BAVC’s MediaMaker Fellowship

We are thrilled to announce a cohort of eight outstanding MediaMaker fellows and their projects for 2012.  The fellows were selected through a competitive process judged by a team of media experts.  The review panel was looking for strong storytelling, innovative approaches, and a diverse mix of fellows and projects with the most potential for impact. 

During her BAVC MediaMaker fellowship in 2011, award-winning journalist Samantha Grant worked to develop "A Fragile Trust," a transmedia documentary project that uses the Jayson Blair/New York Times plagiarism scandal of 2003 as a lens through which to explore ethics, diversity, affirmative action, power and responsibility in the media. This video discusses her development process and transmedia approaches.

Throughout the course of the year, these fellows will participate in a series of workshops and labs designed to help them advance their social issue media projects, get feedback and inspiration from a network of expert mentors, work in  BAVC’s facility, and present their progress in a culminating presentation.  This year, BAVC will also produce case study videos about each project so we can share their creative, collaborative development processes with you.  Watch also for a series of guest blogs as the fellows let you in on their process.

The MediaMaker fellows for 2012 are:

Charlotte Buchen with Mix Tape Pakistan

Mix Tape Pakistan is a multi-platform project involving film and an interactive website that aspires to engage Americans in another side of Pakistan with music, stories and song. At the heart of the project is a trilogy of short films about Pakistan - these shorts are interconnected but each tell a unique and compelling story through music. The goal is to design an interactive website that will be fun and easy-to-use, and driven by music and the stories behind music to allow users to create their own “Mix Tape Pakistan”. This project will tap into amazing music, an existing well of media and 21st century technologies to involve viewers and link Americans and Pakistanis at a time of deepening crisis between our nations.

Dawn Valadez with Turn it Around

Turn it Around (working title) is a transmedia documentary about a diverse group of youth from gang impacted communities. These young people face tremendous odds as they make a new place for themselves in higher education. Their goal is to teach and inspire youth like themselves. This personal narrative takes us into the lives of two young adults, Luis and Deprece, from two economically challenged communities in the Bay area, as they struggle with becoming teachers and… the adults and the role models they know they can be. The personal demons they face, the at-risk communities they hope to serve in, and ambivalent family support set the stage for a tale of unlikely transformation. Can they be the change agents that their communities need to improve the education system?

John Leaños with Frontera! Animated Histories of the Southwest Borderlands

Frontera! is a series of three documentary animations tracing alternative histories of the US-Mexico borderlands through the lens of Indigenous and Latino Americans. The musical animations weave a social history of the southwest focusing on four major river systems of North America - the Río Grande, Colorado, Mississippi and Sacramento. The trilogy begins with “Frontera: The Making of the Southwest Borderlands,” a remapping of migration, settlement and conflict in North America. The second episode, “Black Legend: Rebellion on the Río Grande,” traces two Indigenous uprisings in New Mexico: the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 and the Taos Rebellion of 1847. The third, “Eureka! Gold on the Sacramento River,” reveals the social and environmental consequences of the Gold Rush. Through animation, music and documentary, “Frontera!” offers critical perspectives of the American West, a region in the United States where the heritage of Latino, Native and European America remains conflicted, yet deeply interconnected.

Kristi Adams with From the Ground Up

During WWI and WWII Americans grew food in backyards, on balconies, in parks, wherever they could. At their peak, these gardeners yielded 40% of the produce consumed in the US. The government encouraged localized food production to conserve scarce fuel and labor. Today, citizens across the country are reviving the spirit of these gardens, but this time they face many obstacles and little support. From the Ground Up is an upbeat documentary project about gardeners in three municipalities: San Francisco, Sacramento, and Holyoke, comparing and contrasting these modern urban farmers with the Victory Gardeners. This project consists of a feature length documentary and opportunities to participate in fun, engaging, practical activities, as well as a series of live events… As we see these people engage in their local food system, we ask: Can urban farms nourish and rejuvenate our communities? Plant a seed, nurture it, grow something amazing.

Marcia Jarmel with American Spring: new media. new democracy?

Bloggers, Tweeters, and Facebook users around the world are jailed for their pro-democracy activism, yet barely half the eligible voters in the U.S. cast a ballot in our last presidential election. Yet, online in America, a different story appears to be unfolding, as cell phones, laptops, and an ever-expanding social media toolkit shift the power dynamic between citizens, media, and politicians. Through the stories of ground level activists, American Spring asks: are the 21st century technologies transforming American democracy? Veteran documentary editor, Ken Schneider, is co-directing and co-producing American Spring.

Nancy Kates with Regarding Susan Sontag

Regarding Susan Sontag is a 90-minute creative documentary intended for cable television, festivals, and educational and digital distribution. The film features Sontag’s colleagues, friends, lovers, and detractors; experimental sequences; and extraordinary archival images. Often brilliant and frequently infuriating, Sontag was invariably fascinating. Regarding Susan Sontag allows viewers to look at Sontag while she examines at the world. Sontag saw herself as a citizen of the world. She bore witness to numerous wars, using her prominence to speak out about politics and human rights. As Gary Indiana wrote, for Sontag, “our duty as sentient beings is to rescue the world.” Though fearless in other ways, Sontag was reluctant to speak openly about her intimate relationships with women. The film chronicles Sontag’s life as she struggles privately with her sexuality, her self-image, and her personal relationships, while publicly transforming herself into one of the 20th century’s most influential thinkers.

Nancy Kelly with Trust: Second Acts in Young Lives

This Project will create digital media elements and focused digital and multiplatform strategies for community engagement in preparation for public television broadcast of the documentary TRUST: Second Acts in Young Lives. Some digital medial elements are in-progress: an interactive, bilingual curriculum engagement tool kit; five short video modules; and a bilingual website. As part of the Program, I plan to create additional digital and multiplatform strategies to prepare for the broadcast and expand community engagement. Moving, intimate, and celebratory, TRUST follows Marlin, an 18-year-old Hondureña living in Chicago, who shares a bit about her childhood with a neighborhood teen theater company. It is a traumatic story of rape, incest, an arduous immigration journey and madness. Amazing things unfold as the young actors transform Marlin’s story into a daring, original play. TRUST is about creativity and the unexpected resources inside people often discounted because they are poor, young, or of color.

Dee Hibbert-Jones with Living Condition

Living Condition a is a cross platform animated documentary that tells the stories of three families living with a relative condemned to execution. Each family bears witness to highly politicized events told in their own words, revealing a perspective rarely heard. These testimonies exist in multiple states: as pure fact, unreliable evidence, eroded memories, pleas, defenses, traumatic re-visitations and apologies. The animation blends hand-drawn talking heads with imaginary landscapes of memory, slowed passages and circular storytelling into a symbolic language of trauma, violence and shame. Living Condition will be manifested as a single channel documentary animated film; a series of short webisodes focusing on the political content of these narratives, and a multi-channel installation that investigates the manifestations of trauma within each story.  Dee's project partner is Nomi Talisman.