October 20, 2010 stacys
As news of five suicides committed by youth who were targeted with homophobic harassment has spread across the country, the production company I work with, GroundSpark , and our distribution partner, New Day Films, have redoubled our commitment to helping communities do a much better job of addressing anti-LGBT bias, particularly in school.
Please share this “Spark” on your Facebook page, website, or by emailing it to friends.
We are making some of our tools available for free for the next two months in an effort to get them out far and wide during this time of intense public awareness.
But we need your help. And I don’t just mean by sending a donation.
We need your help in shaping the public conversation and getting these powerful tools into the right hands.
There is a lot of talk right now about more stringent laws and punishment for bullying. We definitely need strong, federal and state anti-bullying legislation. The full solution, though, involves much more than tough laws and rules.
We need to go deeper and address the underlying ignorance and stereotypes that contribute so painfully to the bullying epidemic. We need to build a culture of empathy and compassion. We need to get everyone on board—every student, every parent, and every adult who works with youth.
In recent days, many excellent new initiatives have popped up to support LGBT-identified students and their allies. GroundSpark is building on the good work of our sister organizations by sharing what we do best: sparking the transformation of whole schools from places of conflict and alienation to communities of respect and support.
We know from experience that people get inspired and motivated when they can see moving examples of honest, caring discussion about tough issues like bias-based harassment.
That’s what GroundSpark—through our films, curriculum guides and trainings—can provide. So for the first time our curriculum guides are available for free online and parents and students can stream our films for free into their homes.
Talking about how all students are negatively affected by anti-gay bias, no matter how they identify, is not easy. Nor is talking about stigmas regarding gender norms, race and class. But we have been doing this work, thoughtfully, and with great success for close to fifteen years.
To do our job well, though, particularly at this moment, we need you to help us spread the word.
You can help us reach out to the parents —of the youth who do the bullying, the youth who are scared to death to speak up on a classmate’s behalf for fear of being targeted themselves, the ones who don’t know what to do when their own kids are harassed.
You can help us reach the science teachers, baseball coaches, janitors, and school bus drivers so they understand that it is an important part of their job descriptions to model how to respond to anti-gay slurs.
You can help us give administrators and guidance counselors support and tools to launch in-depth dialogues and school-wide commitments that address bias and prejudice in serious, constructive ways, and not just through discipline.
Please take a moment to share GroundSpark’s Respect for All Project with everyone you know who cares about youth. We’ve brought together our best tools on addressing bias, particularly homophobia.
Just click here and you’ll see how easy it is to get started.
We’re committed to change. Join us. ‘
Debra Chasnoff
(director of these films)
P.S. Stream our Respect for All Project films, download our in-depth curriculum guides, get a film at a discount rate, make a donation, and share the spark. But please get involved. Start talking. Take action.
4 COMMENT
October 6, 2010 stacys
Going against the trend of difficult times for independent film and continuing red ink for digital distribution, one group of indie documentary filmmakers is enjoying significant success in streaming their films to universities and other academic institutions.
New Day Digital, the digital distribution site launched by the venerable, filmmaker-run New Day Films, has seen its streaming revenue climb steadily, fueled in part by multi-title deals with major institutions.
NDD recently closed a deal with University of Southern Florida to stream 15 of their documentary and social action films for 5 years. “There are increasing expectations on the part of faculty, students and researches for online video, said Rue McKenzie, Coordinator of Media Collections, Academic Resources, University of South Florida, Tampa Library. “With most resources available online they ask why isn’t there video as well? It makes them more widely available and streamlined to coordinate multiple uses and users.” Other educational institutions such as University of Connecticut and Lesley University have followed suit with multi-film streaming deals.
NDD, launched in 2008, streams documentary and social issue films from New Day Films, the filmmaker-owned distribution cooperative started in 1971. There are currently 123 films available for streaming and the group plans to expand its catalog. Licensing for viewing individually and as an institution are available and because the filmmakers own their own rights, they can offer customized options. The newest product is based on requests from professors – NDD InClass allows them to stream a film for a single class for $60. This product will launch in the Fall.
