Participant Media
Skoll is also the founder, chairman and owner of Participant Media (formerly Participant Productions), a Los Angeles based media company he created to fund feature films and documentaries that promote social values while still being commercially viable. Its first three films were Syriana, Good Night, and Good Luck, and North Country along with the documentary Murderball. These films accounted for 11 Oscar nominations in 2006.
Subsequent films have included An Inconvenient Truth, American Gun, Fast Food Nation, and The World According to Sesame Street. An Inconvenient Truth won two Oscars in 2007 and has been credited with extending the public debate over climate change. Other films in 2007 included Charlie Wilson's War with Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, The Kite Runner directed by Marc Forster, Angels in the Dust about an AIDS orphanage in South Africa, Darfur Now about the genocide in Darfur with Don Cheadle, and Jimmy Carter Man from Plains, a film about Jimmy Carter directed by Academy Award winning director Jonathan Demme.
Films in 2008 included The Visitor, by Thomas McCarthy with Richard Jenkins and Hiam Abbass; Chicago 10, based on the 1968 Democratic convention protests; Standard Operating Procedure, a documentary about Abu Ghraib by Errol Morris; The Cove, a documentary about the annual dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Japan; The Crazies, an updated version of the George A. Romero biotoxin thriller from 1973; and Pressure Cooker, a documentary about an inner-city school cooking contest, set in Philadelphia. One announced 2010 release, set for Earth Day on April 22, is Oceans, a documentary about the oceans by Jacques Perrin, director of the Oscar-winning Winged Migration.
Films in 2010 included "Waiting for Superman."
The company also has publishing and television divisions, and operates Takepart.com, an online site catering to social activists.
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Famous quotes containing the word media:
“Never before has a generation of parents faced such awesome competition with the mass media for their children’s attention. While parents tout the virtues of premarital virginity, drug-free living, nonviolent resolution of social conflict, or character over physical appearance, their values are daily challenged by television soaps, rock music lyrics, tabloid headlines, and movie scenes extolling the importance of physical appearance and conformity.”
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