Empowering Community Film Festival
2022
Hosted by OHCRN and Simply Living
The 2022 film series, sponsored and hosted by
Ohio Community Rights Network and Simply Living
focused on community empowerment.
Each film shown was followed by a post-film discussion and open Q&A.
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Donations can be made at OhioCRN.org via PayPal or send a check to OHCRN - PO Box 470123 Broadview Heights, OH 44147
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"How did the willful daughter of a Himalayan forest conservator become the world’s most powerful opponent of Monsanto? The Seeds of Vandana Shiva, a feature-length documentary, presents the remarkable life story of the Gandhian eco-activist and agro-ecologist, Vandana Shiva."
Webinar discussion November 20, 2022
with Jim Becket, Sherry Fleming and Scott Singer.
Jim Becket -
Jim brings a varied career to his filmmaking: developmental economist, human rights lawyer, journalist, and author. As Director of Public Information for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Jim made several films about international refugee problems around the world. Since then he has co-produced several documentaries on contemporary environmental issues, including The Green Patriarch, The Amazon: The End of Infinity, The Arctic: The Consequences of Human Folly, and El Misterio del Capital de los Indigenas Amazonicos. Jim’s most recent film was the multi-award-winning Sons of Africa and his awards include festival Best Film awards, two Humanitas Awards, and a George Foster Peabody award.
Sherry Fleming -
Sherry and her husband Ted live on a small homestead in rural NW Ohio, where they raised their two children. Sherry has a bachelor’s degree in animal science production and worked in the swine and dairy industry after graduation. Over 20 years ago, Sherry and other members of their rural community found themselves organizing to protect themselves and the environment from the impacts of factory farms. Since that time, she has worked at the state and local level on issues involving environmental justice, local food networks, water quality, industrial scale agricultural, fracking and water privatization.In 2006, Sherry helped found the local grassroots citizen group, the Williams County Alliance, whose mission is to promote a sustainable future through education and citizen action. The group now finds themselves working to prevent a land-based industrial scale genetically engineered salmon facility from locating in Williams County. Sherry currently serves as chair of the Williams County Alliance, board member for the Ohio Community Rights Network and coordinator for the Bryan Food Co-op.
Scott Singer -
Scott grew up on a small farm in Northwest Ohio where his family grew grain and maintained a small herd of beef cattle. He has a degree in Natural Resource Management, specializing in Wildlife Biology and Management. He took a position with the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service in Northeast Pennsylvania as a Wildlife Biologist assisting private landowners with land management on both public and private lands. Much of this work revolved around the implementation of conservation practices designed to enhance wildlife habitat while protecting water quality and soil health through the establishment of grasslands and restoration of forested riparian areas. Scott and his family now manage their family farm, as his mother and father were set to retire from farming. They continue to operate the farm today as a grain/hay farm, growing a modest amount of prairie grass for livestock forage and seed production. Scott looks to expand the use of grasslands on their farm and others as a multifunctional cropping system. Scott and family are currently bringing a few more acres of native grass into production as a seed crop, and hope that this will be a continuing trend on their farm.
"A film by Lisa F. Jackson and Sarah Teale, PATRIMONIO tells the story of a small coastal town in Mexico and its 3-year battle against an American mega-development."
NOTE: Film available to rent or buy on Apple TV
View the June 26, 2022 Zoom Discussion on YouTube.
WATCH the Friday June 17th GrassRoot Interview with the filmakers and Bill Lyons or Listen HERE.
Lisa F. Jackson has been producing documentaries for over 35 years. It Happened Here, about sexual assault on college campuses, aired on Pivot in January 2015. Grazers: A Cooperative Story premiered at DOCNYC in 2014 and Sex Crimes Unit an unprecedented portrait of prosecutors in the Manhattan DA’s Office aired on HBO in 2011. The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo (HBO 2008) won a Sundance Special Jury Prize for Documentaries and earned 2 Emmy nominations. She produced and directed Meeting with a Killer: One Family’s Journey (2001 Emmy Award nominee) for Court TV; The Secret Life of Barbie (1999 Emmy Award winner) for ABC News. Jackson studied filmmaking at MIT with Richard Leacock. Her other awards include Audience Choice Awards from the London HRWFF, One World Slovakia, Vancouver, film festivals, the 2009 iWitness Award from Jewish World Watch and a Movies That Matter Award from Amnesty International.
