NAME Multicultural Film Festival Selections 2011–2009
NAME 2011 MC Film Fest: Chicago Conference
The following films were selected for screening at the 2011 Chicago NAME Conference:| TITLE & Length | Producer/Info | MC Topic | Summary |
| Children of the Bible(53 minutes) | Nitza Fonen Dradoman, info@dragoman.com | Race, religion in Middle East | Jeremy, a young Ethiopian rap artist, attempts to change the low self-image of the Ethiopian community in Israel. Through music he connects lost Ethiopian youth to their identity and to their parents. Likewise, he tries to stimulate the Kesses, the Ethiopian Rabbis, to fight for their lost spiritual status. |
| Duhozanye: A Rwandan Village of Widows(52 minutes) | Directed by Karoline Frogner. Women Make Movies, www.wmm.com | Women’s rights | During the 1994 Rwandan genocidal campaign, Daphrose Mukarutamu, a Tutsi, lost her husband and all but two of her 11 children. In the aftermath she considered suicide. But instead, she took in 20 orphans and started Duhozanye, an association of Tutsi and Hutu widows who were married to Tutsi men. This powerful documentary recounts the story of Duhozanye’s formation and growth and profiles organization members helping other women victims and taking part in national reconciliation through open-air people’s courts where they can face, and often forgive, their loved one’s killers. |
| Harvest of Loneliness: The Bracero Program (58 minutes) | Directors: Gilber Gonzalez. Vivian Price, Adrian Salinas. www.harvestofloneliness.com | Mexican Americans | Hidden within the historical accounts of minorities, workers and immigrants in American society are the stories of the millions of Mexico’s men and women who experienced the temporary contract worker program known as the Bracero Program. Established in 1942 to replace an alleged wartime labor shortage, the Program lasted until 1964 and was intended to undermine farmworker unionization. The Bracero Program, one of the largest state managed migrations in history, served to import cheap, controlled and disposable workers. The documentary features the men speaking of their experiences and addresses what to expect from a new temporary contract worker program. |
| If These Halls Could Talk | Lee Mun Wah, Stirfryseminars.com | In the summer of 2010, Lee Mun Wah brought together eleven college students from around the country to answer some of these questions. In the process of sharing their stories and different life experiences with each other, they discover and expose the complexity and anguish that accompany those experiences, while trying to be understood and validated in a predominantly white environment. Their stories are starkly emotional and the issues they provoke are equally perplexing, begging to be heard and confronted. Reveals the truths underlying the festering silence on all of our campuses and provides the means to talk about our differences in an environment that is honest, receptive, and, eventually, transformative. | |
| I’m Just AnnekeThe Family Journey
(total, 25 mins.) | Films by Jonathan Skurnik. Youth and Gender Media Project. www.imjustanneke.com. | Trans-gendered youth | A portrait of a 12 year old girl who loves ice hockey and has a loving, close-knit family. Anneke is also a hardcore tomboy and everybody she meets assumes she is a boy. The onset of puberty has created an identity crisis for Anneke. Does she want to be a boy or a girl when she grows up, or something in between? |
| Louder Than a Bomb(100 minutes) | Directed by Greg Jacobs and Jon Siskelwww.louderthanabombfilm.com | Race relations, debunking stereotypes | Every year, more than six hundred teenagers from over sixty Chicago area schools gather for the world’s largest youth poetry slam, a competition known as “Louder Than a Bomb”. Founded in 2001, Louder Than a Bomb is the only event of its kind in the country—a youth poetry slam built from the beginning around teams. Rather than emphasize individual poets and performances, the structure of Louder Than a Bomb demands that kids work collaboratively with their peers, presenting, critiquing, and rewriting their pieces. To succeed, teams have to create an environment of mutual trust and support. For many kids, being a part of such an environment—in an academic context—is life-changing. Film chronicles the stereotype-confounding stories of four teams as they prepare for and compete in the 2008 event. |
| Model Minority: Do the Math(30 minutes) | By Teja Arboleda,teja@entertainingdiversity.com | Asian Americans | Film reveals the impact of the model minority myth on the experiences and perspectives of Asian American (AA) college students. The myth is a complex and contradictory stereotype of AAs as academic over-achievers. While many believe the stereotype is positive, it causes many problems. Asian Americans are overlooked for affirmative action and academic assistance. Tracked by parents, counselors, and social expectations to excel in math-intensive fields, despite their preferences, they struggle to balance personal goals and mental health. |
| Not Just A Game: Power, Politics & American Sports(67 minutes) | Directed by Jeremy Earp.www.mediaed.org | Sexism, homophobia, racism in sports | A documentary based on his bestselling book The People’s History of Sports in the United States, Zirin argues that far from providing merely escapist entertainment, American sports have long been at the center of some of the major political debates and struggles of our time. In a fascinating tour of the good, the bad, and the ugly of American sports culture, Zirin first traces how American sports have glamorized militarism, racism, sexism, and homophobia, then excavates a largely forgotten history of rebel athletes who stood up to power and fought for social justice beyond the field of play. The result is as deeply moving as it is exhilarating: nothing less than an alternative history of political struggle in the United States as seen through the games its people have played. |
