The impact of a San Francisco Film Society Youth Education event can often be gauged by the immediate reactions and responses of the students in attendance—reactions that make it clear that they have been moved, changed or fired up by what they have seen onscreen. One example: the 2000 Schools at the Festival screening of Legacy, a powerful documentary by filmmaker Tod Lending about three generations of women in one family living in Chicago’s toughest housing project, who are able to transcend the economic, social and psychological barriers that plague their community. During the post-screening Q&A with the filmmaker and the mother and daughter featured in the film, a girl in the balcony of the theater spoke, in tears, about the similarities between their lives and her own and the incredible feeling of hope she now had knowing that they had been able to find their way out of the debilitating cycle of poverty and violence. It meant that she, too, might have that same chance. As the event ended, the girl found her way down to the front of the stage, walking directly into the open arms of the mother from the film, where they remained for several minutes, sharing tears and swapping contact information.

At that point in time, Legacy was just beginning its film festival run and had very little public exposure. After winning a Golden Gate Award at SFIFF in 2000, the filmmaker went on to develop a highly successful, comprehensive outreach campaign that used the documentary as a platform for social action and reached more than a half million people.  The film received an Academy Award nomination in 2001 and continues to be a model for successful outreach for creative media. For more about the pubic outreach campaign for Legacy, please see http://www.pbs.org/legacy/.