Make the movie poster for the provocative new documentary POVERTY, INC.

Poverty, Inc. [documentary film]

PovertyCure (not to be confused with Poverty, Inc.) is a research and educational media initiative aimed at changing the way people think about poverty, charity, and development. We have produced a 6 episode DVD Series, a Book Series, a web video series, and more content which can be found on our website. We have also built an international partner network of over 300 organizations and over 1.2 million Facebook fans. Last December we hosted a short film festival in New York City featuring $30,000 in prizes including a $10,000 Grand Prize.

To date, all of our products, events, and initiatives have utilized a single design theme characterized by minimalist principles and a green, white, and black color scheme.

This July, we have our biggest product launch to date with the film festival premiere of our feature documentary film Poverty, Inc. We want this product to have an entirely NEW DESIGN, distinct from PovertyCure but also compatible with it.

Here is a brief synopsis of the film (the full synopsis is available in the attached document).

TARGET AUDIENCE: Film festival programmers and attendees, documentary junkies, university students and professors, sophisticated thinkers, social justice minded individuals, entrepreneurs, people from developing countries, the type of people who like Freakonomics, free thinking skeptics of “the establishment.”

TRAILER: http://youtu.be/UxASM44gPlU
Note: this is actually an old trailer for PovertyCure, but it contains many of the same themes and images as Poverty, Inc.

SYNOPSIS — POVERTY, INC.
'I see multiple colonial governors,' says Herman Chinery-Hesse, Ghanaian founder of one of Africa's most innovative software companies. 'We are held captive by the donor community.' Mr. Hesse is just one of many in the developing world who are concerned about the top-down manner in which the West continues going about the fight against global poverty.

Beholden to paternalistic, donor-recipient mental models derived from colonial times, the West has positioned itself as the protagonist of the development narrative. Unfortunately, the results have been mixed, in some cases even catastrophic, and developing world leaders have become increasingly vocal in calling for change.

Drawing on perspectives gathered from over 150 interviews shot over four years in twenty countries, Poverty, Inc. explores the hidden side of international charity and development through the eyes of indigenous entrepreneurs, parents, and workers, with expert commentary from public leaders, development economists, anthropologists, and charity practitioners.

From TOMs Shoes to the Haiti earthquake, from U.S. agricultural subsidies to international adoptions, Poverty, Inc. examines the butterfly effect of our most well-intentioned efforts and pulls back the curtain on the poverty industrial complex - the multi-billion dollar market of NGOs, state and multilateral agencies, and for-profit aid contractors.

As new waves of interest in solving poverty build, this time with social entrepreneurship leading the charge, now is the time to challenge our existing frameworks and plausibility structures. We must be honest with ourselves: is our helping hurting? Who has the power, and who should have it? Are we truly supporting sustainable development or are we propagating a poverty industry in which the poor stay poor while the rich get hipper?
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PovertyCure Home Page: http://www.povertycure.org/
Facebook (1.2 million fans): http://www.facebook.com/povertycure
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/povertycure

We need an excellent documentary movie poster design to start.

The winning poster will establish the design theme for the film and we envision working with the winning designer 1-on-1 to produce a number of additional designs including but not limited to designs for the DVD jacket, ads, swag, screening invitations, stationery, website, and more.

SIZE: Your choice, but think classic template for movie posters (preferably not landscape).

FORMAT: If you choose to do an illustration, we will want the final version to be a vector file.

CONTENT: Per the standard template for documentary posters (http://goo.gl/AIjuQo), the poster should include the following:

+ Title: Poverty, Inc.
+ Subtitle (see ideas in attached document)
+ Quote from the film or from a reviewer (optional - see ideas in attached document)
+ Credits (see below)
+ Film festival laurels (optional - note: the film has been accepted to two film festivals so far - Anthem Film Festival in Las Vegas and Topanga Film Festival in California).

CREDITS
Directed by Michael Matheson Miller
Producers Michael Matheson Miller and James F. Fitzgerald, Jr.

Co-Producers Mark Weber, Anielka Münkel
Director of Photography Simon Scionka
Edited by Simon Scionka and Tom Small
Associate Producers Jonathan Witt, Tom Vogt, Rochelle de Sa Raimao
Written by Michael Matheson Miller, Jonathan Witt, Simon Scionka
Graphics & Animation by Dave Stotts
Narrated by Robert A. SiricoPresented By PovertyCure, Acton Media, Coldwater Media

This contest is a top priority for us this week and we are happy to work with you throughout the contest. Please feel free to email Mark Weber at mweber@povertycure.org or call 857.209.8374 with any questions you may have.

Additionally, we have certain design preferences that would be good to keep in mind, but please don’t feel bound by them. They include: minimalist, provocative, white, unique font type. We are not fans of the stereotypical distressed look so often used for poverty-related products.