documentary

During the first moments of HBO’s new film “Foster,” the camera pans across an office of Los Angeles County’s Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) and lingers on a cluster of infant car seats.

A trove of court and casework footage is now available for agencies and universities looking to make child welfare and juvenile justice training more dynamic. Calamari Productions, the small production company quietly behind several award-winning documentaries and TV shows about those two fields, has made its massive archive of system-related footage available for educational licensing through “Calamari in the Classroom.”

HBO has acquired the rights to air a documentary that weaves together the stories of youth, families and workers in the child welfare system. “Foster,” created by filmmakers Deborah Oppenheimer and Mark Jonathan Harris, uses the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) as the frame to bring viewers into the day-to-day world of protecting children and helping families in crisis.

Last week, The F-Word, a comedic documentary series following the journey of a queer couple looking to adopt from foster care, premiered online on PBS’s Indie Lens Storycast. The series’ producers and featured couple, Kristan Cassady and Nicole Opper, open up their lives to give others insight into the mystifying process of becoming a foster parent and eventually adopting.

A Brief Note from the Author (6/12/16): I was very much looking forward to publishing my first story on The Imprint and happy to share this story with those who were involved.

In the opening scene, the camera pans across a city skyline at night, sirens wailing in the distance, as firefighter Wellington Jackson asks, “Who hasn’t made a mistake? Are you going to tell me that everybody that goes to prison or is in juvenile hall doesn’t deserve a second chance?”

The multimedia series “Drugging Our Kids,” published by the San Jose Mercury News, won the Edward R. Murrow Award for an online news video documentary by a large online organization last week.