 The film also received an endorsement from Kino-Eye Center for Visual Innovation, a visual cultural research institute, and has been adapted by Kino-Eye Center president, Cesare Wright, as part of the film and media studies curriculum at the Univ.of Rochester and Rice University.According to Wright, "Rise Up" is "particularly interesting as an example of creative ethnography" and "stands in stark contrast to a reductive filmic tradition of exoticism, Orientalism, and tropicalization."