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Filmmakers and Organizations Join to Promote World Day Against the Death Penalty

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LOS ANGELES /PRNewswire/ — Organizations across the United States and MountainTop Films director Lisa Boyd of An American Tragedy have partnered to produce an online fundraising event on October 10, 2022, World Day Against the Death Penalty. The event aims to convey, through a screening of An American Tragedy, the possibility of rehabilitation, the potential for forgiveness, and the cruelty of the death penalty, and through the Q&A discussion following, to activate audiences by providing information and tools for those seeking to become involved in the movement to abolish the death penalty.

World Day Against the Death Penalty Online Event

Date: Monday October 10, 2022
Time: 7:00pm Eastern/6:00pm Central/4:00pm Pacific
Online Event Link: https://bit.ly/AttendWDADP
Event Sizzlehttps://youtu.be/LhogSSihOz4

What: Screening of An American Tragedy followed by a Q&A with filmmakers, organizations, and political figures to spread awareness & provide tools to the public on what individuals can do to get involved and prevent any other inmates from suffering the ultimate sentence. 

Price: A “pay what you can” event, the $5 charge covers the event production fees. Donations to support the work of the organizations involved will be graciously accepted on the event website.

An American Tragedy Synopsis: For 26 years, the Hall Family has been waiting for justice for the brutal rape and murder of their seventeen-year-old daughter. With just four hours to live, Death Row inmate Jeffrey Ferguson must face his final moments and seek redemption for the pain and suffering he inflicted on everyone involved. Would you forgive the man who killed your daughter?

An American Tragedy director Lisa Boyd shares, “This film is my promise to both the Hall and Ferguson families to share their stories of hope and forgiveness and to help end further suffering. Death is not the answer.”

World Day Against the Death Penalty was founded by the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty and the event is supported in partnership with the below organizations. Special guest speakers and additional partner organizations to be announced.

About MountainTop Films

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Founded in 2012, MountainTop Films aims to bring about change through award-winning film, television, and documentaries. Director and Producer Lisa Rhoden Boyd (Bitter Sugar, Pinero, Parade, El Cantante) and David Boyd (The Walking Dead, Dear Edward, As We See It) work directly with the Missouri Department of Corrections to bring stories on prison reform, the death penalty, forgiveness, and second chances to the world through the power of film. https://www.facebook.com/TheMountainTopFilms 

About Nebraskans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty

Nebraskans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty is a nonpartisan 501(c)3 nonprofit founded in 1981 to educate Nebraskans on the problems of our broken death penalty system and to support abolition efforts in our unicameral Legislature. https://www.nadp.net

About Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty

The death penalty is largely unsupported by Missouri constituents and as the number of pending death penalty cases and the population of Missouri’s death row steadily declines, Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty continues to be a driving force behind the movement to Abolish the death penalty in Missouri. https://www.madpmo.org

About Death Penalty Action

Death Penalty Action (DPA) provides tools and strategies for individuals and groups to help stop executions. We offer high visibility resources, leadership, support, educational and direct-action events and activities within the broader death penalty abolition movement. https://deathpenaltyaction.org

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About Death Penalty Focus

Death Penalty Focus was founded in 1988 by a group of California death penalty abolitionists. Since then, DPF has led protests, supported vigils, engaged people of faith, and worked with community leaders to end the death penalty. https://deathpenalty.org

About Peace and Justice Commission, Archdiocese of St. Louis

Members of the Commission include lay persons, clergy, religious sisters, police officers, attorneys, and educators. Marie Kenyon is the director of the Peace and Justice Commission. The Commission will develop its priorities by looking at how issues affecting our region specifically impact the family. As Catholics we believe as Pope Francis states “the family is the fundamental cell of society, where we learn to live with others despite our differences and belong to one another.” By working to help strengthen the family, the Commission hopes to help build stronger communities and a peaceful and just region and world. https://www.archstl.org/peace-and-justice-commission

