Today, October 1, 2007, marks exactly ten years since I moved to New York from Chicago to start the organization that has become Arts Engine. My college pal, the filmmaker Julia Pimsleur, had proposed the somewhat wild idea that we leave our jobs and friends in Chicago, Illinois (me) and Paris, France (Julia), and move back to our hometown of New York City to build a film company dedicated to social issue documentaries.

Thus it was in the fall of 1997 that we worked as line producers on a German television documentary called “World Jazz” and stayed late at the office to write grant proposals and treatments for our first feature documentary, “Innocent Until Proven Guilty,” directed by the recent New York arrival Kirsten Johnson. Our first office was ever so humble—picture Julia and me perched together at a desk that was essentially obstructing the foyer of another production company’s offices (Rose Rosenblatt and Marion Lipschutz’s Cine Qua Non.) We shared one phone line and spent much of each day coordinating the timing for when we would swap the phone jack into our Mac Classics to check our email through our dial-up connection, while hoping that no one was trying to reach us by phone.

This story makes me think: Ah, youth. How different things were in Julia’s and my Web 0.5 world. I knew then that we would be have to master a wealth of knowledge about cameras, broadcasters, editing systems, film festivals and distributors. What I didn’t anticipate was how much we would need to learn about digital distribution, social networking, video downloads and high-resolution compression for video streaming. And while Julia and I hoped and intended our films to make a difference, we had yet to discover how effective the internet could be at galvanizing media makers and users to support social change.

In 1999 we began research on what became MediaRights.org and in 2001 we launched our first Media That Matters Film Festival, at a time when streaming films online was still largely a novelty. Since then, web video has gone from neat-o to necessary, but the work of promoting, protecting and creating media for social change continues to grow in importance as more people have access to these tools. Just last week, the front page of the New York Times reported on Verizon’s attempt to block text messages sent by Naral Pro-Choice America. This censorship caused such an outcry that Verizon backtracked to allow the messages to be sent, but the policy that allows companies such as Verizon and AT&T to discriminate as they choose still stands.

At the same time, the exciting potential offered by free access to digital distribution channels exceeded anyone’s expectations and blew our minds with the Media That Matters Film Festival’s A Girl Like Me. So on the one hand, corporate communications companies may have new tools to control what messages get through to the public, while on the other hand, a 16-year-old can reach millions with her story of internalized racism among young children in Harlem.

Neither of these newsworthy events could have happened ten years ago, but to me both these examples argue for the need for vigilance and imagination in using the tools of media making and media sharing to bring the ideals of free expression to their fullest expression. No doubt we will still need people to keep it real to 2017, fight the good fight and make sure that the truth gets out there. The exciting part is that we’re going to be making creative use of new technologies to do it.

IDA has listed their top 25 documentaries.

Personally, I 100% agree with Hoop Dreams as the number one documentary of all time. The number two choice, The Thin Blue Line, was the film that made me want to make documentaries. I was in high school and an active member of Amnesty International. We were part of a letter writing campaign that along with the film helped to successfully release Randall Adams.

The rest of the list has some great choices (Capturing the Friedmans and Sherman’s March); some I am not sure I agree with (Fahrenheit 9/11) and some I haven’t seen (Night and Fog and Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance).

What do you guys think? Who do you think is missing?

I have been following news about Debbie Almontaser since this summer. Her story affects me on so many levels that I now realize what has happened to her could have easily happened to me or any other Arab and Muslim person living America post 9/11.

Let me explain. I am an Afghan-American person living in Brooklyn since 2000. Post 9/11 I worked to educate and raise awareness about my part of the world. The drive to educate and humanize was an instinctive reaction to images on corporate news programs that justified war; segments on CNN portraying Arabs and Muslims as radical extremists next to footage of carpet bombing the already war-damaged people of Afghanistan. I realized the critical need for education at that time and I realized that I was living and working in the country that had the power to start and end wars.

When I learned of Khalil Ghibran International Academy (KGIA) I thought finally education about Arab and Muslim world formalized and integrated into the public school system. KGIA is envisioned to be the first Arabic language public school to join a handful of other dual-language public schools in New York. It’s mission is to teach Arabic language and culture to students of all ethnic backgrounds along with the required Department of Education standards.

KGIA is the vision of Debbie Almontaser. She lead the plans for this school with a design board of other educators, perspective parents, community members, and the Arab America Family Support Center.

