenwald’s compelling new movie, Making a Killing Off Of Guns.

Laurie Jones is the Programs Director at Brave New Films, where she organizes education and outreach initiatives that use film to start dialogue and promote activism. In 2014, she started the Brave New Educators program, which has brought social justice documentaries and curriculum to over 1,000 classrooms. Through her work in theatre, particularly plays with Wishbone Theatre Collective, Laurie developed her passion for human rights and social justice. She received her BA in Production Studies in Performing Arts from Clemson University and her MA in Applied Human Rights from the University of York.

Robert Greenwald, founder and president of Brave New Films (BNF), is an award-winning television, feature film and documentary filmmaker. He has produced and/or directed more than 50 TV movies and miniseries. including The Burning Bed (1984), starring Farrah Fawcett and  A Woman of Independent Means (1995), starring Sally Field; as well as the feature films Steal This Movie (2000), starring Vincent D’Onofrio as 60’s radical Abbie Hoffman, and Breaking Up (1997), starring Russell Crowe and Salma Hayek.

Greenwald turned to documentary filmmaking in 2002, inspired by pervasive voter rights abuses in the 2000 U.S. presidential election. He found audiences eager for substantive investigations of social issues, told through personal stories, and chose to bypass the usual gatekeepers by devising creative means of distribution, first through house parties, and ultimately through the Internet and social media. The documentaries produced by Brave New Films have been streamed across all seven continents and have been viewed over 70 million times and counting.

At BNF, Greenwald has produced and directed eight full-length documentaries and over a dozen short videos, uncovering corporate abuse, the military industrial complex, the unbridled political influence of billionaires, and the unfair and unbalanced tactics of Fox News.  His full-length features include; Uncovered: The War on Iraq (2004); Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism (2004); Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price (2005);  Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers (2006); Rethink Afghanistan (2009); Koch Brothers Exposed (2012); and War on Whistleblowers: Free Press and the National Security State (2013).  Unmanned: America’s Drone Wars (2013) is BNF’s latest feature-length documentary.

Links and Topics Mentioned In This Episode

* Get the film

* Take Action

* Gun violence in America

* Gun deaths in America