Launched last year at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, the film series will feature works from Russia, Tanzania, Nepal, Colombia, Kenya, Western Sahara, Afghanistan, Zambia, the United States and other countries where women are subject to such chronic problems as poor maternal care, sex trafficking, honor killings, child marriage, rape as a weapon of war, and genital mutilation.

The series will bring together filmmakers, journalists, students, activists and scholars such as Oriana Zill, Maggie Betts and Marina Goldovskaya over this three-day event and explore the intersection of journalism, documentary film and activism.

“We intend to use this series as a platform for not just viewing films but for significant discussions about continuing the wonderful filmmaking and finding ways to forge partnerships among foreign correspondents, filmmakers, producers and student journalists. We want to listen to activists and come up with ideas to keep the world’s most horrific practices against women in the public discussion,” said Associate Professor Lonnie Isabel, chair and founder of the event and director of the school’s International Reporting Program.

This year the series is expanding to other CUNY campuses with a Friday, March 30, event at City College featuring “The War We Are Living,” which chronicles the efforts of two Afro-Colombian women who are fighting to stop the government from permitting prospectors to take over their gold-rich traditional lands.  The program at CCNY’s Steinman Hall, 160 Convent Avenue, will begin with a reception sponsored by the Chancellor’s Office at 6 p.m., the film and a panel discussion.  The producer Oriana Zill, of Women War & Peace, is scheduled to appear, along with Afro-Latina activists.  Linda Villarosa, director of CCNY’s Journalism program, will moderate.

The series kicks off Thursday, March 29, at 11 a.m. at CUNY’s Graduate School of Journalism. 219 W. 40^th, with a series of films, including a presentation at 4 p.m. to New York City High School Students, sponsored by the Harnisch Collaborative Future of Journalism Projects.

On Saturday, March 31, an all-day program will include a presentation of short films and panelists from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, one our original partners.  All events are free and open to the public

The CUNY Graduate School of Journalism opened in 2006 under its Founding Dean Steve Shepard, former editor-in-chief of Business Week. The three-semester master’s program offers a converged curriculum and a state-of-the-art facility.

This series is planned as the first of an annual festival that will, in subsequent years award grants for student documentary filmmakers. Co-sponsors of the film series include the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting and the International Reporting Project. Partners include Fork Films, DCTV  and Women for Afghan Women.

For more information, please contact cunyglobalfilmseries@gmail.com. To learn more about us, check out the International Reporting Program and the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.

Photo Credit: Steve Evans

As journalists and educators of future journalists, we see it as our responsibility to make sure the stories of women are told boldly and passionately. We have found that the immediacy of film and the images of women who have suffered and triumphed is an effective way to maintain and spread conversations and spark reporting so vital in keeping the focus on troubling issues like sexual violence, forced marriage, denial of rights of employment and education, “honor killings” and sexual slavery.

We are proposing that we use the platform of the school to bring together five distinct but interconnected groups to begin what we hope will be a continuing discussion and a boost to journalism and filmmaking. Those groups are filmmakers, journalists, activists, students at our school and others throughout the city, and the general public. We believe that this convergence of interests at a graduate school of journalism for an annual festival is unique and of value to all five groups.

We intend to have tragic films, films showing women overcoming hardships, films selected from several regions of the world from the Americas, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and the Pacific.

We also hope to foster news and action. In addition to showing and discussing a number of wonderful and important films, we plan to have interviews with newsmakers, panel discussions, conversations with filmmakers and panel discussions with activists, officials, journalists and filmmakers. Our goal is a continuing discussion throughout the year on our website and with smaller events.

We aspire to start eventually to show documentary films from our fledging documentary program and to raise funds for students to complete projects on human rights issues.

Photo Credit: A. www.viajar24h.com

THURSDAY, MARCH 29:

CUNY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM
219 W. 40th Street, Third Floor, New York, NY
(between 7th and 8th Avenue)

11:00 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.
STOLEN, directed by Violeta Ayala and Daniel Fallshaw
An examination of a complicated system of slavery in Western Sahara

12:30 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.
THE PEOPLE THE RAIN FORGOT, directed by Sophia Tewa ‘09
An account of the debilitating effects of climate change in rural Kenya

2:30 p.m. – 3:45 p.m.
Short Films and Radio Documentaries from Liberia, England and Afghanistan, with a panel discussion featuring the filmmakers, including Almudena Toral ’10. Sponsored by the International Reporting Project.

4:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.From YouTube to the Silver Screen, an educational program for NYC high school and CUNY students, journalists and filmmakers. Sponsored by the Harnisch Collaborative Future of Journalism Project and Baruch College. Dean Stephen Shepard delivers welcoming remarks.

AT DCTV
87 Lafayette Street

7:00 p.m. RECEPTION

7:30 p.m. LAS ABUELAS DE PLAZA DE MAYO AND THE SEARCH FOR IDENTITY produced by Dr. C.A. Tuggle
As many as 30,000 dissidents of the Argentinian military dictatorship were kidnapped, tortured and killed during the Dirty War between 1976 and 1983. A movement headed by a group called Las Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, or the Grandmothers of May Plaza, is dedicated to finding their missing grandchildren, now in their 20s and 30s, who were taken from their mothers as babies and given to supporters of the military regime. This is an account of the grandmother’s movement and the grandchildren they have found.

8:30 p.m. – 9 p.m.  Interview with Dr. C.A. Tuggle, professor and director of the journalism program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.                              

******

FRIDAY, MARCH 30:

CCNY
Steinman Hall, Grove School of Engineering
160 Convent Avenue

6:00 p.m. RECEPTION SPONSORED BY THE CHANCELLOR’S OFFICE

7:00 p.m. – 7:10 p.m. TRANSMITTING HOPE: VOICES FOR PEACE IN SOUTHERN THAILAND, produced by Andrea Wenzel for WAMU’s Latitudes with reporting by Noi Thammasathien. In Southern Thailand an insurgency has quietly killed almost 5 thousand people since 2004.The conflict pits Malay-speaking Muslim separatists against the Thai state. Over the last 9 years violence has soured relations between Buddhist and Muslim communities. And it’s taken a heavy toll on women—who’ve lost family members and homes. This story was produced as part of an International Reporting Project fellowship.

7:10 p.m. – 8:10 p.m. THE WAR WE ARE LIVING, produced by Pamela Hogan and Oriana Zill
In Cauca, a mountainous region in Colombia’s Pacific southwest, two extraordinary Afro-Colombian women are braving a violent struggle over their gold-rich lands. They are standing for a generation of Afro-Colombians who have been terrorized and forcibly displaced as a deliberate strategy of war.

8:10 p.m. – 8:45 p.m.
PANEL: Impact of Afro-Latina women activists, featuring Oriana Zill and moderated by Linda Villarosa, director of the City College Journalism program.

******

SATURDAY, MARCH 31:

CUNY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM
219 W. 40th Street, Third Floor, New York, NY
(between 7th and 8th Avenue)

12:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.:
THE CARRIER, directed by Maggie Betts
A Zambian woman, one of three wives, contracts HIV and battles to protect her unborn baby from the virus in a remote village where few escape exposure.

1:30 p.m. Intermission

2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. NO WOMAN NO CRY, directed by Christy Turlington Burns
The powerful stories of at-risk pregnant women in four parts of the world, including a remote Maasai tribe in Tanzania, a slum of Bangladesh, a post-abortion care ward in Guatemala, and a prenatal clinic in the United States.

3:15 p.m. – 4 p.m. Panel moderated by Lisa Armstrong on maternal health issues worldwide.

4:15 p.m.- 6 p.m. Women and Children in Crisis: Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting Shorts Program. Featuring TOO YOUNG TO WED by Stephanie Sinclair on the phenomenon of child brides in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, India and Yemen; LEFT IN LIMBO, NEPALESE ADOPTIONS HALTED AND OUTLAWED IN PAKISTAN about rape and the subsequent “honor” killings of women and young girls, both by Habiba Nosheen; THE CLARINETIST about youth violence in Juarez and the healing power of music by Dominic Bracco and Susan Seijas; and current work from a collaborative reporting project between African and U.S. journalists on reproductive health in Liberia, South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya.  With a panel discussion featuring Nathalie Applewhite, managing director of the Pulitzer Center and award-winning filmmaker Habiba Nosheen.

