Watching Waking the Sleeping Giant for Free

Some very cool news: our main North American distributor Indiecan Entertainment gave us permission to release individual chapters of Waking the Sleeping Giant via Youtube in the hopes that those chapters might be useful to some of the many activists and organizations working so hard right now on criminal justice reform, electoral reform, economic reform, and other critical issues.

Stay tuned for details, but the short version is straightforward: on Thursday of this week (July 16) we’ll be making all fourteen chapters of the film available on the Waking the Sleeping Giant YouTube channel for free!

(And don’t forget you can also access Waking the Sleeping Giant through a wide range of streaming services, through Hoopla and Kanopy, and by getting a DVD or Blu-ray disc.)

Dreamscape Media Secures Library & Educational Distribution Rights

We are super pleased to share that we’ve sold the North American educational and library distribution rights! Working with Dreamscape and MidWest Tape (through their Hoopla library service), we hope to reach libraries nationwide with the film. Midwest Tape has been serving libraries for 25 years. Libraries serve a critical function in our democracy by offering access to tools, experiences and technology that many people cannot get anywhere else.

With the 2020 election ramping up, we expect to reach communities around the country with the film. It's an important time to continue to ask: what do we need to learn and do next to further the progressive movement? 

And, you can still purchase the film on the website. It makes a great gift for your political junkie friends or those just getting started in doing the work of democracy.

One thing you can do: if your own public library doesn’t have Waking the Sleeping Giant available, ask them to buy it. Libraries having the film mean a bunch of people will have access that might not have had access otherwise.

Thanks, as always, for the ongoing support of the film and of amazing activists everywhere doing work that matters.

WTSG Hits Amazon Prime!

It's been super interesting watching Bernie's presidential campaign this time around, along with the other candidates who are either squarely in the progressive lane or trying to straddle progressive and more establishment positions. Waking the Sleeping Giant: The Making of a Political Revolution somehow feels even more relevant today than it did when it first came out, making some sense of what's happening on the left and where we go from here (here's the trailer in case you want to refresh your memory). Now we can actually see, in real time, where the movement building during the last campaign is taking us today (both the encouraging and the disappointing).

On that note, we'd like to share some great news: Waking the Sleeping Giant is now on Amazon Prime! If you are an Amazon Prime member, check it out (and please give the film a review if you can spare a quick minute).

If you don't have Amazon Prime, it's also on Amazon Video, iTunes, Vimeo, and most other video-on-demand services.

And you can buy the DVD or Blu-ray version directly from us (which helps us cover the costs of sharing the film with folks who can't afford it).

One other great option: ask your local library to get it! Libraries can purchase the film directly from the Sleeping Giant website.

Please consider leaving a review wherever you watch the film. Those reviews on Amazon, iTunes, and everywhere else make a huge difference. You can even give the film a review on IMDB.

Wishing you all the best this autumn -

Kathryn, Jon, & Jacob

Waking the Sleeping Giant Launches Today: iTunes, DVD, & More

In early 2015, we grabbed a camera and followed Bernie Sanders for a swing through Iowa on a hunch that "something is happening here." Little did we know that this would start a 3- year journey documenting the rise of the Sanders campaign for president and a vigorous effort to build a reenergized progressive movement across the country.

Today - election day - Waking the Sleeping Giant is more relevant than ever, making sense of this singular moment in American politics and grappling with the urgent question of "where do we go from here?" For all of you who have been asking how watch it (or watch it again), we couldn't be more pleased to share that Waking the Sleeping Giant is now widely available!

You can find it on iTunes, Amazon Video, Vimeo, vhx.tv, Comcast, and DirectTV (and it's coming soon on Vudu and Google TV).

And the DVDs and Blu­-ray discs are now available as well!

Sleeping Giant is now available for pre-sale on iTunes!!

Waking the Sleeping Giant officially goes on sale November 6, but Apple just launched the pre-sales.

Pre-sales are hugely important for any book, album, or movie on platforms like iTunes. The pre-sales all get counted as launch day sales, which then determines how it appears on the iTunes page.

If you were thinking about grabbing Waking the Sleeping Giant on iTunes, right now would be a fantastic time to do so! And if you weren’t thinking about it, right now would be a fantastic time to do that, too :)

Thanks everyone for the support!

Waking the Sleeping Giant: Available & Coming Soon!