A month before the opening of the school, Debbie was slandered in the New York Post, New York Sun and right-wing blogs on the internet. She was interviewed by the New York Post and asked about t-shirts that read “Intifada NYC”, t-shirts that she did not produce and that had nothing to do with the school. She responded that “Intifada” literally translates to “a shaking off of oppression” and that she supported the group (AWAAM) that made them, stating that they did not mean to invoke violence with these t-shirts.

newspaper clipping from New York Post, 8/11/2007 issue

The day after this interview, she made the cover of the NY Post with headlines such as “A Madrassa Grows in Brooklyn” and “An Arabic School Plan is a Monstrosity”. A campaign, self-named as Stop the Madrassa, organized a smear campaign to shut down the school. Debbie was portrayed as a foreigner, as an irrational woman, and as a terrorist supporter. The opponents of the school had succeeded in impacting KGIA.

Soon after this smear campaign, Debbie lost key public supporters; Mayor Bloomberg, Chancellor Joel Klein, and United Federation of Teachers president, Randi Weingarten. She was asked to resign from her post as the principal of KGIA.

This was very sad news for me and other Arab and Muslim people in Brooklyn and beyond. How could such an accomplished woman as Debbie be discredited so easily? How could a tenuous link to a t-shirt set back such an important school? Why is there so much resistance to an Arabic-language public school? To me it became clear that the fear mongering and racist stereotypes that were produced by the media post 9/11 are as potent today as they were 6 years ago, that there is a lot of work to be done to break down these stereotypes, and that the act of challenging these stereotypes with education proves to be a struggle.

Today Debbie is back. After months of retreating from the media, after feeling personally and professionally targeted, Debbie is back and addressing what happened to her. Her lawyers are preparing a lawsuit against the Board of Education for violating her constitutional rights and she is re-applying to be the principal of the school that she envisioned would “create bridges of understanding across cultural differences.” (from the proposal for KGIA)

For more information and to support Khalil Gibran International Academy :::
——
Communities in Support of KGIA
AWAAM
Khalil Gibran International Academy in Women’s International Perspective
Principal at New NYC Arabic-Language School Forced to Resign segment on Democracy Now!
Critics Ignored Record of a Muslim Principal in The New York Times
NY Arabic School Caught in Controversy in Voice of America
The Crime Against Debbie Almontaser in In These Times
Khalil Gibran in wikipedia.org

Three years ago, my friends David and Jamie mentioned over dinner that they were starting a film festival. I remember it well. We were all griping about post film school life when they just came out with it.

Honestly, I thought they were crazy. We were busy trying to get our films out in the world. Why in the world would you want to get in the business of creating a film festival?

Sure they had a great argument. They had seen it for themselves. After creating shorts that won festival awards all over the world, other than our Columbia Grad Showcase, their films had a hard time getting seen in New York.

So instead of griping about it, they did something about it.

What I admire most about this endeavor is that they truly created this festival as a vehicle for artists all over the world to show their work. It is not simply a means for promoting their own work. So far they have not even shown their own films (and you guys are missing out!)

I’ve been a juror for NYC Shorts for all three years of the festival’s existence. I started out doing docs and have changed genres every year (comedies, foreign films). What I am always amazed by are the growing number of entries and the quality of the work.

The selection process is that each juror, 18 in total, watches 25 films. We pick our top three and a smaller jury of three makes the final picks. Some of my friends are jurors and every year at opening night we compare notes to see whose films have made it in — as if who we are as jurors has anything to do with the films that come our way. One friend and fellow juror has never had a film that she has watched get in. Most years I get one or two.

This year I am coming to the festival like any of you. I have not seen any of the films in this year’s program because none of mine made it in — thankfully, one of my friend’s films did — and I could not be more excited. All I can think is that if my shorts did not get in, they must have a really, really, exciting batch featured in this year’s festival. (Ok, I’ve seen: The Danish Poet, winner of the best animated short at the Academy Awards last year and one of the most moving shorts I’ve ever seen. It’s playing in the children’s lineup and I really recommend it.)

So you should join me at this great festival beginning Wednesday (Oct. 24th) and going until Saturday afternoon. The NYC Shorts crew run a classy night and they are getting more press and bigger each year.

Oh, and one last plug: if you have kids, their children’s afternoon is always well regarded.