6 p.m.—6:45 p.m. Reception sponsored by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

7:00 p.m. – 8:20 p.m. A BITTER TASTE OF FREEDOM, directed by Marina Goldovskaya
In her quest to uncover the wrongdoings of the Russian authorities, Anna Politkovskaya inspired awe in some and fear in countless others. An investigative journalist for Moscow’s liberal Novaya Gazeta, she was often the only spokesperson for victims of the Chechen War. Hers was a lonely voice, yet loud enough for the entire country to hear. It was too loud. At age 48 she was assassinated for simply doing her job.

8:20 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. A conversation with Marina Goldovskaya

Photo Credits: www.123rf.com, alexbruda, seier+seier+seier

Lonnie Isabel
Founder and Chairman

Nathalie Applewhite
Nathalie is managing director of the Pultizer Center on Crisis Reporting, an innovative award-winning non-profit journalism organization based in Washington and dedicated to supporting the independent international journalism that U.S. media organizations are increasingly less able to undertake. She is also a documentary filmmaker, whose film Picture Me an Enemy (2002), about two young women from the former Yugoslavia, was screened nationally and internationally in film festivals and universities. The film was nominated for a regional Emmy award, and won the Best Documentary Award in the Philadelphia Film Festival’s Festival of Independents. She was awarded a Leeway Harmony grant for this work in honor of projects that promote racial, ethnic, and religious tolerance.

Lisa Armstrong
Lisa is an award-winning journalist with credits in several publications, including National Geographic, Parade, In Style, USA Weekend, The Washington Post, Essence, Working Mother, and Ms. She grew up in Nairobi, Kenya and has made frequent trips to Africa in the past couple of years, writing stories mostly about issues affecting women and children. She won an award from the American Society of Journalists and Authors for an article on a rural Kenyan village formed by women who were allegedly raped by British soldiers. She teaches craft of journalism and international reporting at CUNY’s Graduate School of Journalism.

Kathryn Bonomi
Programming Consultant
Kathryn Bonomi is a film programmer specializing in arts- and author-related programs. Through her longstanding affiliation with the Jacob Burns Film Center, she originated two annual series, “FrameWorks: Art on Film,” featuring speakers from the art world and exhibitions, and “Jazz Sessions,” with live performances. In addition she has planned screenings of films by such directors as Ousmane Sembene, Jehain Noujaim, Marcel Ophüls, Zana Briski, Robert Drew, Molly Bingham, and many others, and postfilm discussions on a wide range of political and cultural topics, domestic and international. A partial list includes: the 50th anniversary of Brown v Board of Education, Emmett Till and the early Civil Rights Movement, human rights in Egypt, war reporting in Bosnia and Iraq, the Nazi plunder of Jewish art collections, autism and other medical issues, American conservatism, the Laramie Project, gay marriage, Enron, and the Sicilian Mafia.

Prue Clarke
Prue is an award winning journalist and media educator. Her work has appeared in the Financial Times, The Times of London, The Globe and Mail, The Australian and on the BBC, CBC, ABC and NPR. Prue’s reporting has focused on Africa since 2004. She has covered war-torn eastern Congo and AIDS-ravaged communities of Rwanda and Uganda. Prue’s reporting on Liberia’s reconstruction has won the national Edward R. Murrow award for feature reporting and an Amnesty International award. Her reporting on child slaves in Ghana won several awards including the United Nations Gold Medal. Prue is co-founder of  New Narratives, a training program for women reporters in Liberia, where women were victimized on an unprecedented scale during the civil war.  Prue has been a Visiting Associate Professor at CUNY Graduate School of Journalism teaching international reporting and radio.

Jesse Hardman
Jesse has worked in public radio for more than a decade, at WBEZ in Chicago and freelancing for shows such as Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Marketplace, and This American Life. He served as a Knight International Journalism Fellow in Lima, Peru. He spent the past year and a half working for the international nonprofit Internews in Sri Lanka, managing a humanitarian information project.  He teaches on the broadcast faculty at CUNY’s Graduate School of Journalism.

