over the last decade, rodrigo dorfman has also worked on a number of projects in collaboration with different members and organizations of the durham african american community. his collaboration with jazz musician and band leader john brown led to the short one night in kernersville, which won the full frame jury award in 2011 and the best cinematography award at the charlotte film festival. he spent three years working and documenting the creation of the durham civil rights mural , the first publicly funded public art work by the city of durham. from the process, a 30-minute short, living colors was created and played at the local hayti film festival. rodrigo also worked with brenda miller-holmes and a dozen community muralists who worked on the project and created an community centered exhibit called muralist!. during the creation of the mural, rodrigo dorfman befriended the great civil rights warrior ann atwater. rodrigo dorfman quickly noticed that ann atwater kept complaining about her bed being too small. she was full of sores because she had no room to turn around. rodrigo immediately created a series of video shorts about her needs, started a crowdsourcing campaign and helped raise $6,000 in less than one week in order to buy ann atwater the bed she needed. rodrigo dorfman also worked on mayor bill bell's anti poverty campaign by creating a video to educate employers on the second chance program, facilitating the hiring of formerly incarcerated folk.. he worked with spirithouse creating short fundraiser videos for their harm free zone campaign . rodrigo was commissioned to collaborate with nia wilson (spirithouse) on an essay/dialogue the sweetness and the spoil, durham stories of resistance . the essay featured rodrigo's short film mother to mother: collective son, created in collaboration with a spirithouse and song. rodrigo was then commissioned to create a documentary about spirithouse by alternate roots, the result was reshaping the mo(u)rning a powerful collaboration centered on the staging of the play collective sun: reshape the mo(u)rning.