Believed
Podcast published by NPR/Michigan Radio
When former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar was convicted of abusing over 300 girls over several decades, the question on everyone’s mind was — how? And how did he get away with it for so long? Believed delves into the stories of the people on the ground, including survivors and Nassar himself, to find out how so many people missed what was happening right under their noses. The podcast is a powerful reminder to listen to survivors and to empower women to come forward with the truth, with the hope that they too will be believed.
Suggested by Digital Media Producer Hallie Steiner
The Democratic Party Wants to Make Climate Policy Exciting
Long Read by Robinson Meyer, Atlantic
Admittedly, I am not as voracious a reader of long things as I could be, but one recent article truly galvanized me: this one on the Green New Deal, made mainstream by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s involvement with the protests.
It’s a bit light on details, but even in broad strokes, it’s the boldest, most exciting policy proposal I’ve seen in my lifetime (that isn’t called M4A). And IMO it’s worth “taking to the streets” for. Because I want the human race to make it, I’m considering joining one of Sunrise’s demonstrations to make sure that it happens. Our nation deserves it, and future generations will reap the benefits simply by being able to go outside in the winter without gas masks and sunscreen.
Suggested by VP of Published Content and Growth Anthony Smith
“America To Me”
Film directed by Steve James
This ten-part docuseries zeroes in on one of Chicago’s most progressive schools, located in suburban Oak Park. Despite its reputation as one of the city’s most liberal and diverse schools, more than half of the student population is white and stubborn inequalities among students persist.
The firm crew were given unprecedented access to the school throughout an entire academic year, and they in turn gave students their own cameras to record personal confessions. The result: An observational and confessional film that shows how divided America’s purported diversity can be.
Suggested by Video Producer Alan Thompson
“Brave”
Autobiography by Rose McGowan
As a woman and a fan of McGowan’s, I felt it was my duty to read her story as one of many voices raised as part of this year’s #MeToo movement. I was disgusted by what McGowan had to endure, and really proud of her candor and steadfastness in the face of unrelenting criticism. Her story, as well as that of Christine Blasey Ford and other high-profile women who have endured sexual violence, has made me certain we can work towards ending such violence and continue to demand equal treatment of women in industries that routinely protect men. But to do so, we need to change the conversation around consent, and get to a place where women can feel proud of embracing their sexuality and using it as a way to feel empowered, without having to endure shame, hatred or criticism for doing so.
Suggested by Managing Editor Alison Kotch
“Veterans Crisis Hotline”
Collection of Short Stories by Jon Chopan
By focusing almost exclusively on the moments of crisis experienced by veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, “Veterans Crisis Hotline” takes on a topic largely missing from today’s mass-market literature. These 12 stories explore the lives of people who volunteer for America’s front lines and the price they pay for doing so. Author Jon Chopan doesn’t dance around issues involving PTSD, sexual violence, the price of war and the complex reality of masculine identity. Instead, he peels back the glossy veneer of valor to intentionally spark a meditation on how America supports its veterans today.
Suggested by Social Audience Director Caitlin Duffy
“Our Towns: A 1000,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America”
Nonfiction by James and Deborah Fallows
When I first got the assignment to interview James Fallows about “Our Towns: A 1000,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America,” the book he wrote with his wife, Deborah Fallows, my first thought was: Annnd it’s 100,000 pages long! But I was quickly won over by its deft prose and incisive look at what’s working to bolster the economies and bonhomie of small towns and cities across America. Since reading it this summer, I keep seeing how its lessons might be applied in the real world. When everything seems to be going wrong on the national stage, it’s more important than ever to realize that some things are actually going very right.
Suggested by Senior Editor Adrienne Day
“Blindspotting”
Directed by Carlos López Estrada
A film that explores the themes of gentrification, incarceration, racism, police brutality and violence in Oakland, California, “Blindspotting” will pull you to the edge of your seat and leave you hanging there until the final minute.
Starring Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal, who are also the talent behind the screenplay, “Blindspotting” is a must see for anyone seeking insight into the lived experiences of those being displaced by the Silicon Valley tech boom.
Suggested by Social Audience Director Caitlin Duffy
“Travels With Charley In Search of America”
Novel by John Steinbeck
After the dust from WWII settled in America, Steinbeck set out on a road trip, with his dog, Charley, along for the ride. Steinbeck’s optimism throughout the novel — combined with his jaded patriotism and ultimate dissatisfaction with where America was headed at that time — also resonates particularly well in today’s America. While it’s a personal reminder to try to live outside the comfort zone I was born into, it’s essential reading for anyone who has grown comfortable with the bubbles we often refuse to step outside of.
