Author: representmedia

Centering Survivor Stories: A Filmmaking Series

Posted on by representmedia

Centering Survivor Stories: A Filmmaking Series will explore how to center the perspectives of sexual violence and abuse survivors in documentary films.

Co-presented by Re-Present Media, The Video Consortium, and Art Works Projects, these workshops feature four films whose work illustrates ethical filmmaking strategies and informed consent practices with film participants.

The events in the series are:

  • Still I Rise with Sheri Shuster
  • The Long Rescue with Jennifer Huang and Jethro Patalinghug
  • The Apology with Tiffany Hsiung
  • Letter to My Child from Rape with Bernadette Vivuya and Leslie Thomas

Each interactive, standalone session will focus on a different aspect of the survivor-centered filmmaking process and help filmmakers apply these approaches in their own work. Workshop participants can discuss situations from their own work in a supportive learning environment.

To attend one of the sessions, please fill out the application form. Applications will be reviewed by Re-Present Media and The Video Consortium on a rolling basis. Selected participants will be contacted with instructions on how to register and pay for a selected workshop. Fee waivers are available for those with financial need. Applicants will be notified no later than a week from their application date.

WORKSHOP 1: STILL I RISE

DATE: Wednesday September 7, 2022

TIME: 3:00PM ET (12:00PM PT / 8:00PM BST)

This workshop dives into how race, class, and power affect filmmaking with survivors. Featuring Still I Rise (2018) by Sheri Shuster, this workshop examines how filmmakers can:

  • Apply an intersectional lens,
  • Make creative choices for strong storytelling without exploitation,
  • Benefit the lives of survivors and their communities through the filmmaking process, and
  • Work with problematic institutions, such as law enforcement, without legitimizing their practices.

Still I Rise explores the relationship between racism and sex trafficking with dynamic womxn in the San Francisco Bay Area closest to the problem and the solutions. The film follows advocates Holly Joshi and Leah Albright-Byrd as they work to prioritize the interdependence of the anti-trafficking movement and other movements for social equity.

Sheri Shuster is an Iranian-American filmmaker interested in advancing intersectional and moral conversations about racism and power. For over fifteen years she worked with nonprofits and elected officials, including former U.S. Congressman Tom Lantos and The Center for Women and Democracy. From 2008-2012 Sheri served as Associate Director of Covenant House California, advocating for homeless and sex trafficked youth. Sheri’s work has been featured at The African American Policy Forum with Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw and The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. Sheri is an alumnus of UCLA and the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance.

WORKSHOP 2: THE LONG RESCUE

DATE: Wednesday September 14, 2022

TIME: 1:00PM ET (10:00AM PT / 6:00PM BST)

This workshop dives into an ongoing, long-term consent process with survivors — especially minors — and the financial impacts on filmmakers and film participants. Featuring The Long Rescue (in production) by Jennifer Huang and editor Jethro Patalinghug, this workshop explores:

  • Long-term consent processes for participants who are minors,
  • Issues that arise when working with impoverished participants, and
  • The balancing act between informed consent, project completion, and film fundraising.

The Long Rescue begins where most trafficking stories end: after the rescue. Following teenage survivors in Cebu, Philippines, the film explores how girls can recover from deep violation to find stability, love, and personal agency. Over six years, Hope, Sara, and Carrie grow from idealist teens into struggling young women – sobered, but driven by hard-won inner strength.

Jennifer Huang started Treeclimber Media to tell stories that aren’t being told elsewhere – personal stories of people of color, women, and girls who have been systematically dehumanized. For almost two decades, Huang’s work in documentary and television production has brought her to unexpected roles in disparate places: scrubbing in for a kidney transplant at the Mayo Clinic (Anonymous Content); writing questions for Colin Powell about African American soldiers in WWI (Harlem’s Hellfighters, Lucasfilm); booking an interview with Hugh Jackman in the middle of Sydney Harbor (Get the Edge, Lieberman Productions); and being questioned in a shipping container in Papua New Guinea (Standing on Sacred Ground, Sacred Land Film Project). She recently finished her first documentary short as a director, This Adventure Called California, about a labor trafficking survivor.

