The documentary Deadly Deception won international critical acclaim and helped the Boston–based nonprofit INFACT win its campaign to drive General Electric out of the nuclear weapons business.

In the world of advocacy video, when a tape helps the sponsoring organization win its campaign, and the tape itself wins an Academy Award, it seems almost too good to be true. The story of the making of Deadly Deception reveals a brilliant mix of a filmmaker's creativity with the political acumen of a national nonprofit organization. With or without the recognition of the Academy, the production process and distribution strategy behind Deadly Deception would illustrate all that advocacy video can achieve.

INFACT envisioned Deadly Deception as a campaign tool from the outset. The organization had been working to drive General Electric (GE) out of the nuclear weapons business for several years before it decided to commission a film. INFACT—who had used video effectively in their successful Nestle boycott—believed that a documentary would be an essential tool. An INFACT staff member spent almost a year reviewing films and interviewing filmmakers. Though filmmaker Debra Chasnoff had not previously produced anything for a nonprofit, INFACT hired her both for her filmmaking talents and for her personal background as an activist and an INFACT supporter.

The organization had three main goals for the film: to gain media attention for the issue, to motivate people to become involved, and to hold the decisionmakers at GE personally accountable. Chasnoff believed that by contrasting GE's "We Bring Good Things to Life" television ads with the stark reality of the harmful pollution caused by GE's nuclear weapons program, the film could gain the media's attention and mobilize the public.

INFACT provided Chasnoff with the stories organizers had been collecting from "downwinders" living in the shadow of GE's nuclear production facilities. "Organizing basically involves telling powerful stories about how people's lives are being affected by abuses of power," says Elaine Lamy, INFACT's former executive director. "Video is a very powerful medium [to use] to tell people's stories because the people can tell their stories themselves." Deadly Deception created an opportunity for the downwinders to tell their own stories, in their own words, to people around the world.

The documentary asks viewers to become involved by boycotting GE. "Most documentaries on issues simply state the problem and that's their function," said Chasnoff at the Benton Foundation Advocacy Video Conference in 1993. "We wanted to make something that motivated people to take action, too. So we used a very targeted approach to show people what they can do about the problem."

To ensure that the video would assist the grassroots campaign, INFACT and Chasnoff agreed to send 60 copies of the rough cut to INFACT's local chapters to solicit feedback. "INFACT took the responsibility of synthesizing all those comments and giving me a very nicely typed out five–page memo on suggestions of how to change the production," said Chasnoff at the Advocacy Video Conference. "It was very helpful in our efforts to make the film better and to make it more useful for what it was ultimately designed to do." INFACT released the video in 1991 with a major media push that included a press conference in New York City and media events in regional organizing centers around the nation.

According to Lamy, the video was used to "pull people together in community gatherings, to organize people to join the GE boycott, and get them actively involved." INFACT distributed more than 15,000 copies of the film to its membership, institutions, and the general public. The video was subsequently transferred to film by Tara Releasing, which distributed Deadly Deception theatrically as a companion to the documentary Building Bombs. Because INFACT raised the funding for the production and appeared in the program, PBS rejected the program for national broadcast, claiming that it posed a conflict of interest. Though Deadly Deception has aired in at least 60 foreign nations, only a handful of PBS affiliates chose to air it in the United States.

Because the video won top awards in several key film festivals, it was eligible for the Academy Award and won in 1992 for Best Documentary Short Subject. "Debra Chasnoff very courageously used her 40 seconds of air time to tell a billion people around the world about GE's connection to nuclear weapons," said Elaine Lamy at the Advocacy Video Conference, "which of course resulted in an avalanche of additional media coverage for this message." Describing the impact of the Oscar on her own life, Chasnoff amused the audience with the following words: "I really recommend winning an Oscar to anyone who is running a grassroots campaign or who comes from a dysfunctional family. I call it 'Oscar therapy'. It works! If you come from a family that doesn't understand why you've been working on progressive issues all your life, just get an Oscar. It cures everything."

