Past Events


April 22 Thursday

The Nontraditional Approach: Self-Empowerment in Green Haven Prison

The Green Haven Prison Project and the Visual Law Project at Yale Law School are thrilled to share footage from an in-progress documentary that spotlights a decades-long program run by men incarcerated at the Green Haven Correctional Facility in Stormville, New York. The program, called the Project for a Calculated Transition, or PACT, uses “The Nontraditional Approach” to prepare its members t...

February 24 Wednesday

How to Find a Safe Harbor for Fair Use

Michael C. Donaldson is an entertainment attorney who has been fighting for independent filmmakers for over 30 years. In addition to working on films by such industry icons as Oliver Stone, Richard Linklater and Davis Guggenheim, Michael serves as General Counsel to Film Independent (home of the Independent Spirit Awards) and the Writers Guild Foundation. He is the industry’s go-to attorney for fair use (a doctrine in United States copyright law permitting limited use of copyrighted material without permission from the rights holders) and other clearance- and rights-related issues.

January 24 Thursday

Hombres Nuevos: A Screening and Discussion with Luis Mancheno

Award-winning immigration attorney Luis Mancheno is featured in Episode 6 of the documentary series “REFUGE: finding home.” The 25-minute episode shares the powerful story of Luis Mancheno, who endured, in his native Ecuador, six months of conversion therapy with an anti-gay therapist, years of abuse, and an attempt on his life. After fleeing to the U.S. in 2008, Mancheno became an immigration attorney at the Bronx Defenders and now fights for the lives of other refugees.

October 11 Thursday

[VLP Presents: Debi Cornwall] Welcome to Camp America: Inside Guantánamo Bay

Debi Cornwall is a conceptual documentary artist and former wrongful conviction lawyer. Marrying dark humor with structural critique, she employs photographs along with archival material, testimony, and video to examine American power and identity in the post-9/11 era.

October 3 Wednesday

Dinner and a Documentary: To Err is Human, A Patient Safety Documentary

The Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy presents a dinner-time documentary screening of To Err is Human and Q&A with the director Mike Eisenberg. Dinner will be served.

To Err is Human

Medical mistakes lead to as many as 440,000 preventable deaths every year. To Err Is Human is an in-depth documentary about this silent epidemic and those working quietly behind the scenes to create a new age of patient safety.

September 5 Wednesday

VLP lunch talk with Solitary Gardens creator jackie sumell and Rodricus Crawford

jackie sumell is the creator of Solitary Gardens, a public art project that denounces solitary confinement and fosters exchanges between persons in solitary and volunteers on the outside. She is joined by Rodricus Crawford, who was exonerated in 2016 after spending nearly five years on death row in Caddo Parish, Louisiana. Together, they will discuss the project and their work against mass incarceration.

April 13 Friday

RIKERS: An American Jail, screening and discussion

Join the Yale Visual Law Project and the Yale Student Film Festival for a screening of the new documentary RIKERS: An American Jail. The screening will be followed by a conversation about the film and the #CLOSErikers movement with film participant and activist Cadeem Gibbs, producer Judy Doctoroff, and Professor Miriam Gohara of YLS. Moderated by New York Times Magazine staff writer and YLS senior research scholar Emily Bazelon.

March 6 Tuesday

VLP Coffee Chat with Filmmaker John Lucas

Join the Yale Visual Law Project for a coffee chat with filmmaker John Lucas to discuss process and ethics in documentary filmmaking.

February 28 Wednesday

Lunch with Josh Begley

Lunch with data artist and app developer, Josh Begley. Hosted by the Visual Law Project and the Information Society Project.

February 7 Wednesday

When Truth Matters, Can Images Be Trusted?

In a world where online information purveyors can distribute “fake news,” does it matter that audio, visual and audio/visual materials can be doctored or be utterly fictional?

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