| Put This On the Map(35 minutes) | www.putthisonthemap.org | LGBT issues | Fed up with a lack of queer visibility, twenty-six young people in Seattle’s eastside suburbs weave together this ground-breaking narrative of shifting identities and a quest for social change. From getting beat-up in a schoolyard to being picked up as a runaway, queer youth exercise courage daily. PTOTM is an intimate invitation into their stories of social isolation and violence, fearlessness and liberation. Professing expertise over their experiences, queer youth provide a candid evaluation of their schools, families, and communities and move an audience from self-reflection to action. |
| Outlet(19 minutes)
What Do You Know? (13 minutes) | Directed by Leigh Iacobucci Frameline Films www.frameline.org | LGBTQ issues | Outlet tells the personal stories of the teenagers who participate in a support group offered by a Bay Area youth organization called Outlet. It includes observational footage of their weekly support group and mentoring meetings, giving us a glimpse of the challenges they face at school on a daily basis.WDYK shows interviews with elementary aged children answering questions about their experiences in school with LGBT issues. |
| Reel Bad Arabs:How Hollywood Vilifies a People(50 Minutes) | Directed by Sut Jhally www.mediaed.org | Arab Americans | A documentary dissects a slanderous aspect of cinematic history that has run virtually unchallenged from the earliest days of silent film to today’s biggest Hollywood blockbusters. Featuring acclaimed author Dr. Jack Shaheen, the film explores a long line of degrading images of Arabs–from Bedouin bandits and submissive maidens to sinister sheikhs and gun-wielding “terrorists”–along the way offering devastating insights into the origin of these stereotypic images, their development at key points in US history, and why they matter so much today. Shaheen shows how the persistence of these images over time has served to naturalize prejudicial attitudes toward Arabs and Arab culture. |
| Samsara (29 minutes) | By Ellen Bruno, Media Library. 190 Rout 17M, POB 1084, Harriman NY 10926 www.brunofilms.com | Asian history, religion | Documents the struggle of the Cambodian people to rebuild a shattered society in a climate of war and with limited resources. Ancient prophecy, Buddhist teachings, and folklore provide a context for understanding the Cambodian tragedy, bringing a humanistic perspective to a country in deep political turmoil. |
| Scarred Justice: The Orangeburg Massacre(57 minutes) | Civil Rights history | Everyone remembers the four white students slain at Kent State University in 1970, but most have never heard of the three black students killed in Orangeburg, South Caroline two years earlier. This stirring investigative documentary restores that bloody tragedy to the history of the Civil Rights Movement after years of official denial | |
| The Sister School Program: Miles Apart but Connected at the Heart(15 minutes)
Opportunity Education: (7 minutes) | www.opportunityeducation.org | Cross cultural communication | This short film showcases the Sister School program by showing how two of the many schools in the program—one in Africa and one in the U.S.—learn from and help each other. The film will be followed by a discussion of how to get involved in the Sister School program. |
| Tongues Untied(55 minutes) | Directed by Marlon Riggs, Frameline Films. www.frameline.org | Homophobia, racism | The stories are fierce examples of homophobia and racism: the man refused entry to a gay bar because of his color; the loneliness and isolation of the drag queen. Yet they also affirm the black gay male experience; protest marches, smoky bars, “snap diva”, humorous “musicology” and Vogue dancers |
| Voices Unveiled: Turkish Women Who Dare(69 minutes) | Director/Producer: Binnur Karawvli.Women Make Movies, www.wmm.com | Women’s rights | Voices Unveiled examines the issue of women’s equality through portraits of three women pursuing the life paths and careers of their own choosing in present-day Turkey. Each has defied social expectations in a democratic, secular nation where religious fundamentalism has re-emerged as a political force and patriarchal values still prevail. |
| Welcome to My World(50 mins.) | www.Operationbreakingstereotypes.org | Race/class relations in high school | A documentary film about two groups of American teenagers from disparate walks of life, and what happens when they come together. The film follows high school students from inner-city New York and rural Maine as they participate in Operation Breaking Stereotypes, an exchange program that aims to replace the seeds of prejudice with real life experience. |
| What’s Race Got to Do With It?(49 minutes) | California Newsreel www.newsreel.org | College inter-group dialogue | What’s Race Got to Do with It? chronicles the experiences of a new generation of college students—in this case over the course of 16 weeks of intergroup dialogue on he U.C. Berkeley campus. As they confront themselves and each other about race, they discover they often lack awareness of how different their experience of campus life is from their peers, to the detriment of an inclusive campus climate. |
| Where Do I Stand?(37 minutes) | Molly Black; www.wheredoistandfilm.com | Racial identity in S. Africa | When xenophobic attacks broke out across South Africa in May 2008, many found themselves caught off guard, shocked by violence that felt like a violation of the principles of their newly democratic nation. Many young people, looted neighborhood shops while some of their classmates, refugees themselves, fled to safer ground. Some youth tried to find a way to help, but still more stood by, watching from their windows or on television. The film captures the optimistic voices of youth trying to make sense of what they experienced and the choices they made during the violence, as they carve out their own places in this complex and divided nation. |
2010 MC Film Festival Selections:
Las Vegas Conference
The following films/videos were screened at the 2010 Las Vegas NAME Conference.
