Category: Advocacy Campaigns

A Human Rights Approach to Media Accountability

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Sherizaan Minwalla

Sherizaan Minwalla is a human rights lawyer and researcher who has been based in Iraq for more than a decade. She has worked closely with the Yazidi community and survivors since the 2014 genocide.

 

Individuals featured in documentaries or media reports may be exposed to physical, social, or psychological risks

The concept of informed consent as a legal requirement is rooted in ethical principles to ”do no harm”

We encourage filmmakers to integrate informed consent … while ultimately working towards structures and mechanisms of societal and legal accountability.

Advancing a Global Human Rights Approach to Media Accountability
By SHERIZAAN MINWALLA, Founder of Taboo LLC

Global attention on unethical media practices has intensified in recent years, leading to greater scrutiny of harms that occur to sources and participants. Individuals featured in documentaries or media reports may be exposed to physical, social, or psychological risks in the process of gathering their stories and in the aftermath of public exposure, requiring legal protection from and accountability for retaliation, stigma, and trauma. This is particularly important when sensitive or controversial issues are covered.

Media makers, including documentary filmmakers and video journalists, are increasingly considering the voluntary ethics and guidelines that apply to their work. However, towards the creation of a long-term solution to media accountability at the societal and legal levels, a framework for engaging with survivors should be based on informed consent, trauma-informed, survivor- and community-centered practices. From a human rights lens, implementing informed consent practices is a step toward ensuring that media makers can be held to account legally and socially, providing a safeguard against exploitative practices.

The concept of informed consent as a legal requirement is rooted in ethical principles to ”do no harm” and to safeguard the rights of participants in medical research, starting with the Nuremberg Code of 1947. It followed the disclosure that the Nazi regime conducted medical experiments on prisoners and other marginalized groups that amounted to atrocities. The Nuremberg Code was expanded by the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and the 1979 Belmont Report, stressing the importance of confidentiality, assessment of risks and benefits, and the autonomy of research participants. These ethical codes have been codified in laws across the world, making informed consent a legal requirement for medical providers, researchers, lawyers, and other professionals working with human beings.

These principles are also the basis for guidelines such as those set forth in the Murad Code on documenting sexual violence in conflict and the Dart Center Europe’s guidelines for Reporting on Sexual Violence in Conflict. However, since these are not legally enforceable rules, participants engaging with the media need legal protections. We encourage filmmakers to integrate informed consent into their filmmaking practices, while ultimately working towards structures and mechanisms of societal and legal accountability.

Centering Care, Consent and Community in Visual Storytelling – March 25

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Centering Care, Consent and Community in Visual Storytelling


Mon, 25 Mar 2024
17:30 – 20:00 CET

The Hague Humanity Hub
Fluwelen Burgwal 58, The Hague

Join ART WORKS Projects, Re-Present Media, Video Consortium, and The Hague Humanity Hub for a community learning event on best practices for consent-based, trauma-informed, and community-centered visual storytelling. Organised with the Movies that Matter Festival, the evening will engage diverse participants who have been using visual storytelling to create impact, whether in grassroots organising, advocacy, education, fundraising, or policy change.

Over the course of the evening, we will hear from Jennifer Huang, Director and Producer of The Long Rescue, the 2022 recipient of the Storyboard Impact Community Fund from Movies That Matter Industry Film and Impact initiative. We will also host a panel discussion discussing cases from different organisations and mediamakers. Participants will be able to share their ideas on how we can develop hands-on tools that will nurture industry-wide change and promote ethical, responsible, and respectful storytelling processes for trauma survivors, mediamakers, and the people and organisations who amplify these stories.

This initiative is part of the Humanity Hub’s programming in collaboration with visual advocacy organisations aiming to emphasise storytelling, photography, filmmaking, and other visual media as essential tools for conveying narratives, fostering understanding, and amplifying the voices of vulnerable groups. These are critical tools for anyone working in the peace, justice, and humanitarian field. Our primary goal is to facilitate collaboration and knowledge sharing among visual advocacy organisations, extending valuable insights to the broader peace and justice community.

We warmly invite filmmakers as well as other practitioners – including social justice and peace advocates, campaigners, fundraisers, policy makers, justice and legal practitioners, and representatives from civil society organisations – to join us. This event is a unique opportunity for mutual learning, allowing us to deepen our collective understanding of how we can employ visual storytelling in a more ethical, responsible and respectful manner.

Free and open to the public.

Register on Eventbrite.

What’s Up with Docs featuring Jennifer Crystal Chien – Keep on Keeping on

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DOK Industry Podcast - Keep on Keeping On

Our Director Jennifer Crystal Chien is featured in DOK Leipzig’s new podcast episode “Keep on Keeping On” from What’s Up with Docs. In this episode, host Toni Bell discusses with Jennifer the vital question of who is determining what is of interest and to whom?! They dive into the challenges faces by BIPOC filmmakers working in a dominant white supremacy culture and the need to generate new and more authentic representations and portrayals of BIPOC communities. Jennifer also talks about her commitment to advocacy and the field-building work at Re-Present Media.

