Sundance DocSource » Poverty & Economics

Caesar’s Last Fast

rperez — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 18:36:22 +0000

Director: Richard Ray Perez

Caesar’s Last Fast explores the private sacrifice and spiritual conviction behind Cesar Estrada Chavez’s fight for justice and dignity for America’s farm workers, which is linked to a new generation of organizers leading the charge for farm worker’s rights today.

Cesar’s Last Fast uncovers the private sacrifice and deep spiritual conviction behind Cesar E. Chavez’s 40-year struggle for America’s farmworkers. The film is built around never-before-seen footage of Cesar’s “Fast for Life,” an act of penance for not having done enough to stop growers from spraying pesticides on farmworkers. The story of this water-only fast is the film’s dramatic arc into which the filmmakers interweave the historic events that defined Cesar’s life mission, known among the members of the movement he led as, La Causa, “The Cause.” Then, by bridging Cesar’s 20th century struggle to the present-day reality the film appraises Cesar’s legacy by immersing us in the struggle of today’s farmworkers. Many of the same conditions that inspired Cesar to organize farmworkers still exist today. These conditions are compounded by the nation’s current economic uncertainty, our political leaders’ lack of will to champion social justice policy, and the insurmountable influence corporate America has on driving our nation’s political agenda.

http://www.cesarslastfast.com
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/pages/Cesars-Last-Fast/64758711459?ref=ts

Cesar E. Chavez Foundation
http://www.chavezfoundation.org

National Farm Workers Service Center
http://www.nfwsc.org

California Rural Leal Assistance
http://www.crla.org/

YouthBuild Project Update

Annie Sundberg & Ricki Stern — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 12:33:00 +0000

DOL announces funding recipients, bringing total of YouthBuild supported programs to 228.

The project has recently begun filming, with initial interviews with founder Dorothy Stoneman, and key participants from the early years of YouthBuild, and the primary year-in-the-life focus has shifted from North Philadelphia to Newark, NJ, where there are exciting developments as YouthBuild Newark Executive Director Robert Clarke was recently awarded $5 million in government funding to replicate YouthBuild programs across the state of New Jersey.

We filmed at the YouthBuild 30th anniversary in Washington DC in March, where Dorothy Stoneman celebrated the ongoing work and the news from the Department of Labor that there would be a significant increase in funding to expand YouthBuild in 2009. For background to the film, we have been filming with Dorothy Stoneman at the YouthBuild USA headquarters in Boston, and filmed interviews that explore the stories of her civil rights work with Leroy Looper, her former Harlem colleague and mentor, and his ongoing work in San Francisco.

In June, we filmed the announcement of the new funding, with Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis and Dorothy Stoneman announcing the upcoming allocation of funding for YouthBuild programs around the country. The funding news meant good news for many more programs this year – almost two times more than were funded in 2008 – but the numbers applying were also higher, as more learn about the program, the need for YouthBuild continues to grow. Several YouthBuild programs learn the hard news that they are not awarded DOL funding, and their operations are imperiled, as operating costs are hard to raise in the face of a full blown recession. Dorothy rolls through calls to reassure program directors around the country that she will help to secure funding in other ways for them. It’s a good and bad week all at once.

We recently filmed the Newark graduation, where 2009 YouthBuild participants mourned the loss of their classmate Edwin, as they celebrated their next steps into a new world of independent living; we will track a handful of the 2009 graduates to see how their lives unfold in parallel with the younger participants in the year ahead, as some may become mentors to the younger participants in an organic way through YouthBuild Newark.

Full production will begin at the start of the upcoming YouthBuild academic year, with the selection of potential YouthBuild candidates and their immersion into mental toughness training starting in mid and late August, and we will be filming the Newark and parts of the North Philadelphia mental toughness training programs. Both groups have had significant increases in the numbers of youth applying; with no advertising or active recruitment, Newark recently received over 2000 applications for approximately 200 spots.

The film may open with a poignant scenes that illustrate the stakes these young people face. In May 2009, a young man is gunned down and killed in Boston in a suspected gang retalitaion; at the sentencing, the judge reads the young man’s unmailed application letter to YouthBuild, filled with hope to change the path of his life. In July, a YouthBuild Newark 2009 graduate is shot and killed one week before he is to graduate. The news was extremely hard for the YouthBuild Newark family, as Edwin Munoz is the fourth Newark participant in the past two years who was killed before reaching the end of the program.

Over the year, the film will journey at key moments to other YouthBuild programs in North Philadelphia, Brownsville TX, Minneapolis and San Francisco, to explore how youth are transforming diverse communities while battling similar economic and personal challenges.

