Media Impact
Creative Activists Without Borders
Among its many sensibilities, social impact storytelling cares for the free movement of people and human rights. In collaboration with the City of Malibu, the Creative Visions Foundation organized “Unsettled“, “an intimate Salon” with the aim to showcase distinguished work-in-progress films related to immigration, migration, and refugees. Don’t miss out these documentary projects coming up!
More About Creative Visions
Creative Visions was founded by Kathy Eldon in 1997 with the aim to create media that matters. The initiative started as a production company in the early 90s and later relaunched as a non-profit organization. Its mission has always been to spark awareness of critical issues and ignite change through impact, media, art, and technology. Their extensive catalog of projects includes causes such as Gender Equality, Youth Empowerment, Climate Change, Health & Well Being and Human Rights.
Furthermore, Creative Visions also recently organized the Spark Change Summit at UCLA’s Film and Television School. The breakthrough event counted with the participation of Impact Producers like Participant Media and Vulcan Productions. Check out Cinema of Change’s coverage of the event’s first edition!
Marking a shift in the advocacy strategy of the foundation, Kathy Eldon enthusiastically introduced the panel making public her aim to “spark Malibu”. More than ever before, her goal is now to focus on local, community challenges, such as homelessness and further improving city laws for undocumented citizens. In fact, in honor to many of its workers, the famous beach city already became a “Sanctuary City” last March of 2017.
The event is part of the programming for the “Safari with Dan Eldon” art exhibit at Malibu’s City Hall.
The Films Showcased
The panel takes place at a time where there are 65 million displaced people on the planet (1 out of 115) and we’re facing the worst refugee humanitarian crisis since the World War II. Moreover, the current Trump administration has not eased such concerns with xenophobic policies, attacks on DACA and racist remarks.
“Unsettled” presented different projects and filmmakers in a panel moderated by Megha Madakia, Creative Visions Director of Media Production and with the participation of Isabella Alexander, director of The Burning, Brad Allgood, director of Patrol, Maribel Serrano, director of My DACA Life, and Florencia Krochik, director of Pathways.
Check out below their synopsis, filmmakers involved and ways you can support:
THE BURNING
Directed and Produced by Isabella Alexander
Migrants on a border fence separating Morocco from Melilla (Spain).
Dr. Isabella Alexander isn’t interested in a story unless it’s hard to tell. “I’ve always been drawn to stories that have been hidden or silenced,” Dr. Alexander says. “At the root of them, there’s usually an injustice waiting to be uncovered.” An anthropologist, writer, and documentary filmmaker, she’s spent the past decade living in the US and Africa.
Over the past two years, Dr. Isabella Alexander has been following the perilous journeys of three families from their home countries in Mali, Sierra Leone, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo towards the promise of safer shores. “The Burning” invites audiences to step inside Africa’s migrant & refugee crisis for the first time, joining these courageous men, women, and children as they travel thousands of miles along Africa’s smuggling routes to the hidden forest camps and detention centers awaiting them just south of Europe’s border.
Dr. Alexander has written extensively on European’s unfolding migrant & refugee crisis and is a regular contributor to PRI, NPR, CNN, and BBC. When not on the ground filming, she’s a Professor in the Departments of Anthropology and Film & Media Studies at Emory University in Atlanta and is inspired by the power of film to educate broad audiences. “I always aim to communicate my research in diverse formats,” she says, “so I can reach not only scholars and students but policymakers and popular audiences.”
“Motivated by my belief that storytelling has the power to humanize complex global issues, I combine my work as an anthropologist, writer, and filmmaker to raise awareness, incite action, and create positive social and political change for marginalized populations.”
Isabella Alexander during “The Burning” film process
Isabella Alexander is also the Founder and Executive Director of SMALL WORLD FILMS, an Atlanta-based production studio focused on social impact storytelling.
The Burning has been possible only through community support. However, Dr. Alexander’s independent feature-length documentary film still needs to secure post-production and distribution funds. Your financial contributions can bring the crew one step closer to uncover’s Africa’s migrant and refugees crisis.