From the Coming Soon department:

1) iTunes pre-sales begin on October 23! If you’re thinking you might like to watch on iTunes, ordering it during the pre-sales period is super super helpful; the better the pre-sales numbers, the more likely iTunes will help promote it.

and …

2) Waking the Sleeping Giant will launch on iTunes, Amazon Video, Vudu, Google TV, Direct TV, and InDemand on November 6!

and …

3) DVDs and Blu-rays officially go on sale on our website on the same date! You’ll find them at our store starting November 6.

Our distributor (Indiecan Entertainment) is still in discussions with the subscription platforms … stay tuned.

And from the Available Now department:

Screening kits for educators and everyone else are available to anyone right now PLUS we are now offering a 52-minute version, which is especially useful for teachers and professors who want to use it in their classroom. Educators, activists, and everyone else have been screening the film all over the U.S. and Canada. Here is some of the educator feedback we’ve received:

“Waking the Sleeping Giant highlights the historic campaign of Bernie Sanders, among other grassroots political campaigns of 2016. But this is not a campaign film; it is a compelling civics lesson and a primer on the mechanics of bottom-up democracy.”

- Dr. Luke Mayville, Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for American Studies, Columbia University

“This film is a needed reminder that social change comes through struggle. It is a powerful tool for teachers who want to inspire and educate about the efforts of everyday working class people.”

- Professor Luis A. Fernandez, Criminology Professor, Northern Arizona University

“This powerful and insightful film provided students with an honest look at American politics at a particularly complicated moment in American history. I enthusiastically recommend it.”

- Professor Kimberly Lubreski, Depts. of Sociology and Justice & Peace Studies, Georgetown University

Worth Waiting for: Sleeping Giant's LA Premiere

Last month we were finally able to give Waking the Sleeping Giant the Los Angeles premiere that it deserved. With the support of four important LA organizations - Sally Lew & Equal Voice for Southern California Families Alliance, LA Brotherhood Crusade (celebrating its 50th anniversary this year!), USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity, and Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Sleeping Giant screened for an incredibly engaged audience that included Jan Williams, the racial justice and labor activist featured in the film, and Lisa Hines, the mother of a young woman (Wakeisha Wilson) whose suspicious death while in the custody of the LAPD is a heartbreaking part of the film's story. 

The post-film talkback included Jan, Diyana Mendoza-Price of the Asian Pacific Islander Forward Movement, Calvin Williams of the Movement Strategy Center, and producer Jacob Smith. The eloquent Henry A J Ramos, a powerful lifelong activist in his own right (who also helped sponsor the screening), moderated. This was the most highly engaged and respectful-but-challenging talkback we've experienced, and we owe our deepest gratitude to the many folks who came to the screening and participated in the conversation afterward.

All of this took place at the fantastic Downtown Independent Theater (which we would gladly recommend for anyone else doing an LA screening as well).

Producers Kathryn Goldman and Jacob Smith were both able to participate, along with Director of Photography Jon E. Erickson and our primary Los Angeles-based cinematographer Andrew Shuford.

And the Black Lives Matter Youth Vanguard organized a powerful vigil immediately afterward just outside the theater to honor Antwon Rose, the unarmed 17 year-old boy killed by police in Pittsburgh earlier that week. Another senseless death of a person of color.

Two Sleeping Giant Cinematographers Earn an Oscar Nomination for Their Won Film About the Opioid Crisis in West Virginia

The Academy Awards are coming up in a week, and we want to offer our warmest congratulations to Elaine McMillion Sheldon and Kerrin Sheldon - two of our exceptional Sleeping Giant cinematographers - for their Best Documentary Short nomination. Their own film is called Heroin(e), and their nomination is well deserved both because they are incredibly talented filmmakers and because the powerful story they tell, about the opioid crisis in West Virginia, is as urgent as it is. We were lucky to get to work with them and wish them giant amounts of good fortune at the Dolby Theater in Hollywood next week.

It also sheds light on one of the most difficult challenges many communities in West Virginia - which we feature in Sleeping Giant as well - are facing.

Hopefully you'll hear more about Heroin(e) after the Oscars, but whatever else you do go watch it on Netflix as soon as you can.

P.S. Here's an article on Heroin(e) and their Oscar nomination, and here is the trailer:

Indiecan Snaps Up North American Distribution Rights to the Sleeping Giant

Very cool news from the 'sharing the film with the world' department: we just signed a distribution agreement with the Toronto-based Indiecan for North American distribution rights. This means that Indiecan will represent Waking the Sleeping Giant with North American buyers, including streaming services, educational institutions, broadcasters, and others. We are very pleased to be partnering with them and hopefully we'll have some more good news to share in the coming months.

