MPT recognizes the importance of local and independent filmmakers and their unique ability to capture truths about the world with artistic integrity, intelligence, and balance. MPT supports these artists and gives viewers access to their voices and viewpoints. These producers' programs provide viewers with a better understanding of the world, an open door to the arts, and actionable information to improve their daily lives.

Welcome, producers! Please scroll to the bottom of this page for special information about submitting your work or program ideas to MPT.

Blackboards & Barriers: Cecil County Colored Schools

Monday, August 25th @ 9:00 PM (premiere); Tuesday, August 26th @ 1:00 & 4:00 AM

A look at the untold story of education during segregation in Cecil County, Maryland. Through personal testimonies, archival footage, and historical context, the film chronicles the experiences of Black students who attended the county’s segregated “Colored Schools” from the post-Civil War era through the Civil Rights Movement. The film also examines the legacy of desegregation and the slow process of school integration, which continued long after legal mandates. It sheds light on the physical preservation of these historic school buildings and the importance of remembering this chapter of American history.

Pictures from a Hiroshima Schoolyard

Tuesday, August 5th @ 10:00 PM on MPT2/Create

A collection of surprisingly joyful drawings created by school children living among the ruins of Hiroshima in 1947 becomes the heart and soul of this true, inspiring story about an exchange of gifts between Americans and Japanese after a devastating war. In 2010, the newly restored drawings, buried for decades deep inside All Souls Church in Washington DC, were taken back to Japan where they were reunited with the artists and exhibited in the very building where they were created. This powerful documentary about reconciliation and the power of gift, introduces the children artists (then in their late 70s) who reflect on their early lives amidst the rubble of their destroyed city and the hope they shared through their art. 

The Five Demands

Monday, August 18th @ 9:00 PM; Tuesday, August 19th @ 1:30 AM

In April 1969, a small group of Black and Puerto Rican students shut down the City College of New York, an elite public university located in the heart of Harlem.  The CCNY strikers were the vanguard of a national Black student movement that transformed the culture, mission, and curriculum of American higher education.  For many, it was the first time they ever stepped foot on the neo-Gothic campus on a hill overlooking their neighborhood. Told through the participants' point of view, the film follows the students' struggle against the institutional racism that, for over a century, had shut out people of color from this institution and other public universities.