Suggested by Video Producer Alan Thompson
“Championships”
Artist: Meek Mill
This past year has seen Philadelphia rapper Meek Mill transform into one of the most compelling voices in criminal justice reform, and Mill’s latest album, “Championships,” serves as a booming soundtrack to that movement.
Mill’s legal troubles came to a head last year when he was sentenced to up to four years for violating his probation, a move that sparked national furor. Now, with a trial still looming, Meek’s fourth studio effort roars with a barrel-chested intensity, forming a raw and emotional plea for substantive criminal justice reform.
Suggested by Senior Video Producer Sean Ryon
“The American Meme”
Documentary by Bert Marcus
While the rise of social media has meant it’s now easier than ever to stay “connected” — and connect with others who have similar interests — it also has contributed to social anxiety, depression and self-image problems. But for every study on how the rise of its popularity makes some people depressed and anxious, there are others who profit, or even thrive off of, its varied forms. The American Meme looks at the lengths some people will go in order to obtain followers on the most popular social platforms (Vine and Instagram).
Equal parts honest, sad and disturbing, “The American Meme” begs viewers to question the role social media plays in our lives, and whether we’re using it as a force for good, as a healthy creative outlet, or as a reason to feed our own self-absorbed narcissism.
Suggested by Managing Editor Alison Kotch
Tag: Film
5 Virtual Reality Projects That Will Change How You View the World
In 1915, two decades after the first commercial film premiered, American audiences packed cinemas to see “The Birth of a Nation,” a three-hour, silent epic directed by D.W. Griffith. The story of racial tensions during Reconstruction demonized intermarriage and championed the Ku Klux Klan as guardians of white women’s chastity. The nation’s first blockbuster, the movie gained popularity for reflecting contemporary fears of racial inclusivity; it possibly even exacerbated prejudices.
If one of the first major experiments in the new medium of film ended up with such a retrograde product, what should we expect from this century’s emerging medium, virtual reality? By immersing viewers in another world, as opposed to the passive experience of watching a movie, virtual reality’s storytelling has the potential to change our moral point of view. If Griffith’s century-old film mythologized men in white sheets, could VR help us see beyond our skin color?
That, essentially, is the goal. But as with most mediums, especially one that removes us from our surroundings, there’s always the danger of escapism in to fantasy. NationSwell examined five recent works (sometimes called “sims” or “experiences”) to see if filmmakers have found a new way to generate empathy.
1. Embracing Our Differences
Nonny de la Peña is sometimes referred to as the “godmother of virtual reality.” At Emblematic Group, the VR company she founded a decade ago in Santa Monica, Calif., de la Peña brought the genre of “immersive journalism” (often pairing real sound with low-budget digital animations) to the mainstream with her short project “Hunger in Los Angeles,” which recreated the experience of waiting on line at a Skid Row food bank. Later films took viewers to a Syrian refugee camp and the Mexican border. This year, at the Sundance Film Festival, she debuted her most recent, “Out of Exile: Daniel’s Story,” about an LGBT youth coming out to his disapproving family. De la Peña, a former Newsweek correspondent, believes that VR can make viewers feel in a way no other artistic medium can. “If you feel like you’re there, then you feel like it could happen to you, too,” she recently told Los Angeles Magazine.
2. Adopting Another Perspective
For the last two years, Specular Theory’s “Perspective” series, which premiered at Sundance in 2015, has been showing how social cues can be misinterpreted very quickly. Playing two sides back-to-back, the narratives by Rose Troche and Morris May show varying perspectives on a crime. In the first chapter, “The Party,” about sexual assault, a man and woman meet at an alcohol-soaked college kegger. Gina, the girl, passes out, too intoxicated; Brian, the boy, has sex with her anyway. This year, “The Misdemeanor” doubled the number of perspectives around a fictional officer-involved shooting in Brooklyn to four: a teenager who’s shot, his brother and two cops. “Who will approach the piece and only watch one thing and think that they have the story?” Troche said to Wired. “That’s pretty much what we have in real life. The piece demonstrates the fact that just because you’re there, doesn’t mean you see everything. Through the four strings, you get to see the full picture.”
