The turnout was astounding for ITVS’ Community Cinema screening of Banished at the Oakland (Calif.) Museum last night. Four hundred people watched the film and many more were turned away. (A second screening at the Museum will likely be added in February.) The audience reaction was enthusiastic and animated and the discussion afterward looked at modern day displacements, specifically post-Katrina New Orleans and urban gentrification in Oakland.

As with all of the Banished screenings I’ve been to, audiences are interested in exploring how our society as a whole can explore reparations and reconciliation as a way to right past wrongs. ITVS is holding screenings of the film all over the country leading up to the February 19th PBS broadcast on Independent Lens.

>> Click here to find a screening near you.

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Christa Scharfenberg is a former CEO of The Center for Investigative Reporting. She joined CIR in 2003 as communications manager and has been a leader in its growth from a small nonprofit news organization, producing a handful of stories a year, to a multiplatform newsroom that reaches millions of people monthly through public radio, podcasts, documentaries, social media and the web. She managed the launch and growth of Reveal, CIR's Peabody Award and duPont-Columbia University Award-winning national public radio show and podcast, produced with PRX. She has been an executive or senior producer of documentaries for CIR, including the Academy Award-nominated film “Heroin(e),” numerous FRONTLINE co-productions and the independent film “Banished,” which premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. Scharfenberg is a member of the Poynter Institute's National Advisory Board and was a 2014 Punch Sulzberger Program fellow at Columbia University Journalism School. Prior to joining CIR, she was associate director of the Film Arts Foundation in San Francisco.