The Moving Picture Institute (MPI) is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 non-profit organization

Non-profit organization

Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...

 and film production

Filmmaking

Filmmaking is the process of making a film, from an initial story, idea, or commission, through scriptwriting, casting, shooting, directing, editing, and screening the finished product before an audience that may result in a theatrical release or television program...

 company founded in 2005 by human rights

Human rights

Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...

 advocate Thor Halvorssen. Its current executive director is Rob Pfaltzgraff, and its creative council includes June Arunga

June Arunga

June Akinyi Arunga is the founder and CEO of Open Quest Media LLC. In 2010, she was named in the 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company. She is a founding partner, and for a period was Director of Corporate Affairs, of Black Star Line SA: a technology solution provider in the fields...

 and David Zucker.

MPI produces and collaborates on both fictional films, and non-fictional, often documentary-style

Documentary film

Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

 films. The subjects of MPI's films typically center around concepts like human rights and individual freedoms, and governmental waste and corruption

Political corruption

Political corruption is the use of legislated powers by government officials for illegitimate private gain. Misuse of government power for other purposes, such as repression of political opponents and general police brutality, is not considered political corruption. Neither are illegal acts by...

. It uses its films as a medium through which these kinds of social and economic troubles are brought to public attention in order to shape public perceptions, and ultimately, to change society's values. Public exposure to freedom-oriented ideas, they contend, will contribute to the improvement of these important issues which they feel tend to be ignored by other traditional media outlets.

Mission and Purpose

Central to the MPI's mission is the promotion of what it refers to as, "freedom-oriented" ideals, through the production of films, as well as the collaboration with and lending of assistance to filmmakers whose films effectively promote similarly freedom-oriented messages that the organization regards as basic human rights

Human rights

Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...

: freedom of speech

Freedom of speech

Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship. The term freedom of expression is sometimes used synonymously, but includes any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used...

, and of association

Freedom of association

Freedom of association is the individual right to come together with other individuals and collectively express, promote, pursue and defend common interests....

, and the general conservation of individual rights and freedoms in a free-enterprise system. . To that end, it uses its resources and expertise in the film industry to give public exposure views that might otherwise not have a voice in the mainstream media

Mainstream media

Mainstream media are those media disseminated via the largest distribution channels, which therefore represent what the majority of media consumers are likely to encounter...

.

Associate filmmaker assistance programs

The type of assistance that the Moving Picture Institute provides to other filmmakers varies based on the need of the filmmaker. It facilitates developing filmmakers through a major internship program, provides support to filmmakers with demonstrable capacity to succeed in the entertainment industry, and promotes narrative features, documentary features, and shorts that communicate its principles. MPI funds films from development through post-production; it also funds developing filmmakers and serves as an intern placement service.

Various partnerships

The Moving Pictures Institutes has been known to collaborate with individuals from a myriad of political and idealogical standpoints on projects for which their common goal is the promotion of "truth and freedom" universally in today's society. Examples of such partnerships include: the film Battle for Brooylyn with liberal filmmakers Michael Galinsky, Suki Hawley, and David Beilinson; Hammer and Tickle with Ben Lewis; and Freedom's Fury

Freedom's Fury

Freedom's Fury is a documentary film about the Melbourne, Australia 1956 Summer Olympics semifinal water polo match between Hungary and the USSR, and the events that led up to the violent battle, the match that what would later be known as the "Blood in the Water match."The documentary was narrated...

which was executive produced by Quentin Tarantino

Quentin Tarantino

Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and actor. In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with films employing nonlinear storylines and the aestheticization of violence...

 and Lucy Liu

Lucy Liu

Lucy Alexis Liu is an American actress and film producer. She became known for playing the role of the vicious and ill-mannered Ling Woo in the television series Ally McBeal , and has also appeared in several Hollywood films including Charlie's Angels, Chicago, Kill Bill, and Kung Fu Panda.-Early...

.