Many thanks to the MC Film Festival Committee, chaired by Robin Brenneman.
| Title and Length | Publishing Information – Producer/Director | Multi-cultural Topic | Summary |
| Crossing Lines(32 minutes) | A film by Leena Jayaswal and Indira S. Somani. New Day Films. www.crossinglinesthefilm.com | Cultural identity/ Indian Americans | Crossing Lines is a film about an Indian American woman’s struggle to stay connected to India after the loss of her father. Like most second-generation ethnic Americans, Indira Somani has struggled with identity issues, since her parents migrated to the U.S. in the 1960s. This film takes you on a journey to India, where Indira visits her father’s extended family for the first time after his death. The film explores how Indira tries to stay connected to Indian culture and her extended family despite the loss of her father. |
| Killing Us Softly 4: Advertising’s Image of Women. (45 minutes) | Media Education Foundation. www.mediaed.org | Feminism | In this new, highly anticipated update of her pioneering Killing Us Softly series, Jean Kilbourne takes a fresh look at how advertising traffics in distorted and destructive ideals of femininity. The film marshals a range of new print and television advertisements to lay bare a stunning pattern of damaging gender stereotypes–images and messages that too often reinforce unrealistic and unhealthy perceptions of beauty, perfection and sexuality. |
| For the Next 7 Generations: 13 Indigenous Grandmothers Weaving a World that Works (85 minutes) | A project of the Center for Sacred Studies and The International council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers. Laughing Willow Company. www.forthenext7generations.com | Indigenous people | Who owns cultural identity? Who controls how a people are studied and represented? Is there a “politics of knowledge?” This provocative new documentary explores these issues through the controversial career of one of the most influential scholars of the 20th Century. Melville J. Herskovits (1895-1963) led a revolution in cultural anthropology, founded the first African Studies Center in the U.S. and was the first president of the African Studies Association. Historians including co-producer Vincent Brown, Kwame Anthony Appiah and Johnetta Cole, discuss what It means that the son of Jewish immigrants played such a dominant role in shaping how Africa and African Americans have been viewed. |
| Herskovits At the Heart of Blackness(56 minutes) | Vital Pictures. Independentlens. Produced by Llewellyn Smith, Vincent Brown and Christine Herbes-Sommers. California Newsreel. www.newsreel.org | Cultural identity/ biography | Who owns cultural Identity? Who controls how a people are studied and represented? Is there a “politics of knowledge?” This provocative new documentary explores these issues through the controversial career of one of the most influential scholars of the 20th Century. Melville J. Herskovits (1895-1963) led a revolution in cultural anthropology, founded the first African Studies Center in the U.S. and was the first president of the African Studies Association. Historians including co-producer Vincent Brown, Kwame Anthony Appiah and Johnetta Cole, discuss what It means that the son of Jewish immigrants played such a dominant role in shaping how Africa and African Americans have been viewed. |
| Howard Zinn: You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train(78 minutes) | A film by Deb Ellis and Denis Mueller. www.howardzinn.org. www.firstrunfeatures.com | Biography, multicultural history | A film about the life and times of historian, activist and author of the best-selling classic, A People’s History of the United States. Featuring rare archival materials and interviews with Zinn and colleagues such as Noam Chomsky, the film captures the essence of this extraordinary man who was a catalyst for progressive change for more than 60 years. |
| Tea and Justice: NYPD’s 1st Asian Women Officers (55 minutes) | A film by Ermena Vinluan. Women Make Movies. www.wmm.com | Feminism/Asian Americans | Tea and Justice chronicles the experiences of three women who joined the New York Police Department during the 1980s–the first Asian women to become members of a force that was largely white and predominantly male. In this award winning documentary, Officer Trish Ormsby and Etectives Agnes Chan and Christine Leung share their fascinating stories about careers and personal lives as well as satisfactions and risks on the job, the stereotypes they defied, and how they persevered. |