Sarah Teale is the Producer/Director of Kill Chain: The Cyber War on America’s Elections (aired: HBO March 26th, 2020. Emmy nominated for Outstanding Investigative Documentary 2021). Producer/Director on the HBO series The Weight of the Nation, nominated for a Prime Time Emmy. Other HBO films she produced and directed include Dealing Dogs, (Emmy nomination Outstanding Investigative Documentary); Hacking Democracy, (Emmy nomination Outstanding Investigative Documentary); Death on a Factory Farm; Bellevue: Inside Out, a year inside the locked psychiatric wards at Bellevue Hospital; and Mumia Abu Jamal: A Case For Reasonable Doubt?, HBO Cable Ace Award nomination. She has also produced and directed documentaries for the BBC, A&E and Discovery. Teale also produced and directed the feature documentaries Grazers: A Cooperative Story with Lisa F. Jackson distributed by Collective Eye and Passion River and Patrimonio, which premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival and Full Frame and is distributed by First Run Features.
Additional Information and Articles
Patrimonio Study Guide
“Patrimonio means heritage, patrimony, or birthright in English and this guide has been developed to augment the film; to provide a larger context for its story and offer a deeper understanding of the region, its history, and its heritage.”
This is an extensive study guide that covers the environment, history, general statistics, fishing industry, 5 essays and also includes film facts, timeline and discussion guide.
An excerpt from the film. (1:47)
“It’s time the authorities show its citizens that they are working for us, and that the rule of law is respected.”
(6:28) Click on “CC” box at the bottom of the video for English captions.
“They are flagrantly violating the law and, this includes either omission or complicity on the part of the authorities.” ~John Moreno
Video sent to the Todos Santos TV station at the request of lawyer John Moreno in case he was arrested.
March 13, 2017 Video Recorded. (Released on May 19, 2017.)
May 12, 2017 The mayor of La Paz and the Governor of Baja California Sur visited Tres Santos and were seen “chumming it up with CEO Javier Barrios.”
May 19, 2017 John Moreno was arrested, less than a week after the mayor and governor’s visit.
Documentary alleges corruption, greenwashing in Baja Sur development
Patrimonio tells the story of the battle over a luxury residential project in Tres Santos By Megan Frye
Published on Friday, June 21, 2019
“Tres Santos gifted land valued at US $4.3 million for the Colorado State University (CSU) campus. Patrimonio co-director and producer Teale says the gift was merely a way to use CSU’s reputation as an environmentally conscious institution to bring more faith to the project as well as money: the only people who can study at CSU’s Tres Santos campus are current CSU students or alumni.
Movie keeps the ugly reality of Tres Santos alive
By Kathryn Reed
Apr 9, 2019
“It’s hard to believe anything the backers of Tres Santos have to say after all the lies they told, the documents they forged, the environmental analysis that was bought in their favor, and the people they bribed to greenlight the project.
The film shows how the government wheels were greased. Big money was tied up in the project.”
Santiago Rising
View the April 3rd, 2022 Zoom Discussion:HERE.
Santiago Rising (directed by Nick MacWilliam, 2021) takes place on the streets of Chile’s capital city in late 2019 as massive protests over economic inequality engulf the country.
Filmed during the weeks after protests began, Santiago Rising meets social movements, protesters and ordinary people in their struggle for equality and human rights.
The film charts the build-up to the historic vote, in October 2020, that saw Chileans vote for a new constitution to replace the one imposed during the brutal Pinochet dictatorship.
Santiago Rising emphasizes the prominent role of music and art in political dissent."
It is indeed an exciting time now in Chile as a vote on a new constitution, that is currently being drafted, will take place in October 2022. Their constitution, if approved, would be the second one in the world to include Rights of Nature. Our country and our communities have a lot to learn from what has been taking place in Chile!
Nick MacWilliam
is a British filmmaker and journalist who lived in Chile between 2010 and 2014. He has written extensively on Latin American politics and culture for various media, including Jacobin, In These Times, Counterpunch, NACLA, Red Pepper and more. He is co-editor of Alborada, an independent media platform focused on Latin America.
Juliet Lynd
is Associate Professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies, and Interim Chair of the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Illinois State University. Her scholarship and teaching are centered on the intersections of culture, art and politics in Latin America, including poetry, narrative, and the visual and performative arts. She has published numerous articles on literature and ideology throughout Chile’s experiences of revolution, dictatorship, and democracy from the 1960s through the present. She is currently writing a book on poet-artist-performer Cecilia Vicuña’s work in Chile in the 1960s and early 70s,
tracing its legacy through the Popular Unity government of Salvador Allende (1970-73), the resistance to the brutal reactionary military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), the compromised transition to democracy in the 1990s, and through the so-called estallido social (“social explosion”) of 2019.