Rooftop Films Rocks!

I had a great time with the Under Water's Mercy team watching trailers from 20 great projects - narrative and documentary - that were part of the IFP Independent Filmmaker Labs  this summer.

The docs were especially strong, including Dear Mandela, about three young slum dwellers who refuse to be evicted from their homes in one of Durban's sprawling shantytowns; 25 to Life, about an HIV-positive man who seeks redemption from the women of his promiscuous past; and Smokin' Fish, about a young Tlingit Indian man who makes a pilgrimage to rural Alaska to spend a summer living off the land.

The show was part of IFP Film Week, and was put on outdoors along the Hudson River in New York City by Rooftop Films. I had barely heard of Rooftop Films before this, and now I'm a huge fan! "Underground Movies Outdoors"... we hope we'll have a chance to screen Under Water's Mercy this way when we're done.

It has been a productive and fun week at IFP's Independent Film Week - a real powerhouse of an event.

Last Train Home

I just got home from seeing Lixin Fan's Last Train Home, which follows one family among the 130 million migrant factory workers in China. It's a powerful film which manages to capture something of the broad sweep of humanity and the intimate struggles of this one family. It did seem a bit contrived at times, but I recognize the challenges of filming in China and certainly forgive the filmmakers for doing what they did to knit together their story.

The film was showing at the Brattle Theatre as the last of this season's Docyard screenings, which help build our Boston documentary filmmaking community. After the screening, the filmmaker skyped in for a Q&A (pictured above).

It was great reconnecting with old friends, including Jesse Shapins, a PhD student at the Harvard Graduate Student of Design who is also an urban media theorist, documentary artist, and social entrepreneur. When I worked at Harvard's Film Study Center last year, we helped Jesse and his classmate Olga Touloumi curate A Media Archaeology of Boston - which pulled together media representations of the Boston area landscape over the last 100+ years. Thanks to all their effort, it was a great show - ranging from stuttery 1901 movies of Boston streetcars, to cheesy 1980s fiction films, to a black-and-white documentary on the Boston Marathon and a promotional video featuring the mayor of Somerville jogging through the city streets.

Jesse has just started co-teaching A Media Archaeology of Place, which looks to be a fascinating course "exploring different modes of representing place." I'm looking forward to seeing the final output of this class, which will be accessible to the public on a map-based website.

Under Water's Mercy at IFP

I'm very excited to be heading to New York for Independent Film Week (what they used to call the IFP Market) with Under Water's Mercy, a film I'm co-producing and editing with Sharon Linezo Hong and Monique Verdin. This will be our first public exposure for the film.

Under Water's Mercy tells the story of a young Native American woman who returns to her Houma community in Southeast Louisiana and finds it threatened by environmental disaster. As her loved ones suffer displacement, illness, and even suicide, she finds a sense of purpose as a storyteller for her people.

Critique Class at MassArt

This fall I'll be teaching The Filmmaker's Project at MassArt's Continuing Education program. It's an advanced critique class for filmmakers who are working on a piece and are looking for some structure (i.e. deadlines!) and feedback from a consistent teacher/classmate group. We will discuss structural, thematic, and fine editing issues, and engage in more philosophical conversations about what it means to make a film. I will also lead occasional workshops on the technical and professional aspects of post-production.

My students last spring came pretty far with their own projects, and seemed to learn from identifying issues in other students’ films, and watching those films evolve in the critique process.

The course begins September 9 and is still open for enrollment. It meets Thursdays 7-10pm.

JP Youth Gather for Health Equity

I enjoyed filming a gathering of young people in Jamaica Plain to talk about what they can do to help close the gap in health outcomes between different ethnic and socioeconomic groups. The meeting was organized by Jamaica Plain Youth Health Equity Collaborative, a dynamic grassroots group run out of the Southern Jamaica Plain Health Center.

The Collaborative is working on several fronts to address the structural roots of health inequality. They are currently focusing on youth employment - both on the policy level to preserve funding for youth jobs, and in developing a youth-run business. They also published a great report to educate young people in Jamaica Plain about the complex causes of health disparities.

It's been fun meeting several articulate new leaders in JP, and the health center's Manager of Community Health Programs, Abigail Ortiz (pictured above, leading a role play). She knows how to keep a room full of young people engaged and cooperating on ambitious projects for their community's future. 

Tom Wolff wrote a nice article in his newsletter about the Youth Collaborative's work, and that of one of their funders, the Center for Health Equity and Social Justice at Boston Public Health Commission (who has hired me to document some of their grantees).

100 Days Post-Spill

It's now been 100 days since BP's oil rig exploded, killing 11 rig workers and setting off a massive crude oil leak. Thankfully, the cap on the well seems to be holding, and if all goes according to plan (a big IF), a relief well will soon enable a permanent end to the spill. Of course, the estimated 92 million gallons of oil that have already leaked into the Gulf of Mexico will continue to affect the area's wildlife, vegetation, and economy for years.

The oil spill also threatens to end indigenous people's ability to live off Louisiana's land and water, as they have for hundreds of years. I am co-producing and editing a film called Under Water's Mercy that follows one Native American family's struggle to maintain their traditional way of life alongside oil and gas industries in Southeast Louisiana. The film is directed by Sharon Linezo Hong, and shot by her and Monique Verdin (who also made the photo above on the Pointe au Chien Bayou). In the film, Monique returns to her Houma community as they face a series of manmade environmental disasters, and gradually finds a sense of purpose as a photographer and storyteller for her people.

This fall, we'll be meeting with potential funders, broadcasters, and distributors who could help us get the film out into the world.

Alcohol Prevention Front and Center

Earlier this week I found myself immersed in the research and strategies for preventing high-risk drinking at colleges. Outside the Classroom asked me to film their Alcohol Prevention Coalition's second Annual Research Summit at Babson College. It's a gathering of top administrators, health educators, and student affairs directors who work to minimize binge drinking and its ramifications such as sexual assault, poor academic performance, and damaged town-gown relationships.

I am excited to be working with Outside the Classroom because I find them to be not only a top-notch research and strategy organization, but a great example of social entrepreneurship. They seem to be a for-profit business that operates with a non-profit mission. Their website says they aim to "Run Like a Business ~ Act Like a Nonprofit ~ Feel Like a Family ~ Care to Be Better."

Founder and CEO Brandon Busteed (pictured above) described the complexity of their approach to alcohol prevention, which brings together a diverse range of partners - deans, athletic directors, student affairs officers, health educators, student groups, faculty, and Greek organizations - and uses the Coalition's rich data on student attitudes and behavior to design policy.

I'm looking forward to producing some webclips to get the word out about the Coalition.