Project’s website: http://www.theburning.org
PATROL
Directed by Brad Allgood
Brad Allgood is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker specializing in emotionally charged adventure, social issue, music and Spanish-language films that inspire audience engagement. He has directed, photographed and edited many long and short-form documentaries including My Village, My Lobster, the CINE-winning documentary about indigenous lobster divers in Nicaragua; 120 Days: Undocumented in America, a CINE-winning feature-length documentary about an undocumented immigrant’s last days in the United States with his family; Songs from Bosawas, an adventure and music film that documents the first professional recording of Mayangna Indian musicians in the rainforests of Nicaragua; and Hunting ISIS, a 6-part series for History and Viceland about volunteer soldiers fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
PATROL is a documentary film that follows a group of indigenous Rama forest rangers and an American environmentalist as they lead dangerous patrols into the virgin forests of the Indio-Maíz Biological Reserve in Nicaragua–one of the largest intact tracts of rainforest north of the Amazon. Their goal is to protect the forest from illegal loggers, land traffickers, and cattle ranchers.
After a powerful hurricane decimates the forest and their communities, the Ramas must take a last stand to save the vulnerable forest as they wrestle with the forces that threaten their livelihood, cultural survival, and ultimately, the future of the planet.
You can learn more on his website: www.bradallgood.com
MY DACA LIFE
Directed and Produced by Maribel Serrano
It’s a special day for Maribel Serrano. Not only is she showing her documentary-in-progress teaser for the first time in public, but hours before the event started, U.S District Judge John Bates became the third federal judge to support the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. He opens the door to restarting the program by publicly writing: “Each day that the agency delays is a day that aliens who might otherwise be eligible for initial grants of DACA benefits are exposed to removal because of an unlawful agency action.”
After living as an undocumented immigrant for most of her life, in 2012, Maribel benefited from Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the act enacted by President Barack Obama that allowed her to get a work permit an exception from deportation.
“All I wanted growing up was to make my parents proud, stay out of trouble, be law-abiding and progress in my life and career. I was not given the option when I found out I did not have an identity, which closed many doors for me while realizing the real dangers I faced,” says Serrano. The DACA program was rescinded in September 2017. 800,000 young immigrants who grew up in the United States as the only home they knew are losing their legal status and protections. These include teachers, doctors, business owners, parents and many others who are American in every other way, except on paper.
Now, after 25 years, she was allowed to visit Mexico. She visited the town of her birth in hopes of finding answers and reconnecting with the homeland she never knew. Through her journey, she hopes to give a face to the immigration story for her and the millions who live and work in the USA.
This documentary reflects an extremely important and defining issue in the United States and aims to educate to ensure progress as a country. Maribel’s goals are to “learn to embrace our rights, use our political voice and enhance our global compassion”.
“MY DACA LIFE” is currently fundraising funds under Creative Vision’s Fiscal Sponsorship Program. You can check out her donations portal here.
Project’s website: www.mydacalife.com
PATHWAYS
Directed by Florencia Krochik
Pathways – Directed by Florencia Krochik
Pathways showcase the stories of six “DACA-mented” & undocumented youth and the struggles they face pursuing higher education. The film weaves together their captivating stories and explores the crippling US immigration policies that have led to the hardships they and their families face.
Through a combination of interviews with academic experts and personal immigration stories, Pathways aims to educate viewers on the current state of the immigration system and clean up many false myths surrounding the topic. “By weaving expert insight to support the cause and effect situations our featured subjects find themselves in we hope to not only make an emotional plea for immigration reform but also a fact-based one” Krochik explains.
Florencia Krochick has been selected to participate in the Film Independent Documentary Lab Fellowship in 2018 and received the Stella Artois Finishing Fund 2017 Grant. “The stories of these incredibly brave and driven kids and their families are really the stories of America and our humanity – the relentless pursuit of a better life,” says Krochik.
Filmmaker’s website: www.florenciakrochik.com