Darfur Now, which Braun originally tried to make as a scripted film, launched his career as a documentary filmmaker. Since then, he’s written and directed films like ¡Viva Maestro!, in which conductor Gustavo Dudamel curates an innovative concert that celebrates the power of art to renew and unite amidst unrest in Venezuela; and Betting on Zero, where hedge fund titan Bill Ackman works to expose Herbalife as a pyramid scheme. Looking back, Braun observed, “In one way or another, my films ended up engaging in a fairly explicit way with big social problems and have promoted change.”
The discussion, which convened USC students, local filmmakers, entrepreneurs, and academics, explored the tension between impact and profit. Like with many social enterprises, the work of these filmmakers is often challenged by commercial concerns. For Olson, fundraising proved arduous and time-consuming, but her majority reliance on grants and donations afforded her the independence to focus on impact as the primary goal.
“I haven’t had to make big decisions where profit had to be weighed over social impact and I feel really fortunate for that,” Olson said.
Braun’s documentary projects, on the other hand, were all fully financed by a studio or production company.
“For me, the question was principally how is this going to be a riveting piece of cinema people are going to want to watch? I’m not thinking in particularly commercial terms,” Braun said, “But it has to be really strong, because if it’s not, any other goal I have for the film — it’s ability to shape or change policy or change individuals — it goes down the tubes if people don’t watch.”
These filmmakers don’t measure success in dollars but impact, which is often difficult and frequently impossible to quantify. And yet, Braun and Olson have felt the influence of their work over time. Olson pointed to Tapped, a film about water safety on which she was a line producer.
“I’m still getting emails from university students who are watching it. It’s got a long tail on it — it isn’t just a topic for today, but a topic for generations a decade in.”
There’s no greater example of impact than action. Following a viewing of Darfur Now at the UN, the Security Council added a discussion of the crisis to its agenda. In Knocking Down the House, Olson followed four women with no political name recognition who wanted to run for office.
“They firmly believed their representatives were not serving the communities they were elected by,” she said. “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York was a bartender when we started filming with her, and she ended up being the youngest woman at that time sworn into congress.”
Netflix bought the film at the Sundance Film Festival. It was one of the first times a streamer came on board and agreed to fund the impact campaign, Olson shared. If that wasn’t impact enough, the film inspired many others who were unknowns in the political sphere to enter local races.
“We would go to screenings and have young women crying and saying, ‘I saw your film and it struck a chord and I decided to run for city council or county commissioner.’ Many of them won their seats,” Olson said.
The Jacobson Family Sustainable Impact Lecture Series is a six-part discussion featuring experts and leaders in social impact spaces. This year has featured discussions on topics including affordable housing, women and minority impact investment, climate change, and AI.
