What would it be like if you put your children in a school where the teacher spoke a foreign language? Speaking in Tongues follows the experience of 4 kids in language immersion grade schools.

Come watch this award winning film and support Californians Together, a statewide coalition of parents, teachers, education advocates and civil rights groups committed to securing equal access to quality education for all children. $4 from each ticket sold will be donated to their “Seal of Biliteracy” campaign.

September 12th 3:00pm – 5:00pm
@ Aero Theatre (1328 Montana Avenue)
Santa Monica, CA
Directions: http://bit.ly/buxwiC

Please share this exciting event with your networks. Special invited guests include: the filmmakers, community leaders, policymakers and more advocates from organizations at the forefront of multilingual education.

Limited tickets available, so purchase yours now: http://bit.ly/amfISs

Spread the word on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=136889176352301&ref=mf

Missed last week’s invigorating Story Leads to Action at the 92YTribeca that we co-hosted with Chicken & Egg Pictures? Fear not, filmmakers Elizabeth Mandel and Beth Davenport have agreed to share their lessons learned from the evening for your benefit:

photo by Chicken & Egg Pictures

Three years after filming the reunion of a Congolese girl and her mother, separated by war in Congo, Rose & Nangabire (working title) is almost complete. The work-in-progress screening last Thursday was an exciting opportunity to share our work outside the edit room. With a focus on audience engagement, it was also invigorating to finally explore in a public forum how the film can be used to create change.

While many social-justice issues are covered in the film, our audience engagement strategy focuses on refugee rights and resettlement; peace-building and reconciliation; and women in post-conflict situations. The evening was moderated by Robert West of Working Films, with panelists Matthew Edmundson, Operations Officer, Mapendo International and Desiree Younge, Senior Manager, Global Philanthropists Circle, Synergos. Audience members included representatives from the International Rescue Committee, STEPS to End Family Violence, Witness, Human Rights Watch and The Safe Harbor Project, as well as filmmakers and film fans.

Ideas and thoughts generated by the post-screening discussion included the following uses for the film or modules created from the footage:
•    Reaching policymakers and practitioners who are often, due to politicization, desensitized to the issues Rose and her family confront and challenge.

•    Targeting schools, because the presence of a teenage refugee going to high school in the film will make the issues accessible to a youth audience.

•    Partnering with the Department of Education to train teachers who work with refugees and other ESL populations.

•    Bringing together diaspora communities, for example by creating a women’s-only discussion group, and/or a group for teens, where survivors of war can have a safe space to share their experiences.

•    Working with women- and girls- leadership programs to provide a portrait of a strong, resourceful role model.

It was also pointed out that while embarking on our project we need to assess who is already doing this work and can program the film into their existing frameworks, and who can use the film to take their work to new places. This thought brings us to our next phase, solidifying relationships with organizations that address our three issue areas, and finessing the ways in which Rose & Nangabire can be used to help them in their work. As we finish up the film and begin to screen at film festivals, we’re also looking forward to using this momentum to inspire thinking and follow up action on the part of general audiences as well.

Stay tuned for announcements about our festival premiere and the launch of our audience engagement plan. In the meantime, if you are in any way involved with our issue areas — refugee rights and resettlement; peace-building and reconciliation; and women in post-conflict situations — please be in touch, we’d love to hear from you. We can be reached at elizabeth at artsengine.net or beth at artsengine.net.

I was invited to be on the jury for the Matter Documentary Award at the Branchage Jersey International Film Festival this past weekend. (That’s the Jersey that is a British Crown Dependency off the coast of Normandy, France – not New Jersey in the U.S.) The Matter Award goes to the “best socially conscious” documentary film in the fest. It includes £2000 to the filmmaker, plus £1,000 to a charity of the winner’s choice.

The nominees were quite extraordinary, including Burma VJ, The End of the Line, Only When I Dance, Rough Aunties, and The Yes Men Fix the World. The jury felt one film – Burma VJ – reflected a unique moment in time for film and activism, and named it the winner. The “citizen” and professional Burmese journalists in the film risked their lives to fight back against an oppressive and repressive regime, sending their stories of street-to-street resistance to audiences outside their borders with the use of new technologies – including handycams and in some cases cell phone connectivity.

The filmmaking team has built a campaign around this film, including primary partners Amnesty International UK and the Burma Campaign, supported by the Cooperative. Together they have built an audience engagement strategy that will take this film to thousands of audiences members, giving them relevant and urgent direct actions of response when the lights come up and the film’s credits roll. Built into the campaign are new connections to viewers through social media tools and networks, including Twitter and Facebook.

And as important as the subjects of this film, the individual struggles and reports that brought new attention to a criminal regime in Burma, is the model they offer us. With video cameras embedded in most cell phones, stories from the frontline will now have a reach and immediacy never before possible.  It is increasingly clear that activists now have a tool for spotlighting and pushing back against oppression while building global coalitions for resistance – no matter how isolated the place from which they are reporting. The immediacy of their message will now be measured in seconds. I am confident that future struggles for human rights are strengthened by our interconnected paths and new routes of truly mass communication; we saw it first in Burma VJ.