3. Contemplating the Bigger Picture
The Wevr-produced film “Hard World for Small Things,” which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2016, likewise tackles police brutality. In the five-minute story, director Janicza Bravo, a black woman, retells a deeply personal story from her own life. In 1999, while on vacation from her native Panama, a cousin had been killed in Brooklyn while holding a bag of coke. After looking up the event, all Bravo could find were short write-ups in local newspapers. Bravo’s film goes beyond that brevity to capture a whole life, leading up to its final moments. “What if their lives were more than a couple of paragraphs; what if it was their friends, where they were going, what they had read, what they had desired, etc. I wanted to make a short piece that was emotionally longer than a paragraph, and that you got a slice of his life before he died. So when he died, it’s not about the event and what he did to have died; it becomes about who he was, his humor, his laugh,” Bravo has said. For her new sim, she transposed the story to a mini-mart in South Los Angeles, where police mistake someone’s identity and fire at him with questionable cause.
4. Respecting Animals and Nature
Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab is bringing the rigors of academia to VR. At the university’s campus in Palo Alto, Calif., professor Jeremy Bailenson, the lab’s director, tests whether virtual reality can improve all life by making viewers more empathetic, more aware of the need for environmental conservation and more communicative. Essentially, he wonders, can visualizing the effects of our behavior change our actions? In one sim, a headset-equipped viewer grabs a chainsaw and cuts down a tree in a forest. In another film, after a person gets down on all fours and straps on the VR goggles, they become a cow grazing in a pasture before being driven to a slaughterhouse. It might just be enough for you to think twice about loading paper into a printer or ordering beef for dinner.
5. Putting Personal Responsibility in the Driver’s Seat
Even the lowly PSA is going virtual, too. Reel FX and AT&T’s recent commercial simulates the consequences of distracted driving. In “It Can Wait,” a person places her hand on a wheel before the simulation starts. She motors around a neighborhood while texting, barely avoiding bikers, swerving cars and schoolchildren in the crosswalk. As you can guess, the experience ends in tragedy. “Although people admit that such behavior is terrible and that they do it, they don’t necessarily see themselves as part of the problem. What people are doing is rationalizing that there is a safe way to do it,” Michelle Kuckelman, executive director of brand management at AT&T, told USA Today. By experiencing the film, participants get to see the danger from afar, while still catching a glimpse of disaster up close.
Continue reading “5 Virtual Reality Projects That Will Change How You View the World”
This Documentarian Is Filming Incredible Vets — and Helping Them at the Same Time
Ski fans have been enjoying movies by the pioneering snow sport documentarian Warren Miller for decades. Now Miller’s son Kurt, of Niwot, Colo., is filming sports-themed documentaries with a new purpose: to show injured veterans and other people with disabilities participating in adaptive sports. Kurt Miller’s non-profit, Make A Hero, has a Wounded Military Fighter’s Fund that’s currently raising donations to buy a service dog for former Army Corporal Jesse Murphree of Westminster, Colo., who underwent 58 surgeries and lost his both legs after an injury in Afghanistan in 2007.
They’ve raised about $3,500 toward the goal of $6,000 to pay for Jasper, a 2-year-old German shepherd the trainer has already given Murphree on credit. Murphree told Whitney Bryen of the Longmont Times-Call, “I have a partner. It’s the same idea as having a battle buddy in the field watching your back.”
In exchange for providing Murphree with Jasper, the folks at Make A Hero made one request of him: to star in their new film, the water-sports themed The Current. “I’m not really a water guy,” Murphree told Bryen, “but when they asked if I wanted a free trip to Mexico, I figured why not.” In the film, Murphree learns how to scuba dive. Off-screen, he proposed to his girlfriend while in Mexico. The film debuted at the Boulder International Film Festival on Sunday, with the aim to raise the additional donations needed to pay for Jasper. We have a good feeling that they’ll meet their goal.
MORE: These Sisters Created An Incredible Place to Help Veterans
Can Ancient Native American Traditions Heal Today’s Vets?
For centuries, many Native American tribes held traditional rituals when their young men returned from battle to help reintegrate them into society. Today, some are performing these ceremonies to help veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Utah filmmaker Taki Telonidis of the Western Folklife Center in Salt Lake City is shooting a documentary about these traditions and their effects on returning vets, many of whom come home with “invisible drama,” he told the Elko Free Daily Press. Telonidis is documenting the traditions of warriors among the Blackfeet tribe and the work of one Shosone-Paiute medicine man who conducts sweat lodges for all interested veterans at the George Wallen Veteran Affairs Center in Salt Lake.