Content Guidelines

Films For Action focuses on just about every topic related to changing the world.

 


 

Our favorite submissions:

  • Have a long shelf-life - also called "evergreen" content - because it will remain relevant and useful for people browsing the library months or years later. 
     
  • Inspire people to take action 
     
  • Are relevant to a broad international audience 
     
  • Focus on the root problems or the root solutions
     
  • Avoid unnecessary antagonism, over-the-top or in-your-face emotional appeals, fear-mongering, hype, etc
     
  • Expand our ability to experience universal empathy and compassion for all people and the planet and avoid appeals that reinforce artificial divisions (including nationality, political affiliation, race, culture, religion, sexual orientation, immigrant status, etc)​

 

Browse our most viewed or highest rated content for examples (accessible through the EXPLORE menu).

 

Content Goals (How We Decide What to Add to the Library)

*Is it the best of the best? Our goal with the FFA library isn't to index all activist-related content, only the very best 10%. For every 10 videos we watch and review, we may only add 1-2.

*Is it useful for raising awareness? Content should be highly engaging for the choir (it offers something new to people familiar with the subject) OR people beyond the choir (it introduces the subject in a way that attracts rather than repels people that might not already agree or be interested in the subject). 
*Is it shareable? Content should inspire the intended audience to share it at least once. The best content would inspire people to share it many times over the years because it's one of the definitive films on the subject. 

*Does it have excellent production values? This isn't always necessary but poor production values can negatively impact a viewer's trust and engagement with the content. 

*Does it have broad appeal? The best ideas should appeal to a large audience, assuming they're presented in the best light. For instance, many people likely agree with anarchist principles (like personal autonomy, mutual aid, or direct democracy), but may not identify as an anarchist. Content that's heavily branded with anarchist subculture identifiers may unnecessarily marginalize the ideas that are trying to be promoted. Likewise, a majority of Americans support Universal Healthcare, but may not identify as a socialist. Promoting the idea without the ism is generally ideal to reach beyond the choir, but it's not a requirement for us. What's more important is...
*Is the content transparent about its underlying values and bias? We prefer content from people who are transparent about their values and bias over content that pretends to be neutral or objective. As we've written about before, we're all biased by our values and philosophical orientation. Better to be self-aware and honest about those biases than pretend to not have them. Media outlets like FOX or CNN lose all their credibility because they pretend to be "fair and balanced" while keeping their values and biases obscured (they both support different political factions of the ruling class and corporate elite, but they'll never admit this). Democracy Now!, Common Dreams, Films For Action, and other quality alternative media, on the other hand, are transparent about their left-leaning values (progressive, libertarian socialist, democratic socialist, liberal, independent etc - we're not a huge fan of political labels because they can stunt critical thinking (your own or your audiences), but they're useful to a point). 

*Is it accurate? Our values should never interfere with truth and accuracy. If the content supports our values but isn't accurate, it shouldn't be shared. If a film is mostly true but contains some inaccuracies, those discrepancies should be pointed out in the video description. 

 

 


 

To filter out spam, we manually approve new posts

After a few posts, your submissions will be automatically approved.

 

After your post is approved, share it!

The best way to see your content featured is to 'test it in the wild" by sharing it on social media. If it gets a lot of shares, it will naturally show up in our trending section on the homepage and on every content page. 

 

We'll share the best submissions on our networks!

As always, thank you for contributing! 50% of our best content was added by our members. Films For Action wouldn't be what it is today without your contributions.

 


 

Style Tips


Title formatting:

Capitalize the First Letter of Each Main Word

Trailers: Include the title only. We'll add (trailer) to it after you submit it.

Note: The title will also become the URL for the video or article.
Ex: filmsforaction.org/watch/this-is-the-film-title

 


Description tips:

Use the Tx button to remove formatting weirdness.

Put web links at the end or embed them in the text. Links at the beginning look bad on the site. 

Turn web URLs into active links using the paperclip button. 

 

 

Is your video submission a series or separated into multiple parts (part 1, part 2, part 3)? 

After you submit part 1's URL, please add the additional parts in the Other Parts (optional) section

Help keep our library clean and organized by not submitting each part as a separate video. Thanks!