Every year, SF based Bay Area Video Coalition brings filmmakers together with technologists to develop new media strategies for their projects at the annual Producer's Institute. Draxtor Despres had the chance to talk to Spanish-American documentarian Chelo Alvarez-Stehle about her project on sex-trafficking, called "Sands Of Silence", which will be accompanied by a flash-based game.

Austrialian artist Lynette Wallworth was a mentor at the Producer Institute this year at BAVC in San Francisco. Her installations utilize technology to amplify and celebrate the human spirit. During the course of these intense 10 days, she engaged with filmmakers and technologists in fruitful collaboration and also entered Second Life for the first time. Certainly Draxtor Despres had to sit down with Lynette's avatar alter-ego Rasaa Mistwalker and chat a little about physical versus simulated reality.

Producers Institute 2009 mentor Lynette Wallworth gives guidance on storytelling, interactive installation technologies and emerging media platforms at the 2009 Producers Institute for New Media Technologies.

Wendy Levy from SF based Bay Area Video Coalition is at the helm of the annual Producer's Institute, which brings filmmakers together with technologists to develop new media strategies for their projects. Centered around social and human rights issues, the film projects touch on subjects from healthcare crises to sex trafficking. Draxtor Despres worked around the clock on bringing SL as a possible place to engage to this diverse crowd. A series of interviews starts off with this chat with BAVC's own Wendy Levy.

Clips from the 2009 Producers Institute projects.

Charlotte Lagarde explains her Producers Institute project, Adoptlink.

Thomas Allen Harris and Ann Bennet explain Digital Diaspora Family Reunion, their Producers Institute project based on Through A Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People, a documentary that explores how African American communities have used the medium of photography to construct political, aesthetic, and cultural representations of themselves and their world.

Producer Ashley York talks about her Producers Institute project, a computer game which seeks to illuminate the flawed nature of the American prison system and the irreversible nature of the death penalty.

Joe Rubin of Frontline World discusses

Director Melissa Regan talks about her Producers Institute project.