This comes on top of another string of terrific screenings, including the World Community Film Festival in Courtenay, British Columbia (which we’ve heard is an amazing location but sadly couldn’t get up there), a terrific Denver screening at the Bug Theater, and another one at the University of Vermont in Burlington.

Here is today's Screen Daily article about the acquisition.

The Giant Returns to Denver

Waking the Sleeping Giant returns to Denver for an encore screening after our sold out show at the Sie Film Center this summer. We are looking forward to sharing it again with one of our hometown crowds. Tickets are on sale now ($8 in advance/$10 at the door).

Over the past couple of months we've had some terrific screenings around the country, including three in West Virginia, one in Decorah, Iowa, another in Hamilton (near Toronto), and yet another in Telluride, Colorado.

We expect to have some more news about 2018 soon ... stay tuned!

The Canadian and European Film Markets

Waking the Sleeping Giant was invited to participate in two film markets this month, where sales agents and distributors show up looking for films to represent and distribute, and where filmmakers show up with films they hope to sell. We'll start at the Canadian Film Market near Toronto (happening at the same time as the Hamilton Film Festival) and then head to IDFA Docs for Sale in Amsterdam, which is probably the most prestigious and most important documentary film market in the world.

We promise to share stories and news when we get back. In the meantime, thank you for all of the support over these past four years. Whether or not we secure distribution, we are thrilled to get to participate in both of these markets and we are even more thrilled to have been able to share the film with so many people (well over 3,000 now).

More soon ... 

The Giant's Autumn Road Trip

The Waking the Sleeping Giant team is gearing up for another round of screenings all over the U.S. (and north of the border as well!).

On Saturday, October 21 the Giant returns to the Green Mountain State to screen at the Vermont International Film Festival as part of the Vermont Filmmakers Showcase. Producer Jon Erickson will be there for a post-film Q&A. We've got a community screening in Boise, Idaho on the same night, and a few days later - October 25 - we are part of the Movies That Matter Film Series at the University of Calgary.

We've got four screenings queued up for November, the first of which is on Friday, November 10 at the Alexandria Film Festival near Washington, D.C. The next night - November 11 - Waking the Sleeping Giant screens at the prestigious St. Louis International Film Festival (with producer Kathryn Goldman) and at the Hamilton Film Festival in Ontario, Canada (with producer Jacob Smith).

There are more screenings in the works - LA, Seattle, New York, and others - so stay tuned!

Netroots Nation!

We are jazzed to announce that Waking the Sleeping Giant has its next big activist screening lined up: Netroots Nation in Atlanta (August 10-13)! We don’t have the specific time and date yet, but we do know you can register for Netroots and get all sorts of info about the rest of the agenda at the Netroots Nation website.

Folks who have already seen the film know that Black Lives Matter charging the stage at the Netroots Nation in 2015 (as well as BLM activists staging similar protests elsewhere) is a key moment in Waking the Sleeping Giant. It will be very cool to share the film there this year with a bunch of activists who are working hard to do cross-movement organizing different and better than its been done in the past.

 

Reminder: Montpelier, DC, & Denver Premieres Are This Week

If you live in Washington, D.C. or Denver here's your chance to catch Waking the Sleeping Giant on the big screen. And we've got some great news: Kai Newkirk and Amirah Sequeira (both of whom are in the film) will join filmmaker Jacob Smith for the Q&A after the D.C. premiere.

350.org founder Bill McKibben introducing Waking the Sleeping Giant to an audience of 800 at the People's Summit in Chicago last weekend.

350.org founder Bill McKibben introducing Waking the Sleeping Giant to an audience of 800 at the People's Summit in Chicago last weekend.

Waking the Sleeping Giant heads to Montpelier, the capitol of Vermont, the evening before the Vermont State Legislature’s veto session kicks off. This special presentation, hosted by Vermont Lieutenant Governor David Zuckerman, State Senator Chris Pearson, and State Representative Mary Sullivan, also includes a Q&A with filmmaker Jon D. Erickson.

Then the Giant heads to Washington, D.C. for a screening at the E Street Cinema on June 21.

And then the film is Colorado-bound, with a screening at the Sie Film Center on June 23. There are only two dozen tickets left!

 

 

 

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