Category: Advocacy Campaigns

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.

The Power of Personal Documentary at BAMMS 2022

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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

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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

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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

May 11 – The Power of Personal Documentary Films: The Creators Session

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May 11 CAAM Filmmaker Summit Event - May 11th 10am PT

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

Presented at the CAAM Filmmaker Summit with A-DOC

In this 90 minute presentation and interactive dialogue, IDA’s Director of Artist Development Abby Sun will moderate a presentation and discussion with Chanda Chevannes, Jennifer Crystal Chien, Nausheen Dadabhoy, a Muslim-American filmmaker and mixed race Asian American filmmaker David Siev regarding highlights of their work as it relates to RPM’s field surveys on personal storytelling and their films – An Act of Worship and Bad Axe. We will also discuss the unique challenges Asian Americans and/or Muslim Americans and other BIPOC face when making these films. After the presentation, attendees will engage in a facilitated dialogue about their own experiences, reflections, and questions.

Panelists:
Jennifer Crystal Chien, Director, Re-Present Media
Chanda Chevannes, Filmmaker, Writer, and Educator
Nausheen Dadabhoy, Director, An Act of Worship
David Siev, Director, Bad Axe
Moderator: Abby Sun, Director of Artist Programs, IDA

REGISTER FOR EVENT

May 3rd Launch Event for BIPOCs – The Power of Personal Documentary Films

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Join us for a launch event for The Power of Personal Documentary Films!

REGISTER FOR EVENT

The Power of Personal Documentary FIlms, published by Re-Present Media, is an article researched over several years to look at the impacts of racism and white supremacy in the industry on emerging BIPOC filmmakers. The article also makes a case for the importance of personal storytelling. Learn more about the findings from this work and engage with other BIPOC industry members in an interactive audience discussion.

Over the last several years, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) documentary filmmakers have discussed decolonizing documentaries as part of creating more equity in the field. In 2017, Re-Present Media (RPM) decided to take a different angle on the issues faced by BIPOC filmmakers and began gathering information on the impact of racism and white supremacy in the industry, which is summarized in their new article, The Power of Personal Documentary Films. RPM advocates for personal storytelling from underrepresented communities in documentary films and nonfiction media.

Jennifer and Chanda will present an overview of the highlights of this work, which was composed of focus groups and surveys on the experiences of underrepresented filmmakers working on personal stories. Then they will take a deep dive into the context of this work, including their personal stories behind why this work was necessary, the value of qualitative data, the necessity of anonymity for participants, the strategy behind the impact campaign for this work, and how this work can become a seed for ongoing practice towards industry change.

Those who attend will gain an understanding of the importance of personal documentary filmmaking along with the issues surrounding white supremacy culture and its impact on BIPOC filmmakers. Jennifer and Chanda will also provide a preview of the impacts they hope the article will have and the ways in which attendees might continue to engage in the conversation.

The presentation will be followed by an interactive audience discussion that will not be recorded.

REGISTER FOR EVENT

Resource List for R.E.S.T. Summit Session

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A blue flyer for the Beyond Trauma Informed: Understanding Reciprocal Impact session at The R.E.S.T. Summit

Here are some resources that we recommend to our attendees at our session “Beyond Trauma Informed: Understanding Reciprocal Impact” at Video Consortium’s REST Summit.

Our panelists:

Sherizaan Minwalla-Human Rights Lawyer

Joann Depetro-Licensed Therapist

Reporting Guidelines

Re-Present Media at The R.E.S.T. Summit

Posted on by Re-Present Media
A blue flyer for the Beyond Trauma Informed: Understanding Reciprocal Impact session at The R.E.S.T. Summit

Re-Present Media is excited to present a session at The Video Consortium’s R.E.S.T. Summit at 12pm ET on Friday, March 25th, 2022 that will introduce filmmakers and journalists to a new model of filmmaking that centers participants and their agency in storytelling, and is informed by our previous campaign work on “Sabaya”

Re-Present Media founder, Jennifer Crystal Chien, will be moderating a workshop titled “Beyond Trauma Informed: Understanding Reciprocal Impact” alongside human rights lawyer, Sherizaan Minwalla, and licensed therapist, JoAnn DePetro. The workshop will discuss how filmmakers and participants have a reciprocal relationship of impact, even though they may have significant power, resource and status differences. JoAnn DePetro will share how narrative therapy can help filmmakers gain insight on those involved in filmmaking on both sides of the camera. Sherizaan Minwalla, a human rights lawyer involved in the Sabaya film campaign advocating for the rights of Yazidi women will present best practices for working with traumatized participants ethically. Participants will leave with a new model that centers reciprocal impact and how participants can be empowered in the process of engaging with media in situations that involve issues related to trauma and mental health.

To attend this session, filmmakers and journalists must register for the free REST Summit.

Launched by the Video Consortium and supported by the Google News Initiative, the REST Summit (Resilience, Emotional and Digital Security, Trauma) is a collaborative week-long virtual symposium that explores the nature of resilience, safety, and trauma for those working in video journalism and documentary film.

The REST Summit will provide a safe, inclusive, and inspiring virtual space for nonfiction film and video storytellers to collectively lower their protective shields, be vulnerable, and find more balance while reporting on real-world events. Using a community-driven and grassroots approach, this summit is made by creators for creators—to dive into sensitive, often overlooked topics around mental health and safety.

Taking place Monday, March 21 to Friday, March 25, 2022, the Summit is open to members of the nonfiction film and video industry who seek to have a better understanding of these most pressing issues.

To attend, please email us at: [email protected]