All That Glitters

Tomas Kudrna — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:34:55 +0000

Director: Tomas Kudrna

All That Glitters is about how strange capitalism and democracy can be if it is introduced into a country with a soviet tradition i.e. in a country in which people have never had to make their own decisions. This film gives an opportunity to think outside our civilization and the export of democracy to the rest of the world. Kyrgyzstan and the small village of Barskon provide a picture of the whole world and its fundamental powers. Kyrgyzstan is a crossroads of interests. On a political level it is the rivalry between Russian and America influence, on a religious level it is the rivalry between Christianity and Islam and on an economic level it is the predominance of China and Russia.

Filmed in the settlement of Barskon, Kyrgyzstan, one of the former states of the Soviet Union. During the time of the Soviet Empire, the people of Barskon did not fare very well. They lived under a totalitarian regime in which the value of a human life seemed negligible. Despite the oppression of Soviet rule they had at least everything they needed. The socialist system provided each and every inhabitant with work, a wage, free education and good health care. Regardless of whether a person worked or idled away their time, the conquests of socialism were always at hand.

The Soviet system introduced people to collective farming, provided tractors and harvesting machinery, built fences in front of people’s houses, repaired roads, and built schools. Then everything changed. The USSR broke up and democracy and capitalism came in. In Barskon no one really knew what to do and how to conduct themselves in a capitalist, democratic system. Habits remained the same and people waited to receive and take orders from above. Is it possible to establish democracy in a country that has lived under Soviet rule for so long?

After a period of chaos the situation began to improve. Even the inhabitants of Barskon began to feel it, especially when a large investor from Canada began to mine for gold in the mountains above Barskon. People from Barskon saw a powerful neighbor in Kumtor and began to expect it to provide everything which the USSR used to provide. In order to avoid protests from the inhabitants of Barskon, Kumtor begin to support the villagers and thus drew nearer to the role of the USSR. They became big brother.

Our School

Mona Nicoara — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:27:39 +0000

Director and Producer: Mona Nicoara
Co-Director: Miruna Coca- Cozma

Our School tells the story of Roma children struggling to break the barriers of segregation in a small Transylvanian town.

Roma, also known as “Gypsies,” are Europe’s largest and most persecuted minority. The descendants of former slaves, Romanian Roma continue to live in poverty, at the edges of society. They suffer discrimination in all areas of their life, and their children are often placed in segregated schools which offer no future. Our School documents one of the first integration efforts following a European Court of Human Rights judgment similar to Brown v. Board of Education in the United States.

Our School reveals the detailed and messy workings of race relations in a small Transylvanian town, following the lives of participants from up close in a warm, intimate visual style. The film builds the world in which the participants live by slowly drawing viewers into the minutiae and rhythms of the small Transylvanian town. The arc of the story is constructed around the hopes, wins, and losses of the children themselves. At the same time, the world of the adults who are making crucial decisions for these children (parents, teachers, friends and neighbors), as well as the town as a whole (as represented by the racist mayor or the sympathetic bookstore owner) are also explored to allow viewers to understand the intricate web of motivations which affect the main story line.

Our School shows the way in which human rights principles and well-intentioned policies play on the ground, in the daily lives of those directly affected by them. It takes a close look at the role that local context, history, and culture play in complicating and distorting the dynamics and outcomes of even the most basic and benign efforts for change. At the same time, by telling a compelling human story, the film hopes to extend awareness of segregation beyond a small circle of activists, mobilizing new energies at a moment that is ripe for change and providing a platform for the wider desegregation movement by means of a far-ranging web-based strategy linking audiences to activists and donors.

Principal photography in Romania was completed in 2008, and the project is currently in post-production in New York. Release 2010.

Easy Like Water

Glenn Baker — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 21:01:47 +0000

Director: Glenn Baker
Producer: Stephen Sapienza
Social Entrepreneur: Abul Hasanat Mohammed Rezwan

Easy Like Water is a feature documentary about floating schools, solar power, and the fate of the earth.

In Bangladesh, solar-powered floating schools are turning the front lines of climate change into a community of learning. As the water steals the land, one man’s vision is re-casting the rising rivers as channels of communication, and transforming people’s lives.

Mohammed Rezwan, an architect by training, has conjured up the equivalent of environmental Jujitsu, harnessing the power of water to educate and unify the community. With a fleet of 88 boats and internet-connected computers powered by the sun, his project is bringing education to rural Bangladeshis, including many girls who have never had access to school before.

The film will dramatically demonstrate how, as rising waters threaten to create millions of refugees worldwide, climate change is becoming the gravest human rights challenge of our time. Yet Easy Like Water offers hope: it is an inspiring story of local people creating resilient strategies with appropriate technology. In the context of the stark realities, this message of tenacity and action will galvanize audiences.

Project Update

Easy Like Water is pleased to announce support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. The film has been invited to participate in the Good Pitch forum at IFP’s Independent Film Week in New York in September 2009. We are partnering with the U.N. Environmental Programme to present an excerpt from the film at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009.