Major Productions

MPI is involved in the production and promotion of the following narrative and documentary films:

Title	Release Date	Notes
Mine Your Own Business Mine Your Own Business Mine Your Own Business is a documentary directed and produced by Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney in 2006 about the Roșia Montană mining project. The film asserts that environmentalists' opposition to the mine is unsympathetic to the needs and desires of the locals, prevents industrial progress,...	2007-2-18	By Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney's; initiates a discussion about how the environmentalist movement has impeded economic growth in impoverished parts of the world. The film focuses particularly on Romania, Chile, and Madagascar.
Marina of the Zabbaleen Marina of the Zabbaleen Marina of the Zabbaleen is a 2008 award-winning documentary film written and directed by Engi Wassef that examines the life of Marina, a 7-year-old Egyptian girl living in a Zabbaleen garbage-collecting village in Cairo. The film debuted at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival with sold-out screenings...	2008	By Engi Wassef; examines the life of Marina, a 7-year-old Egyptian girl living in a Zabbaleen garbage-collecting village in Cairo.
Freedom's Fury Freedom's Fury Freedom's Fury is a documentary film about the Melbourne, Australia 1956 Summer Olympics semifinal water polo match between Hungary and the USSR, and the events that led up to the violent battle, the match that what would later be known as the "Blood in the Water match."The documentary was narrated...	2006-8-25	By Colin Keith Gray and Megan Raney Aarons; centers on the 1956 Olympic semifinal water polo match between Hungary and Russia. This so-called "Blood in the Water Match" took place in Melbourne, Australia weeks after Soviet forces brutally suppressed the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. The film is narrated by Olympic gold medalist Mark Spitz.
Hammer & Tickle Hammer & Tickle Hammer & Tickle: The Communist Joke Book is a 2006 documentary film about nature of jokes under the powerful and socially restrictive Communist regime of the Soviet Union and her satellite nations...	2006-4-30	By Ben Lewis; analyzes humor's role in undermining Soviet totalitarianism. In 2006, Lewis's documentary won the Zurich Film Festival's award for "Best New Documentary Film." It has been broadcast by the BBC in Britain and by ARTE in France, and has inspired an accompanying book.
The Free Market Cure	2007-6-21	By Stuart Browning; short film series.
The Libel Tourist	2006
Indoctrinate U Indoctrinate U Indoctrinate U is a 2007 American feature-length documentary film written by, directed by and starring Evan Coyne Maloney, on ideological conformism and political correctness in American higher education...	2007-4-23	By Evan Coyne Maloney; exposes ideological conformism and political correctness in American higher education. The film addresses speech codes and other phenomena that undermine free expression, intellectual diversity, and academic freedom on American campuses.
The Singing Revolution The Singing Revolution The Singing Revolution is a documentary film created by James Tusty and Maureen Castle Tusty about the nonviolent Singing Revolution in Estonia where hundreds of thousands of Estonians gathered publicly, between 1986 and 1991, in an effort to end decades of Soviet occupation...	2007-6-26	By James and Maureen Tusty; tells the story of the peaceful protests that liberated Estonia from Soviet control
Do As I Say	2008-10-2	By Nick Tucker; American political hypocrisy
2081 2081 (film) 2081 is a 2009 science fiction short film, which premiered at the Seattle International Film Festival on May 29, 2009. It is directed and written by Chandler Tuttle...	2009-5-29	By Chandler Tuttle; a narrative film adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron story
An Inconvenient Tax An Inconvenient Tax An Inconvenient Tax is a 2009 documentary film produced by Life Is My Movie EntertainmentAn Inconvenient Tax explores the history of the income tax in the United States and the causes of its many complexities. The film follows...	2010-4-15	By Nathaniel Thomas McGill and Vincent Vittorio; history of the income tax in the United States and the causes of its many complexities
The Cartel	2009-5-30	By Bob Bowdon; investigates public education in the United States, specifically New Jersey, and how a "widespread national crisis manifests itself in the educational failures and frustrations of individual communities."
Battle for Brooklyn	2010-7-9	By Michael Galinsky, Suki Hawley, and David Beilinson; feature-length film about the abuses of eminent domain by government and developers
Choice Media	Coming Soon
The Rubber Room	Coming Soon
U.N. Me	Coming Soon	By Ami Horowitz; the unfulfilled promises of the United Nations
Inside the Mind of Ayn Rand	Coming Soon
Museum of Government Waste	Coming Soon

External links

• Moving Picture Institute
• Hudgins, Edward L., 1 April 2007, "Freedom's Filmmakers.", The Objectivist Center. (Archived by WebCite® at http://www.webcitation.org/5n8Jc4dKT)