This Adventure Called California, directed by Re-Take Oakland filmmaker Jennifer Huang, is screening at Cinequest, Saturday, August 20, at 9:15 am. A special extended panel conversation follows the screening of the film!

This Adventure Called California is a short documentary film about recently divorced Arnoldo, who comes to the United States from Mexico to win back his family but meets only brutality and despair, until a chance encounter at a racquetball court changes the course of his life.

For tickets, visit: https://bit.ly/3yrp0ro

Sabaya’s Greatest Flaw: It Missed the Story

By Jennifer Huang

In recent investigations by Kvartal and the New York Times, Sabaya director Hogir Hirori admitted that he misrepresented the most dramatic scene of the film in which Leila, the main protagonist, is taken from the Al Hol refugee camp. In this scene, he swapped one veiled woman for another without telling the audience, the film funders, or the press. The woman in the film is not Leila, but another woman. 

While industry members debate the ethics of this lack of transparency about the film’s crucial scene, however, the bigger problem is that the entire film is based on the inaccurate representation of the work of the Yazidi Home Center. Mahmud and Ziyad of the Yazidi Home Center are portrayed as heroes, rescuing women from Islamic State captors. But in fact, many of those women had chosen to stay in the refugee camp because they knew that their children, born of rape by their captors of a different faith, would not be allowed in the Yazidi community. When Mahmud and Ziyad took the women from the camp, it was sometimes against their will. Sometimes they coercively separated the mothers from their children, a flagrant violation of the women’s and children’s rights.

Hirori said that he didn’t have time to follow this issue, and he was focusing on how the women were being saved. But the fact that the women didn’t want to be “saved” is the real story. It’s far more complex, messy, and heartbreaking than the film. And I would argue that choosing to ignore the real story goes beyond an artistic choice and ventures into negligence and harm. 

I wish that Hirori had taken the opportunity to examine the nuance and messiness that he found, to show how humans doing something courageous could simultaneously be doing something cruel and inhumane. 

And I wish that he had taken the time to center the survivors, to get truly informed consent and to portray them as complicated people with varying needs and dreams, agency and ambivalence. 

It would also have been an opportunity to raise the critical issues these women face: why Yazidis refuse to accept these children, and how in trying to preserve their culture, they are creating a huge rift in their community and abandoning their own daughters. And how these women are now left effectively stateless and unmoored, forced to choose, impossibly, between their parents and traditions and their own children. 

While we can’t know what was in the minds of the filmmakers, I don’t doubt that they were well-intentioned. It is a frightening reality of our occupation that even with the best of intentions, our films can have unintended consequences, and that with their power, reach and exposure, they can create significant harm for our protagonists. 

That is why I am glad that as a field, there is a new awareness of these issues. Filmmakers are  being asked to interrogate our own biases, our own relationships to our protagonists and the communities portrayed in our films, and to be extremely cautious about how we are representing vulnerable people. Had Hirori reflected on these questions, I believe he would have made a very different film. 

As a community of filmmakers, we need to go even further. We need a deep, industry-wide shift in attitudes, practices, and expectations. Some ideas that come to mind are: 

  • Teach ethics and protagonist stewardship in film schools, probably before we teach lighting or camera angles; 
  • Make ongoing consultation with vulnerable protagonists the industry standard, rather than the exception;
  • Be willing to fund and support projects that put ethical processes ahead of the film’s commercial viability and profitability (even if that means the film doesn’t get publicly released); 
  • Build mental health services and wellness resources into grants and budgets, 
  • Create support networks and resources for protagonists;
  • Normalize conversations about protagonist stewardship, transparency, and responsibility;
  • Create and standardize a role for an ethics consultant who evaluates the project before filming starts, through production, impact and distribution. 

We’ve chosen complicated work without easy answers. In the struggle to raise funds, find distribution, woo gatekeepers, and finish our films, we filmmakers often forget the power we do wield. Let’s continue to learn from each other how to use our power responsibly.


As a Chinese American child growing up in Kansas, Jennifer was bullied relentlessly. This foundational experience led to her lifelong commitment to justice, especially for women and children. Her work has brought her to unexpected places: scrubbing for a kidney transplant at the Mayo Clinic, leaping from a crashing snowmobile in Aspen, and being detained in a shipping container in Papua New Guinea. She is making her directorial debut with the recent release of a documentary short about a labor trafficking survivor, This Adventure Called California, and is in post production on a feature-length documentary about teen sex trafficking survivors in the Philippines, The Long Rescue.