About World Coalition Against the Death Penalty

The World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, an alliance of more than 160 NGOs, bar associations, local authorities, and unions, was created in Rome on 13 May 2002. The aim of the World Coalition is to strengthen the international dimension of the fight against the death penalty. Its objective is to obtain the universal abolition of the death penalty. To achieve its goal, the World Coalition advocates for a definitive end to death sentences and executions in those countries where the death penalty is in force. https://worldcoalition.org/2022/09/09/take-action-for-world-day-2022/

To learn more or to offer your partnership & support contact:
Kristen Bedno, SideHussle Life
1.310.801.8959
345412@email4pr.com

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SOURCE MountainTop Films

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Empowering Stories: TNC Network’s Positive Impact Documentary Series

Discover a refreshing alternative to fear-inducing news. Join TNC Network on their journey to showcase positivity in a world of uncertainty.

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Photo by Kyle Loftus on Pexels.com

In a world filled with uncertainty, TNC Network stands out by highlighting its positive impact. The new documentary series focuses on inspiring individuals, offering a refreshing alternative to fear-inducing mainstream media. Avoiding clickbait, TNC aims to uplift and inform. Stay tuned for the debut on STM Daily News.

https://q5i.09c.myftpupload.com/

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Documentary Highlights Need for Advancing Women’s Health Research

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WASHINGTON, D.C., UNITED STATES /EINPresswire.com/ — The National Institutes of Health recently presented an exclusive screening of the documentary Below the Belt to its 21,000+ employees and researchers.
Below the Belt shines a light on endometriosis, a disease that affects 200 million girls and women around the world yet remains vastly underfunded and under-researched.

The filmmaker Shannon Cohn is one of those women. Cohn partnered with executive producers Hillary Rodham Clinton, Rosario Dawson, Corinne Foxx, Mae Whitman, and the late Senator Orrin Hatch to position the film as a key part of a larger social impact campaign focused on increasing widespread awareness, improving medical education, and creating transformative policy changes in women’s health.

The documentary shows how women are often dismissed, discounted, and disbelieved in their healthcare. During the average ten years it takes to be diagnosed with endometriosis, they are often told that symptoms are in their head or part of being a woman. A greater diagnostic delay exists for women of color who are less likely to be believed, diagnosed, and effectively treated. Due to outdated notions, women with endometriosis are often treated with an array of ineffective drugs and surgeries and erroneously told that pregnancy and hysterectomy are cures. Nearly 50% of infertility cases in women are due to this disease, and almost all are preventable.

The NIH screening, hosted by Diana W. Bianchi, M.D., director of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at NIH, and Janine Clayton, M.D., Director, Office of Research on Women’s Health, and NIH Associate D

irector for Research on Women’s Health, was shared with all 27 departments of the NIH Institutes and Centers that make up the National Institutes of Health.

“It is important for our society to understand the human impact of endometriosis. That is why documentaries like Below the Belt are so significant,” said Diana W. Bianchi, M.D. “Our hope is that a greater awareness of the effects of endometriosis among women in the United States and around the world will help accelerate research efforts to definitively diagnose, prevent, and treat this painful disorder.”

Director Janine Clayton, M.D., noted in a panel discussion following the screening that too often, women, and in particular women of color, are not listened to, especially when they are experiencing pain, and they are not believed.

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“Unfortunately, race is a factor that sometimes results in bias and how clinicians evaluate individuals presenting with pain,” said Clayton. “It is critical that we raise awareness of that fact and necessary to interrupt the bias.”

Both NIH and Cohn are pressing Congress about the urgent need to focus on women’s health research.

“The goal is to press for a transformative amount of research funding for NIH,” said Cohn. “Researchers should be allowed to be trailblazers on a disease that impacts so many people. We must compel Congress to act on the urgent need to increase funding, not just for endometriosis but for all women’s health issues.”