Jethro Patalinghug (they, them) is a filmmaker, video producer, visual artist, and queer immigrant activist. You can watch their films 50 Years of Fabulous and My Revolutionary Mother on Amazon and iTunes. They are also known for their drag persona Virginia Please on Tiktok where they highlight representation for queer and trans-BIPOC communities. Jethro was Mr. Gay San Francisco 2016 and Mr. GAPA 2012. They have a B.S. in Digital Filmmaking at the Art Institute of California in San Francisco and are currently finishing an MFA in Studio Art at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

WORKSHOP 3: THE APOLOGY

DATE: Wednesday September 21, 2022

TIME: 1:00PM ET (10:00AM PT / 6:00PM BST)

This workshop dives into telling stories of survivors, decades after the trauma has occurred.

Featuring The Apology (2016) by Tiffany Hsiung, this workshop explores:

  • Practicing care with survivors regardless of the passage of time,
  • Awareness and care in telling stories that have an intergenerational impact,
  • Cultural shame and its impact on participants and during production, and
  • The importance of witnessing and listening as part of the filmmaking process.

The Apology follows three former “comfort women” who were among the 200,000 girls and young women kidnapped and forced into military sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. Whether seeking a formal apology from the Japanese government or summoning the courage to share their secret with loved ones, these women are motivated by setting future generations on a course for reconciliation, healing, and justice.

Tiffany Hsiung is a Peabody award-winning filmmaker based in Toronto, Canada. Hsiung’s approach to storytelling is driven by the human condition and the relationship that is built with the people she meets both in front and behind the lens. She won the inaugural Toronto International Film Festival Share Her Journey Short Cuts Award for Sing Me a Lullaby (2020) as well as a Directors Guild of Canada award for Best Short Film. In addition to the Peabody award, The Apology (2018) won the DuPont Columbia Award and the Allan King Memorial Award. She was recognized as one of DOC NYC’s 40 under 40.

WORKSHOP 4: LETTER TO MY CHILD FROM RAPE

DATE: Monday September 26, 2022

TIME: 1:00PM ET (10:00AM PT / 6:00PM BST)

This workshop dives into how a survivor’s role can evolve from participant to producer in rewriting social narratives. Featuring Letter to my Child from Rape (2020) by Bernadette Vivuya and Leslie Thomas, this workshop explores:

  • Working with film participants who become involved as producers,
  • Parental consent and long-term impacts on their children,
  • Creative choices in audio and visual storytelling, and
  • Rewriting social narratives to empower survivors.

In Letter to My Child from Rape, director Bernadette Vivuya brings to the screen the powerful words of poet-advocate Désanges Kabuo as she braves dangerous prejudice to claim a future for the child she did not choose to have but now loves fiercely. Often, these mothers and their families face stigma from the very communities that should embrace and support them.

Bernadette Vivuya is a Congolese visual journalist and filmmaker based in Goma, Eastern DRC. She works on issues of human rights, the environment, and the exploitation of raw materials, with a particular interest in subjects that testify to the resilience of the people of this region affected by numerous conflicts.

Leslie Thomas is a feature narrative and documentary director, multi-media artist, and architect. Leslie is also the founder of ART WORKS Projects and an Emmy-award winning art director. Her projects have been exhibited on five continents in cultural, civic, and academic centers. Her recent films include The Prosecutors and Thursday’s Child.

To attend one of the sessions, please fill out the application form.

If you have any questions, please contact: [email protected].

“This Adventure Called California” screening at Cinequest

Posted on by representmedia

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

Posted on by representmedia

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.

Jennifer Huang awarded Berkeley FILM Foundation Grant

Posted on by representmedia

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.

Jennifer Huang wins The Great Chicago Pitch

Posted on by representmedia

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 in Tribeca’s Juneteenth program

Posted on by representmedia
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

The Power of Personal Documentary at BAMMS 2022

Posted on by representmedia

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).

Sabaya: Director accused of faked scenes, heroes lied to separate children from mothers

Posted on by representmedia
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.

June 5 – The Power of Personal Documentary Films: The Creators Session

Posted on by representmedia
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