Tune in now: What’s Up with Docs feat. Jennifer Crystal Chien – Keep on Keeping on

Curators of the episode: Toni Bell and Brianna Jovahn, MBA.

Ethical Filmmaking with Survivor Stories

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Yixuan Zeng wrote an article about Ethical Filmmaking with Survivor Stories published on Color Congress‘s Medium.

Yixuan shared about watching survivor stories as a survivor themself, Re-Present Media’s work to discuss ethical filmmaking practices for working with survivors in our Centering Survivor Stories series, and the importance of providing solace and solidarity to survivors through stories created with thoughtful and intentional practices.

We are working with Yixuan to create the documentation for our Centering Survivor Stories series, which will cover the high-level themes and lessons learned from the sessions so that it can be circulated widely beyond the immediate workshop participants, while also protecting the privacy of participating individuals and the details of their films.

DOK Leipzig: Personal Storytelling from Underrepresented Communities

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Re-Present Media Director, Jennifer Crystal Chien, participated in the DOK Leipzig 2022 Industry Talk: Personal Storytelling from Underrepresented Communities on October 18, 2022.

Jennifer was in conversation with filmmakers Brenda Akele Jorde (The Homes We Carry), Mickaël Bandela (One Mother) and Paula Vaccaro, founder of Pinball London and member of the steering committee of ARTEF. The panel was moderated by Gugi Gumilang, Executive Director of In-Docs.

MVFF: The Power of Personal Documentary Films

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Re-Present Media Director, Jennifer Crystal Chien, participated in the Mill Valley Film Festival 2022 Panel: The Power of Personal Documentary Films: The Distributors on October 13, 2022.

In early 2022, Re-Present Media issued an article, The Power of Personal Documentary Films, presenting data gathered from emerging BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) filmmakers working on personal documentary films. In particular, the article explored the impact of racism and white-supremacy culture on their work.

This session presented highlights of the survey project as it relates to the current distribution landscape, then dove into a deep conversation with distribution professionals. Themes included: the value of personal documentary films from diverse communities, how personal documentaries are currently distributed, the challenges of marketing such films, the missed opportunities to connect with audiences because of an unconscious bias against these films, and how strategies can shift among distributors for programming, acquiring, and marketing personal documentaries.

Jennifer was in conversation with Brenda Avila-Hanna (New Day Films), Amanda Salazar (Film Programmer), and Annie Roney (ro*co Films, Founder & Chief Executive Officer). The panel was moderated by Claire Aguilar (producer/consultant, former Director of Programming and Policy at International Documentary Association).

Resource List for Practical and Ethical Considerations for Working with Film Participants

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This is a list of tools and resources to help filmmakers, funders, and participants address ethical challenges that arise during the filmmaking process. These resources cover a range of topics, including: financial impacts and benefits, ownership, content review rights, and the film’s impact on participants. This list was prepared for a workshop presented by Filmmakers Collaborative SF and Re-Present Media.

  • What is Ethics?
    Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, Santa Clara University
    An explanation of what ethics is.
  • Making an Ethical Decision (PDF)
    Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, Santa Clara University
    Questions to help you make an ethical decision.
  • Inside the Documentary Cash Grab (Sep 16, 2022)
    The Hollywood Reporter
    As streaming transforms the once-sleepy nonfiction space into a money-making juggernaut of hit series, cool parties and $30 million single-title sales, THR talks to Alex Gibney, Ken Burns and other filmmakers about rising costs, ethical lapses and the very soul of their profession.
  • Editorial Standards
    Australian Broadcasting Corporation
    The editorial guidelines and standards of Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
  • Dealing with trauma and survivors of trauma (June 4, 2020)
    Australian Broadcasting Corporation
    The Australian Broadcasting Corporation provided this guidance to assist staff involved in the reporting, discussion or depiction of trauma. It includes advice on dealing with victims, survivors, relatives of victims, and witnesses of crime, accidents, and natural disasters.
  • Making Media with Communities: Guidance for Researchers
    Ann Light of Northumbria University and Tamar Millen of the Community Media Association
    These guidelines set out a framework of ethical and practical considerations for creating media with communities to think about the process, the approach, and the legacy of the project.

The D-Word: Centering Personal Narratives of BIPOC Communities

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What are the experiences of emerging documentary filmmakers of color working on personal stories in the industry?

In this D-Word Focused F2F, Jennifer Crystal Chien, producer, director and co-founder of Re-Present Media, summarizes and expands on findings from focus groups and surveys responding to this timely and urgent question. The discussion then focuses on how we can utilize the research to facilitate sustainable industry change.

The recording is available on YouTube.

For more information on our campaign: The Power of Personal Documentary Films

Centering Survivor Stories: A Filmmaking Series

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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].

Sabaya’s Greatest Flaw: It Missed the Story

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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.