Muhammad Yunus Banks on America (WT)

Gayle Ferraro — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 20:35:42 +0000

Director: Gayle Ferraro
Social Entrepreneur: Muhammad Yunus

The story has evolved into a story of people working together which is larger than the sum of its parts. Tapping into the success of Muhammad Yunus after winning the Nobel Peace Prize (2006), Grameen America has opened in Queens, NY replicating his banking model after the program he started in Bangladesh. Opening in a developed country soon has its challenges for Dr. Yunus, the new bank workers and the women who hope to change their lives with the money-generating collateral-free loans that offer them hope to live better lives. The film portrays the integrity of the poor and the fixed mind-sets of the rich in an economic environment that ultimately reveals a deeper view of what really works.

Project Status

We are working towards a fine cut and hope to lock picture the first week of October. Check out a recent series of posts by Gayle Ferraro from the 2009 Skoll World Forum at Filmmaker magazine.

Youthbuild Documentary (WT)

Annie Sundberg & Ricki Stern — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 23:56:36 +0000

The YouthBuild feature documentary (working title) closely follows a year in the life of three young people who are selected for YouthBuild, which combines innovative education with high stakes community rebuilding in one of the toughest cities in America: Newark, New Jersey.

The film is as much about powerful stories of rebuilding neglected neighborhoods and transforming education in America, as it is about the personal struggles to reclaim and reinvent these promising but fragile lives.

We follow the process to select the incoming class, to the official completion of the program in June 2010. Some may graduate, some will not… Along the way the film explores education, poverty, and the deeply emotional and revealing process – for the leaders and the students – that is a year in the life of YouthBuild.

About YouthBuild

YouthBuild is a youth and community development program that simultaneously addresses core issues facing low-income communities: housing, education, employment, crime prevention, and leadership development. In YouthBuild programs, low-income young people ages 16-24 work toward their GEDs or high school diplomas, learn job skills and serve their communities by building affordable housing for homeless and low-income people, and transform their own lives and roles in society. All YouthBuild students are poor and many have had experience with foster care, juvenile justice, welfare, and homelessness. Participants spend 6 to 24 months in the full-time program, dividing their time between the construction site and the YouthBuild alternative school. Community- and faith-based nonprofit organizations sponsor most programs, although some are sponsored by public agencies. Each YouthBuild program raises private and public funds to support itself. Primary support comes from the U.S. Department of Labor through a dedicated federal line item.

Project Update

DOL announces funding recipients, bringing total of YouthBuild supported programs to 228.

Poor Consuelo Conquers the World

Peter Friedman — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 23:53:41 +0000

Director: Peter Friedman
Producer: Paul Miller
Social Entrepreneur: Soap Operas for Social Change

Logline: Poor Consuelo Conquers the World tells the story of popular soap operas and telenovelas, now being used to combat the effects of poverty around the world.

It all started by accident in 1969, when a Peruvian telenovela character worked her way out of poverty using a sewing machine; and suddenly sewing machines flew off the shelves by the thousands all over Peru. That incident, combined with the social modeling theories of psychologist Albert Bandura demonstrating the power of fictional media characters to act as role models and affect behavior of viewers, inspired a brilliant Mexican director named Miguel Sabido to create popular telenovelas designed both to entertain and to address urgent social issues. His first series was a huge commercial hit and demonstrably contributed to a significant decline in birthrates in heavily overpopulated Mexico. He revised and refined his formula until it became a scientific methodology that soon spread around the world with success after success, and ultimately helped create an entire field, now known as Entertainment-Education. Sabido essentially created an affordable, exportable model for socially sustainable development, all while creating hit show after hit show. Like Sabido’s work, our documentary Poor Consuelo Conquers the World is both entertaining and solution-oriented in its approach to social change.

In the Spring of 2009 we filmed the creation of a radionovela produced by Radio Atipiri and Media Impact, in El Alto, Bolivia, one of the poorest cities in South America. Radio is cheap to produce and reaches people who can’t afford TV. The station we filmed even reaches people who can’t afford radio by simultaneously broadcasting from loudspeakers on the roof of their station! Excerpts from this footage helped Poor Consuelo win the award for Best Project Presentation for Cinema at the 2009 Sunny Side Documentary Market in La Rochelle, France. YLE-TV Finland then joined our team, with others soon to follow. Stay tuned! Development support provided by ITVS.

Sundance DocSource » Poverty & Economics

Caesar’s Last Fast

Other Articles

YouthBuild Project Update

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All That Glitters

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Our School

Suggested links for more information

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Easy Like Water

Project Update

Suggested links for more information

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Muhammad Yunus Banks on America (WT)

Project Status

Suggested links for additional information

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Youthbuild Documentary (WT)

About YouthBuild

Project Update

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Poor Consuelo Conquers the World

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