NDD helps schools answer the growing demand by students and faculty for readily_available, high_quality, online media. Schools that use NDD can stream video 24/7 without the additional costs of adding infrastructure and personnel, making films available to a wider audience, including the online classroom.
New Day Films is a cooperative of more than 100 member filmmakers, whose films have won Academy Awards, Emmys, and premiered at major film festivals. And although New Day has evolved enormously since the days of distribution on 16mm film prints, the group’s core values remain the same: Illuminate. Challenge. Inspire.
1 COMMENT
July 27, 2010 stacys
For a film on the politics of teaching evolution, who better to create our high-school study guide than two of the nation’s most accomplished Biology teachers? We first met Ken Bingman during the filming of Kansas vs. Darwin (he was one of the authors of the contested Kansas science standards) and he agreed to make a cameo appearance along with one of his classes at Blue Valley West in Olathe, Kansas. Over 18 months later, Ken saw the finished film and liked it so much, he began to use it in class as an example of science in society. We’ve stayed in touch over the last couple of years because he’s a very insightful person with a great perspective on the problems in teaching evolution, having taught Biology for 47 years.
But it wasn’t until this Spring when I asked him to write our study guide for high school science and social studies teachers that I learned the full extent of his stature and experience: Ken is a National Science Teacher of the Year, an inductee in the National Teachers’ Hall of Fame, Presidential Award Winner for Excellence in Science Teaching, a co-author of the National Science Standards, and Fulbright Memorial Fund Teacher to Japan. And, he’s still teaching! (If I were in the Hall of Fame for anything, I would retire and live off my fees from autograph shows.)
Not satisfied to supply his own huge store of knowledge, Ken brought in his brother, who also taught Biology for over 30 years at high school, college and graduate school levels. He was the director and co-developer of the Inquiry Role Approach, a curriculum program for Biology Teachers and Students, published by Silver Burdette in 1974.
Jeff Tamblyn, Unconditional Films
Director, Kansas vs. Darwin
1 COMMENT
June 23, 2010 stacys
To say that I have been resistant to self distributing my film, would be the understatement of the year. I am a filmmaker, I make films that hopefully move or somehow inspire something, anything. I am not, however, a distributor, that is not where my talents or desires lie.
It was last summer in the midst of trying to finish my latest film, Change is Gonna Come, three years in, out of money and vowing never to write another grant application, I read Think and Grow Rich. The book suggests finding a product to sell so I can raise money, in my case to finish my film. As I pondered this, I looked around my office and sitting on my bookshelf is my product– my first film The Smith Family, ready and waiting to be sold and distributed.
I finally got it, we create films so they can be seen and utilized. And what better way than to have them seen and used in the educational market with professors asking the hard questions, and students retorting right back with even more provocative questions. Getting people talking, was the very reason we made the film in the first place.
I am doing not only Change is Gonna Come, a disservice but also all those who haven’t yet experienced The Smith Family, all the professors who can use the film in their classroom to stimulate discussion about homosexuality, religion, AIDS, HIV, family, marriage, fidelity, faith, forgiveness, unconditional love.
The responses of how this film is used in the classroom never ceases to blow my mind, from dentists to nurses, to social workers. Used in ways I couldn’t have dreamed up, affecting lives and changing perspective in ways that force me to continue telling stories.
So, if I have to devout a portion of my brain power to stretching in ways I once believed I was incapable of, to reach my goal to make a difference and affect lives, then I will write that newsletter, learn to blog and build those lists.
Because I am a filmmaker, intensely passionate about what I do, I’m learning to be an entrepreneur so others can actually experience my work and make their own choices.
Tasha is based in Venice, California where, when not lamenting or filming, she plots and plans volunteer vacations in Africa, Cuba, Thailand and other remote corners of the world.