A little more than a year after the release of Deadly Deception, GE announced they were leaving the nuclear weapons business. Elaine Lamy would not say that Deadly Deception or the press coverage it generated won the campaign. "Video does not take the place of human interaction," she says. "INFACT had spent four years engaged in intensive grassroots organizing in the United States and abroad before the release of the film. But Deadly Deception provided a tool for a well–organized grassroots network and took the campaign to the next level of engagement with GE."

How a short organizing video and a video news release gave a coordinated voice to hunger activists across the country.

In the early 1990s the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) found that its network of local groups working to prevent hunger in the United States wanted something to bring them together in a coordinated campaign.

"The groups started coming to us and talking about being burnt out, being tired, feeling isolated," said Ann Kittlaus, former communications director for FRAC, at the Advocacy Video Conference. "They said 'we need something that gives us common language and themes and images.'"

The organization decided to wage a coordinated campaign to end childhood hunger. The campaign centered around a ground–breaking study which revealed that 5.5 million children under the age of 12—or one out of every eight children—are hungry in the United States.

FRAC realized that video was ideally suited to a campaign bringing together many disparate local organizations. "Instead of having just a one–day release [of the report] which we knew would be significant in Washington DC and across the country, we wanted to have a tool that community groups could use for organizing, educating, and fundraising," said Kittlaus. But the organization had never produced a video before and according to Kittlaus, "telephone trees were about as sophisticated as our groups got."

The Benton Foundation, involved in shaping the Campaign to End Childhood Hunger from the beginning, took responsibility for producing the video, working with producer Virginia Quesada from Washington DC. The 10–minute video is a model of effective low–cost production, using creative graphics and borrowed footage from dozens of films on hunger programs and food policy, along with original interviews and coverage of the launch press conference. The video provides a visually compelling synopsis of the FRAC study, explaining how the statistical information was obtained directly from families in need, confirming visually what thousands of people working at food banks and soup kitchens had known for years—that too many children go hungry in America. The video connects individuals working in isolation from one another and articulates childhood hunger as a national problem.

To ensure that the video would meet the needs of local food banks and other groups fighting hunger, FRAC organized several focus groups in the process of making the video. One month before the release of the report, FRAC held a national conference, the last stepping stone in the effort to train their grassroots groups for the national campaign. The producers presented a rough cut at the conference, recognizing that "these were the people who were going to use this as a tool for getting people motivated, getting them excited about the issue, getting them really alerted to the issue...so their feedback helped us target how to present the material, and how to make it very effective."

To generate interest at the state level, FRAC also offered a video news release (VNR) via satellite the day of the report's release in Washington DC. The VNR was produced by the Communications Consortium Media Center, a public interest media center in Washington DC, that was responsible for the campaign's national media relations. The VNR used elements from the video, including footage of people at food banks, excerpts from the press conference that day in Washington DC, and added scrolled data on the number of children who were going hungry or in danger of going hungry in each state, along with contact information for local campaign spokespersons. More than 75 stations incorporated the VNR into local news, according to Phil Sparks of the Communications Consortium.

FRAC's primary goal in producing the video—to unify and reinvigorate grassroots anti–hunger groups—was achieved. The organization distributed 5,000 copies of the tape through more than 40 statewide coalitions and more than 100 national organizations.

"The groups in our network use it all the time at meetings, in their communities, to show to their Rotary Clubs or PTAs," said Kittlaus. FRAC encouraged food banks and other interested organizations to use the video as a general discussion piece and then hand out materials on local efforts. Dick Goebel of Second Harvest Food Bank in St. Paul, Minnesota, wrote: "The video was extremely helpful; we showed it to our clients and to staffs of other food banks, and it helped us raise public awareness." The Oregon Food Bank used the video in presentations around the state and it inspired them to create their own half–hour documentary which aired on an ABC affiliate. Three national religious organizations put their own tags on the beginning and end of the tape, asking their members to become involved.