NIH is working with the White House on a new initiative establishing the first-ever White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research, an effort led by First Lady Dr. Jill Biden and the White House Gender Policy Council. Its goal is to fundamentally change how the United States approaches and funds women’s health research while pioneering the next generation of discoveries in women’s health.

In a statement, the Biden administration specified that “under-investing in women’s health research can decrease women’s well-being and quality of life, hold women back in the workplace, and affect their families’ economic security. By contrast, increasing investments in women’s health research can yield broad societal gains, including lower health care costs and a more productive and inclusive workforce.”

Cohn believes the global social impact campaign around the film can help elevate the White House’s overarching mission and recently discussed the campaign’s strategic elements and goals with the White House Gender Policy Council.

Learn more about endometriosis at www.EndoWhat.com and the film at www.BelowtheBelt.film.

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About Below the Belt
The documentary Below the Belt exposes widespread problems in our healthcare systems that disproportionately affect women. From societal taboos and gender bias to misinformed doctors and financial barriers to care, the film reveals how millions are silenced and how, by fighting back, we can improve healthcare for everyone. Below the Belt is streaming on PBS through June 2024.

About Shannon Cohn
Shannon Cohn is an attorney and filmmaker whose work has appeared on PBS, Discovery Channel, and Nat Geo. Her previous film, Endo What?, a feature documentary on endometriosis, was hailed by The Guardian as “film of the year” and by Newsweek as “the first step in a plan for change.”

Source: Laura Evans Media

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Porto Jewish Community to Release the Trailer to a Film About the Massacre of the Jews of Lisbon in 1506

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PORTO, Portugal (Newswire.com) – The Jewish community of Porto has released to the general public the trailer for a full-length historical film about the massacre of the Jews of Lisbon that took place in the Portuguese capital in 1506.


Mekor Haim Kadoorie synagogue in Porto, Portugal
The Porto Jewish community has been active over the past decade to promote Jewish culture, among which is the feature film “1618,” which recounts the story of the Inquisition and won the largest number of international awards for a Portuguese film.

The premiere of the film “1506,” which will be available for free viewing, will take place on April 19, 2024 – exactly 518 years since that traumatic event occurred. The film will be available in a variety of languages and platforms for online viewing.

More than 3,000 Jews were brutally murdered in the massacre between April 19 and 21,1506. A simple spark was enough for popular sentiment to cause a catastrophe. The fires into which the bodies were thrown reached the height of houses – even babies were thrown into the fire in the heart of the city, where for three days a brutal mass slaughter of the city’s Jewish residents took place.

“To know the massacre of 1506 in Lisbon is to know the events of October 7, 2023 in Israel and the historic massacres perpetrated against the Jewish people throughout Europe. The only change is the weapons used. ‘October 7 did not exist in a vacuum,’ Antonio Guterres said, and he is right,” said Gabriel Senderowicz, president of the Porto Jewish community and a member of the European Jewish Association.

The Portuguese company LightBox was chosen to produce the film, and the script recreating the historical events, written in 2021, was based on in-depth research carried out at the Alberto Benveniste Research Center for Sephardic Studies at the University of Lisbon.

The Porto Jewish community has been active over the past decade to promote Jewish culture, history and education. Among its notable achievements during this period is the feature film “1618,” which recounts the story of the Inquisition in the city and won the largest number of international awards for a Portuguese film.



The Jewish community of Porto was only officially reestablished in 1923 by Captain Barros Basto, known as the “Portuguese Dreyfus” after he was persecuted for his efforts to reestablish a Jewish community in Porto, some four centuries after it had been destroyed by the Portuguese Inquisition.

Among the important projects led by the community over the past decade are the Jewish Museum in Porto and the Holocaust Museum, which in the past two years have hosted more than 100,000 schoolchildren, constituting 10% of all schoolchildren in Portugal.

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Source: The Jewish Community of Porto

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