MOOTS: The White House is Supporting the Next Generation of Filmmakers

Many people criticize U.S. President Barack Obama’s time in office. Some say he takes too much time off while the nation needs him. Others complain about how he does not act as a strong leader for our nation. While these may be true, Obama has done something recently that makes me very proud to call him my president.

At the second annual White House Student Film Festival — a good idea in itself — the president announced that the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and the American Film Institute have paired with Obama’s United We Serve agency to provide one million hours of mentorship over the next three years to the next generation of filmmakers. This includes young filmmakers who were present at the film festival and others across the nation. While this might seem trivial to those outside of the film industry, this is an amazing step forward for those within and wanting to join. This means the United States of America is truly committed to seeing young, up-and-coming filmmakers succeed in an industry that is often considered one of the tougher ones to do so.

The American Film Institute and SAG-AFTRA pledging to give one million hours of mentorship over the next three years also means that these two organizations are willing and open to cooperating with one another to better the film industry as a whole. This, on its own, is not surprising, but the fact that they also paired up with the government opens up a new, weird angle on Hollywood.

The film industry, after all, is one of the industries that is lesser regulated by the government. And while I am usually a fan of some sort of regulation by the government, one of the things that makes the film industry so special and entertaining is the fact that the government is not able to make big decisions about what the general public is allowed to see and what they are not. Sure, the Motion Picture Association of America can tell the population how risqué the films are through their rating system I’ve written about already, but no films are barred from showing. Even pornography is not banned from playing in a theater, though there are far more regulations on which theaters are allowed to show that sort of thing.

My biggest concern, amid many compliments to the program, is that the government might be trying to insert itself into Hollywood.

This might seem like a conspiracy theory, but I think it’s worth discussing even just a little. The government has never had a strong foothold in American cinema. They never regulated what films showed, thanks to the voluntary self-regulation imposed. To combat this, the state governments used to criminally charge projectionists who showed films that did not align with their views, but then censorship of movies was ruled illegal by the U.S. Supreme Court. Now, there is little a state can do past changing the regulations necessary to show movies with that content, and even that is hard to do legally. So the government could very well be looking for a way in, as they look on from the outside.

If they are, this would be a good way to do it. What better way to change what’s going on in an industry than by changing how the youth who will join it think? The biggest opposition to this theory is that the young filmmakers are being taught by people who already work in the film industry. But at the same time, the filmmakers are working through a government agency to do their mentorships. It is entirely possible that the government is looking for a way to, ever so slightly, control Hollywood.

But then again, the government could genuinely be trying to help, which is what I believe is actually going on. If so, this is an unprecedented step for the government in support of the film industry, on par with Obama shaming Sony Pictures for not releasing “The Interview.” This would mean the government is trying to help get different perspectives into Hollywood by supporting young filmmakers who are bound to have vastly different personal stories. The initiative would be spread out all across America, pairing whichever filmmakers are a part of SAG-AFTRA and the American Film Institute in any given area to mentor eligible filmmakers in said area.

The world through the eyes of a kid in southern Florida compared to the same world through the eyes of a teen from Wisconsin is going to be greatly different, and the stories they can tell when given the proper tools — as this initiative is trying to do — are going to be the next great thing for Hollywood.

With this in mind, I want to just say, non-ironically: Thanks Obama!