43: How a Hollywood Director/Artivist Used Film to Fight Censorship, Racism, & Fear – Part 1

In this episode we visit with storied Hollywood director Jeremy Kagan, whose career has proved that yes, the power of story on the big screen, the small screen, and the community screen can be both entertaining and help change hearts and minds for the better.BIOJeremy Kagan is a director/writer/producer of feature films and television. His credits include the box-office hits&nbsp;Heroes&nbsp;(1977),&nbsp;The Big Fix&nbsp;(1978) and&nbsp;The Chosen&nbsp;(1981). His&nbsp;The Journey of Natty Gann&nbsp;(1985) was the first US film to win a Gold Prize at the Moscow Film Festival. Other directing credits include&nbsp;Conspiracy: The Trial of the Chicago 8&nbsp;(1987) (winning the ACE Award for Best Dramatic Special) and&nbsp;Roswell&nbsp;(1994), which he produced and directed and which was nominated for a Golden Globe. In 1996, his episode of&nbsp;Chicago Hope&nbsp;(1994) won him an Emmy for Outstanding Direction of a Dramatic Series. One of his segments of&nbsp;Picket Fences&nbsp;(1992) was listed by TV critics among the top 100 television episodes. His recent work includes en episode of&nbsp;Steven Spielberg's Emmy-winning anthology _"Taken" (2002/I) (mini)_ and numerous episodes of such hit series as&nbsp;The West Wing&nbsp;(1999) and&nbsp;The Guardian&nbsp;(2001).&nbsp;His&nbsp;Bobbie's Girl&nbsp;(2002) was the highest rated film on Showtime 2003 and his movie&nbsp;Crown Heights&nbsp;(2004), which he produced and directed, won the Humanitas Award for "affirming the dignity" of every person and was nominated for a Directors Guild Award in 2004. Mr. Kagan is a graduate of Harvard University, where he wrote his thesis on&nbsp;Sergei M. Eisenstein, has a Masters from NYU and was in the first group of Fellows at the American Film Institute. He is a tenured full professor at USC, where he is in charge of the directing track, and has served as the Artistic Director of&nbsp;Robert Redford's Sundance Institute. He is on the National Board of the Directors Guild and is Chairperson of its Special Projects Committee and author of the book "Directors Close Up" and was presented the 2004&nbsp;Robert Aldrich&nbsp;Award for "extraordinary service to the guild.”NOTABLE MENTIONSThe Hays Code: The&nbsp;Motion Picture Production Code&nbsp;was a set of industry guidelines for the&nbsp;self-censorship&nbsp;of content that was applied to most motion pictures released by major studios in the&nbsp;United States&nbsp;from 1934 to 1968. It is also popularly known as the&nbsp;Hays Code, after&nbsp;Will H. Hays, president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) from 1922 to 1945.&nbsp;ACLU Freedom Files: The Freedom Files,&nbsp;Directed by Jeremy Kagan that premiered&nbsp;in 2005 with a 10-part television series&nbsp;featuring real clients and the attorneys who represent them, as well as well-known activists, actors and comedians Lewis Black, Margaret Cho, Richard Belzer, Harry Shearer, Judy Gold and Noah Wyle. The Premiere Season episodes include Beyond the Patriot Act, Dissent, Drug Wars, Racial Profiling, Gay &amp; Lesbian Rights and more.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Change-making Media Lab: The mission of The Change Making Media Lab (CMML) is to foster positive social and environmental change by producing strategic high-impact cinema, television, multi-media visual imagery to inspire individuals, organizations, and communities into action. CMML also promotes research on effective media techniques and helping engaged community members leverage the power of the cinematic arts to achieve health, sustainability, and social justice.&nbsp;&nbsp;Miguel Sabido, Entertainment Education: is a producer, writer, researcher, and theorist, known for pioneering&nbsp;Entertainment-Education, developing the "Theory of the Tone", and producing a number of commercially successful&nbsp;telenovelas&nbsp;for&nbsp;Televisa&nbsp;in the 1970s.[1] &nbsp;Charles Perrault: Writing in seventeenth-century France during the reign of King&nbsp;Louis XIV, Perrault is best remembered as the creator of the modern fairy tale. His greatest legacy is his collection&nbsp;Histoires, ou Contes du temps passé, avec des moralitez,&nbsp;(1697;&nbsp;Histories or Tales of Past Times; also published as&nbsp;Fairy Tales or Histories of Past Times, with Morals,) which contains some of the most enduring and widely recognized stories in all of Western literature, including "La Belle au bois dormant" ("Sleeping Beauty in the Woods"), "Cendrillon ou la petite pantoufle de verre" ("Cinderella, or the Little Glass Slipper"), "Le Maître chat ou le chat botté" ("The Master Cat, or Puss in Boots"), and "Le Petit chaperon rouge" ("Little Red Riding Hood"), among others.&nbsp;Yurek Bogievic&nbsp;is a Polish film director, screenwriter, actor and producer. He directed, among others,&nbsp;Anna&nbsp;(1987),[1]&nbsp;Three of Hearts&nbsp;(1993) and&nbsp;Exit in Red&nbsp;(1996).Bobby Seale: is an American political activist and author. In 1966, he co-founded the&nbsp;Black Panther Party&nbsp;with fellow activist&nbsp;Huey P. Newton.[2]&nbsp;Founded as the "Black Panther Party for Self-Defense", the Party's main practice was monitoring police activities and challenging police brutality in Black communities, first in&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakland,_California" rel="noopener noreferrer"...