Professor Emerita Liane Brandon Featured in Virtual Event Nov. 12 Marking 50 Years of New Day Films

Professor emerita Liane Brandon, a founder of New Day Films, will be one of four founders featured in a virtual event from 2 to 3:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 12, to celebrate 50 years of distributing award-winning documentary films.

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Brandon, who served on the College of Education faculty for 30 years, helped found New Day in 1971 as a way to distribute films that feminist filmmakers were making about the women’s movement. She says New Day was the only way filmmakers could distribute independent films about feminism and the women’s movement in the early 1970s.

“Back then, cable, videotape, YouTube, social media, email and cellphones didn’t exist and TV stations didn’t show independent social issue films,” Brandon said. “We felt that reaching our audiences was a political act . . . as much as the act of making films. And we believed in the idea of filmmakers controlling their work in collective decision making, in sharing our knowledge and using film for social change.”

Democratically run by more than 150 filmmaker members, New Day delivers hundreds of award-winning documentaries to community groups, government agencies, public libraries, businesses and educators, including UMass.

Joining Brandon in the virtual event will be Jim Klein, Amalie R. Rothschild and Julia Reichert, who won an Academy Award in 2020 for co-directing “American Factory,” a documentary about the challenges faced by American workers employed in an Ohio factory purchased by a Chinese company. The film is currently available on Netflix. The four founding members will be joined by more recent member-owners Brenda Avila-Hanna, Rodney Evans and New Day’s current chair, Suzan Beraza.

The public is invited to join the filmmakers for this free virtual event to celebrate the 50 years of groundbreaking documentaries. To RSVP to the event, go to https://www.eventbrite.com/e/new-day-films-50th-anniversary-founders-celebration-tickets-177348904347. ASL and CART live captioning will be provided.