Re-Take Oakland filmmaker, Jennifer Huang, has been awarded a Berkeley FILM Foundation 2022 Grant Award, for her film The Long Rescue.

The film is the recipient of the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation Elevate Award for $25,000, in partnership with the Berkeley-based Jonathan Logan Family Foundation (JLFF).

The Long Rescue follows Filipina teen sex trafficking survivors for six years where we learn of their dark pasts through brief flashbacks that reveal the cyclical nature of exploitation that haunts women and their children for generations.

Congratulations to Re-Take Oakland filmmaker, Jennifer Huang, who won The Great Chicago Pitch for The Long Rescue. The film will receive $50,000 as part of the inaugural Shifting Voices Film Fund, sponsored by CMP and Mezcla Media Collective.

The Long Rescue follows Filipina teen sex trafficking survivors for six years where we learn of their dark pasts through brief flashbacks that reveal the cyclical nature of exploitation that haunts women and their children for generations.

For Love and Legacy - Dana King in her studio

Re-Take Oakland filmmaker A.K. Sandhu is screening For Love and Legacy this weekend as part of Tribeca Film Festival’s Juneteenth program.

The film tells the personal stories of sculptor Dana King and activist Fredrika Newton who come together to build a new monument that honors the Black Panther Party’s vital place in American history.

For tickets and more info:

https://tribecafilm.com/films/for-love-and-legacy-2022

Re-Present Media presented a session, The Power of Personal Documentary Films: The Creators, at the 2022 Bay Area Media Makers Summit. The Bay Area Media Maker Summit (BAMMS) is a collaborative initiative to cultivate a healthy and inclusive Bay Area filmmaking community.

In this session, we reviewed highlights from a Re-Present Media study that looks at the relationship between emerging BIPOC filmmakers, personal storytelling, and the dynamics of white supremacy culture in the industry.

After a presentation of findings and strategies for change, Jennifer Crystal Chien engaged in a dialogue with two guest filmmakers with personal films – Jay Gash (When the Garden Comes) and Lucy Saephan (My Name is Lai).

Kvartal

A two-part investigative report on Sabaya in Kvartal by Swedish journalist Ludde Hellberg that exposes the following:

  • The movie is significantly based on a falsehood, states Peter Galbraith, former US ambassador.

  • The film’s protagonists forced several of those women to be separated from their children, promising they would later be reunited. Those who refused were kept under house arrest for up to two years.

  • The director now admits that the dramatic rescue of Leila, the female protagonist of the documentary, was filmed with an entirely different woman. Other scenes are also examined and shown to be faked.

The articles can be found on Kvartal, a Swedish online magazine.

This news has made ripple effects through the Swedish media, stirring up conversations among funders, distributors, and film reviewers.

Our original advocacy campaign began in October 2021, after the release of the New York Times article citing problems with this film. Since then, we have worked with a group of international women advocates to continue to bring attention to the unethical and exploitative practices of this film.

BAMMS Summit - Power of Pesonal Documentary Films Event - Sunday June 5 - 12:30pm

Join us for a filmmakers’ case study for The Power of Personal Documentary Films!

IN PERSON – Sunday June 5, 12:30pm

KQED, 2601 Mariposa Street, San Francisco

Learn about our new article, The Power of Personal Documentary Films, which looks at the importance of personal storytelling in relationship to racism and white supremacy in the industry.

We discuss two case studies from personal films by Lucy Saephan (My Name is Lai) and Jay Gash (When the Garden Comes).

REGISTER FOR EVENT

Congratulations to Re-Take Oakland filmmaker, Lucy Saephan, who received the 2022 CAAMFEST Loni Ding Award for Social Justice Documentary, for My Name is Lai.

In My Name is Lai, a first generation Mien American elder, shares the events leading up to her arrival to the U.S. as a refugee survivor of war. Lai retraces moments of her life from memories as a young child, to being a newly arrived refugee finding her way in the U.S. Through these memories, Lai reflects on her life, passing on cultural traditions, fears of losing her independence, and hopes for the future.