Tasha Oldham
0 COMMENTS
June 15, 2010 stacys
Dear Ms Oldham,
Every semester for the past 5-6 years I have shown The Smith Family. Each semester the students make the same statements “life changing”, “powerful”, ” I will never view HIV/AIDS in the same way”, the list goes on. I am using your film to help educate my students who will then go out and work with hundreds of people throughout their careers. I want you to know how powerful this has been and we may never know how many hundreds of people’s lives have been changed because of it. It has opened the eyes of many of my students.
Thank you and the Smith family for this brilliant film.
Martin McDonell
Social Work Professor
BYU-Hawaii
0 COMMENTS
May 21, 2010 stacys
The contentious debate on ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ has lately seen surprising maneuvers from all sides in Washington, and ASK NOT has been right in the thick of it.
Two weeks ago, our groundbreaking and deeply personal PBS film illuminating the remarkable history, implementation and real stories behind the policy was screened on Capitol Hill to a bi-partisan group of Congressional members including Sen. Al Franken D-MN and Rep. Patrick Murphy D-PA. Three subjects from the film — Jacob Reitan (Founder of the “Right to Serve Campaignâ€), Alex Nicholson (Executive Director, Servicemembers United), and Jarrod Chlapowski (Military Consultant, Human Rights Campaign) — as well as filmmaker Johnny Symons, were present for the event.
Meanwhile, despite his previous statements to the contrary, a letter from Defense Secretary Robert Gates was leaked stating that Congressional action changing the policy at this time ”would send a very damaging message to our men and women in uniform...” The letter triggered a flurry of conflicting responses from advocacy groups, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and ultimately, the White House. Now, it looks as though an issue that had the potential to be resolved this year may remain part of our military policy until 2013 or longer.
0 COMMENTS
April 9, 2010 stacys
Debra Chasnoff was in western Massachusetts recently screening her New Day titles, Straightlaced—How Gender’s Got Us All Tied Up and Let’s Get Real. One of the screenings was in South Hadley, where 15-year old Phoebe Prince had recently committed suicide. Today Debra writes about the case in The Huffington Post.
0 COMMENTS
April 2, 2010 stacys
Daddy and Papa , Johnny Symons’ award-winning and Emmy-nominated film exploring the personal, cultural, and political impact of gay men raising children, is featured throughout Ellen Lewin’s new anthropological textbook, Gay Fatherhood: Narratives of Family and Citizenship in America. Lewin, who received several grants for her research including one from the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for University Teachers, says, “Daddy and Papa inspired my efforts to give voice to gay dads through ethnography.”
1 COMMENT
December 22, 2009 stacys
“I think the key to learning is going visual.†Barry Hoonan, 6th grade teacher
Teachings of the Tree People and The Red Pines now have full curriculum guides. Funded by a grant from the National Geographic Education Foundation, the Experiencing Film guide series is designed for middle grade learners and adaptable for all learning levels.
Film is often seen as a passive learning medium. The Experiencing Film lessons developed at IslandWood take film to a new level of dynamic instructional strategies.
To see video of teachers using these films in the classroom, and download the curriculum, visit the IslandWood Website at http://islandwood.org/media
Teachers talk about the Experiencing Film curriculum:
“I definitely felt like I hooked some students I don’t always hook, because I felt like there was something for everyone in today’s lesson.â€Â Wyoshe Walker, middle school teacher.
“I really feel like the kids left this afternoon with a great feeling of success – a bounce in their step – because they did something new, they learned something new, and they were all good at it in their own special way.â€Â Lynn Barnicle.
0 COMMENTS
December 2, 2009 stacys
Body & Soul: Diana & Kathy won the Audience Award and Second Prize in the Jury Awards at The Way We Live Festival in Munich, Germany. The film also had two screenings in Salt Lake City before Thanksgiving. One at The Fine Arts Museum and one at South Valley School. Diana Braun, who is featured in the film and Filmmaker Alice Elliott spoke at both screenings. Body & Soul: Diana & Kathy finished a successful run on PBS. The broadcast was used to highlight National Disabilities Awareness Month.
Diana Braun at a screening, presenting her take on independent living skills.
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