Rebecca Leung
Rebecca is an associate professor at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. She served as a coordinating producer at CBS News, and developed multimedia packages for 60 Minutes and 48 Hours. Previously, she worked as a senior editor and product manager at TheStreet.com, and as a producer for ABC News and CNET News.com. She also freelanced for the Los Angeles Times and taught journalism at the State University of New York and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. As a multimedia consultant, she created a teaching site for “The Authentic Voice,” a book and DVD project based on stories honored by the “Let’s Do It Better” Workshop on Journalism, Race and Ethnicity at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. The project was published by Columbia University Press and funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Ford Foundation. She received her M.S. from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and her B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley.

David L. Lewis
David is an independent documentary filmmaker and veteran New York City-based journalist. He spent five years as an associate producer at 60 Minutes for correspondent Ed Bradley; was a political reporter for The New York Daily News; and has worked for Gannett Newspapers, ABC News, and New York 1 News in his varied 25-year career. David teaches craft of journalism at CUNY’s Graduate School of Journalism.

Louise Lief
Louise has been deputy director of the International Reporting Project since the program to provide U.S. journalists the opportunity to report on critical international issues, was founded in 1998.  Previously she was a senior editor at U.S. News and World Report, where she worked for 10 years, primarily covering the State Department and foreign affairs community in Washington. Her duties included overseas reporting for the magazine in Central Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Before joining the magazine in 1987, she lived in Paris where she was an associate producer/researcher for the CBS newsmagazine “60 Minutes,” developing programs and covering events in Africa, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. While in Paris she also worked as a stringer for TIME, then for Newsweek, and was a contributor to The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and the Boston Globe Magazine.

Tina Pamintuan
Tina began her career at National Public Radio where her favorite task was writing science and adventure scripts for Morning Edition’s Radio Expeditions. In 2001, she was part of a small team that won a Dupont-Columbia Silver Baton for the yearlong series, The Geographic Century. Tina’s interest in education began ten years ago when she founded Xtreme Youth Zone Media, a documentary training program for teenagers. Her media training projects have received support from organizations, including the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the Radio and Television News Directors Foundation, and the Third Coast International Audio Festival. As an independent radio producer, her stories have appeared on WAMU’s Latitudes, KCRW’s UnFictional, and American Public Media’s The Story. Her writing has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Humanities, and Bust. She is currently a fellow at the International Center For Journalists.  Tina is director of radio projects and initiatives at CUNY’s Graduate School Journalism

Linda Prout
Linda is a professor and director of broadcast at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. An accomplished broadcast journalist, Linda is senior producer of a show for CUNY TV on the ethnic media called Independent Sources. She was a writer and producer for PBS and the Bravo Network before joining City College, and has served as station director for Harlem Community Radio. She also has produced award-winning series for television and video including “The Kids’ Chronicle” and “WomanSource.” Two of her programs, “Study with the Best” and “In the Life,” have been nominated for Emmy Awards. Prout has also worked as a reporter for several print publications including Newsday, Newsweek, and the Star-Ledger. A former associate professor at the New School University, Prout is a Fulbright Scholar who has taught broadcast news writing and newsmagazine publication in China. She holds an M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, and a B.F.A. in Theater from NYU.

Yoruba Richen
Yoruba is a documentary filmmaker whose directing debut Promised Land, aired on the PBS program POV in July 2010 and has screened at festivals across the globe. It was the winner of the Fledgling Fund award for Social Documentary as well as a recipient of the CPB Diverse Voices co-production grant.  Yoruba has been a producer on films that have aired on PBS, HBO and BET. She was also producer at the investigative unit at ABC News as well as a producer for the independent radio and television program Democracy Now.  Yoruba teaches international reporting and documentary film at CUNY’s Graduate School of Journalism.

Sophia Tewa
Sophia graduated from CUNY’s Graduate School of Journalism in 2009 concentrating in Broadcast and International Reporting. Her documentary, The People the Rain Forgot, about how climate change and drought have ravaged Kenya, was named Best Documentary Feature at the Winter 2012 Los Angeles Cinema Festival of Hollywood. A native of France and graduate of CUNY’s Lehman College, she has worked with CNN and CBS and teaches multimedia production at the Meridian, Lehman’s student news site.

Photo Credit: truemitra

Women for Afghan Women

Photo Credits:
Main Page – seier+seier+seier
Section Page – CUNY Graduate School of Journalism