"We found the video to be enormously useful in terms of involving new partners in the campaign because video is a great organizing tool," says Kristin Driscoll of FRAC. "For people who don't know the issue, they're moved by the video to become involved. For people who are already involved, the video makes those people feel they're part of something greater than their own individual efforts."

The United Farm Workers Union distributed hundreds of thousands of videos free of charge to educate workers, policymakers, and the public about the hazards of pesticides.

In 1985 Emmy–award winning producer Lorena Parlee met Cesar Chavez, leader of the United Farm Workers from 1962 until his death in 1993. At the time of their meeting, Parlee wanted to do a film about Chavez's life. She says Chavez responded to her request by saying, "You can one day, it's not time yet, but in the meantime could you do a little film for us." Parlee agreed to donate her labor, and their collaboration produced The Wrath of Grapes, the most widely–distributed advocacy video to date, with more than 250,000 free copies in circulation around the globe.

The video describes the dangerous business of producing grapes, which are sprayed with more restricted pesticides than any other fruit or vegetable in the United States. Since the video was created to support the UFW's renewed grape boycott, it illustrates graphically the UFW's concerns. Women who worked in the fields during pregnancy describe their grief in giving birth to children with severe birth defects. Other children who live near the fields suffer from cancer. Parlee was conscientious about the difficulty the interviews posed for the families. "We visited [them] several times before we filmed the interviews because we wanted them to be sure they didn't feel used or exploited. Even though they wanted to warn others about the horrors of pesticides, it was hard for them. It was hard for us, too." By contrasting images of helicopters dousing grape fields with slow motion images of a mother washing grapes for a small child, The Wrath of Grapes brings the issue home to every consumer.

At first, Chavez was the only person in the union showing The Wrath of Grapes at public speaking engagements. "Cesar Chavez was a very, very strong believer in the use of video as long as somebody went with it," she says. "It always was connected to, somehow, a real person." Chavez was quoted in a UFW newsletter as saying, "Once I realized how moved people were at what they saw—sympathetic, yes, but angry, too—I knew we had to get it [The Wrath of Grapes] out as fast and to as many people as possible."

The UFW and Parlee designed a comprehensive strategy for the free distribution of The Wrath of Grapes. Farmworker organizers use the tape (and 16mm copies) in their organizing efforts, and they distribute free videos widely—even handing them out on street corners, asking for donations in return. The UFW mailed viewing copies along with information and print graphics to the boards and newsletter editors of other interested organizations: labor organizations, churches, environmental organizations. Many organizations encouraged their constituencies to watch the video in their chapter meetings. The first line of a review in the newsletter of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers (OCAW) Union reads: "All OCAW locals should make room on their meeting agenda for a powerful new film and video from the UFW."

After consistent follow–up, other organizations began distributing the video themselves. The New York State Teachers Union, for example, made 700 copies, one for every school district in the state. The UFW printed direct–mail pieces and ads with coupons offering free copies of the video and kits explaining how to run a house meeting. Chavez said "a whole new network of volunteers" was created through the distribution of the video.

In 1990 the UFW produced an updated version of the video entitled No Grapes that has also been distributed to hundreds of thousands of people. No Grapes has been translated into Spanish, French, Mandarin Chinese, and Cantonese Chinese.

The impact of The Wrath of Grapes and No Grapes as a factor in the UFW campaign has not been specifically documented. Yet by 1992 an estimated 9 percent of consumers in the United States had stopped buying grapes and certainly the very extensive distribution of the video has played a role. The principal goals of the campaign have nearly been achieved: All of the five pesticides the UFW demanded should be banned have been, or they are in the process of being, phased out.

"The video is one of our strongest means of educating the public about the dangers of pesticides," says Jocelyn Sherman of the UFW. "Actually seeing the people and their suffering is an extremely effective method of making the public aware of the dangers farm workers are forced to face."

Next: Advocacy Television: From Sofa to the Streets

Last updated: 22 October 2001 mff
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