All good things begin with a plan.  ”Kicking It”, the just released documentary on the 2006 Homeless World Cup in Cape Town, South Africa was a part of a plan by AOL executive Ted Leonsis:

How Ted Leonsis’ Snag Films Came To Be:

“I wanted to make films that had a double-bottom line - movies that had a return on their investment, but which also righted a wrong, or spurred viewers to social action. I began to think about the concept of ‘filmanthropy,’ believing that filmmakers could transform the energy created by a film that shined the light on injustice, or which exposed a social need, into greater audience participation...I learned that many great documentaries, released even two or three years ago and having run through their traditional distribution, are now hard to find, and large media companies want an easy way to have these films connect with an audience.”

Go to the Snag Films website and “watch full-length documentary films for free...and put them anywhere on the web. When you embed a widget on your web site, you open a virtual movie theater and become a “Filmanthropist...” With a library of 225 documentaries, and rapidly growing — browse by topic or go through the alphabet from A-Z — you’re bound to find films that resonate with your interests.

For some, art is excessively highbrow, while sports is looked at as the domain of the uncultured.  What do you get when you combine the power of the artistic & athletic mediums with a powerful socio-political motive?  A third stream, ‘Filmanthropy,’ awareness, social change.  We’ve already seen this hybridization occur and we’re destined to see more in the coming years: seemingly incompatible disciplines cobbled together out of creative necessity and brought to bear on real problems in a rapidly changing world.

Sounds exciting.

What’s your Red Rubber Ball?!