| Unveiled Views: Muslim Women Artists Speak Out(52 minutes) | A film by Alba Sotorra. Women Make Movies. www.wmm.com | Religion/ gender | In this revealing documentary, five extraordinary Muslim women talk about their occupations, aspirations and the rights and status of women in their countries. They challenge the expected and enforced rules that dictate their lives and strive to rise above violence and oppression. These self-portraits of hope, heroism, and pride challenge conventional Western stereotypes about women in the Islamic world. |
| As Seen Through These Eyes: (74 Minutes.) | A Hilary Helstein film Narrated by Maya Angelou. Menemsha Films and Parkchester Pictures. www.menemshafilms.com | Holocaust | As Maya Angelou narrates this powerful documentary, she reveals the story of a brave group of people who fought Hitler with the only weapons they had: charcoal, pencil stubs, shreds of paper and memories etched in their minds. These artists took their fate into their own hands to make a compelling statement about the human spirit, enduring against unimaginable odds. |
| New Year Baby (74 minutes) | A documentary by Socheata Poeuv. Center for Asian American Media. ITVS. Independentlens. Broken English Productions. www.newyearbaby.net | Asian Americans | A young woman born in Cambodia and raised in the U.S. returns to Cambodia to discover secrets of how her family came together during the Khmer Rouge period. |
| Let’s Get Real (35 Minutes) | A Respect for All project. Groundspark Productions. New Day Films. www.groundspark.org | Bullying | Unlike the vast majority of films made for schools about the issue, Let’s Get Real doesn’t sugarcoat the truth or feature adults lecturing kids about what to do when “bad” kids pick on them.Let’s Get Real examines a variety of issues that lead to taunting and bullying, including racial differences, perceived sexual orientation, learning disabilities, religious differences, sexual harassment and others. The film not only gives a voice to targeted kids, but also to kids who do the bullying to find out why they lash out at their peers and how it makes them feel. The most heartening part of Let’s Get Real includes stories of kids who have mustered the courage to stand up for themselves or a classmate. |
| Blacking Up: Hip Hop’s Remix of Race and Identity (57 minutes). | A co-production of Limbic Productions, Inc. and WTIU, produced in association with ITVS with funds provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting . California Newsreel. www.newsreel.org | Racial identity | The ambitious and hard-hitting documentary Blacking Up: Hip-Hop’s Remix of Race and Identity looks at the popularity of hip-hop among America’s white youth. It asks whether white identification is rooted in admiration and a desire to transcend race or if it is merely a new chapter in the long continuum of stereotyping, mimicry and cultural appropriation? Does it reflect a new face of racial understanding in white America or does it reinforce an ugly history? |
| In My Shoes: Stories of Youth with LGBT Parents (31 minutes) | Directed by Jen Gilomen. Produced by COLAGE (Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere) Youth Leadership and Action Program. Frameline Films. www.frameline.org | Sexual orientation | In a time when LGBT families are debated and attacked in the media, courts and Congress, from school houses to state houses across the country, five young people who are children of LGBT parents give you a chance to walk in their shoes–to hear their own views on marriage, making change, and what it means to be a family. |
| Papers: Stories of Undocumented Youth(60 minutes) | Graham Street Productions. Directed by Anne Galisky. www.papersthemovie.com | Immigration reform | There are approximately 2 million undocumented children who were born outside the U.S. and raised in this country. These are young people who were educated in American schools, hold American values, know only the U.S. as home and who, upon high school graduation, find the door to their future slammed shut. 65,000 undocumented students graduate every year from high school without “papers.” It is against the law to work or drive. It is difficult, if not impossible in some states, to attend college. They live at risk of arrest, detention and deportation to countries they may not even remember. Currently, there is no path to citizenship for these young people. Many of these young people are advocating for passage of the DREAM Act, a bill that will provide a path to citizenship for undocumented youth if they attend college. |