Short Takes on Health and Justice Screening Review

     Last night, I attended one of the First Fridays film series at CUNY School of Public Health called Short Takes on Health and Justice. Each film was very well-researched and was able to examine public issues on a very personal level. For someone who has had zero interest or association with access to healthy food in Bed-Stuy, has no relation to a veteran exposed to Agent Orange, has never been concerned with childbirth or contracting AIDS, and whose house was not hit by Hurricane Sandy, these films were able to touch me in a way that started to make me acknowledge issues I have never been affected by before I watched them- the message I got after watching the films was "this is something you need to care about because it could happen to you too" (but only because these are fellow human beings speaking to me)- I was very disappointed at the lack of Asian Americans in the student films.
     During the panel discussion , Jessica Green, Cinema Director of the Maysles Documentary Center, thought the films were generally "very clear about identifying problems and what people are doing about it...all films are tight...did an effective job of revisiting history and economically bringing it to date through diverse voices and perspectives... and are very ready to distribute on the internet to get films out there and create a lot of dialogue."

Note: At the end of the screening, the audience was asked to hand in index cards of our feedback to the student film makers. I didn't hand in anything, so this blog post will be my electronic index card.
This is also my extra credit assignment for my FILMP Media 160 class at Hunter College.

SILENT EXPOSURE
The first film, Silent Exposure, by Christopher Nostrand, Kayoko Nakamura, and Dawn Jacob, was visually well-made. For example, the camera person got an extreme close-up of the tear on Mrs. Nostrand's face when she reminisced about her late husband, a former Marine affected by Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. I don't want to say too much about this film because it received a CINE Golden Eagle Award, so I'll use my time and energy to talk about the other films.

I SPEAK BIRTH
In I Speak Birth, by Diana Quiñones Rivera and Teofilia Acheampong, I would suggest that the interviewees on the street face a light source and have looking space because everyone being interviewed on the sidewalk faced away from the sun and were centered in the frame. I also suggest that the interviewees be filmed at an eye-level rather than low-angle because I feel very disconnected from the conversation when I'm shorter than the speaker. I enjoyed watching mothers giving birth, though at first I was like, "wait - are we seriously watching this right now? *head pops out of woman in a water-filled tub and bleeds a pool of blood* Oh-okay then. I guess we are; thanks for the warning." It was a point-and-shoot video, which I know is NOT COOL in the world of professional cinematographers, but the homely effect made me more comfortable about watching that birth scene.

THE STIGMA CONTINUES
Speaking of birth and blood, the message in Stigma Continues by Bryan Mark Urbsaitis and Liz Clarey is tragic yet powerful ( one dude had to bury his own brother who died from AIDS, another guy was walked out on after telling a girl he had AIDS). The footage however, made me cringe in my seat: the lens of the camera had rain droplets on it, the transitions included three seconds of hip-hop music which distorted the mood of the film, and the color balance of the shots kept changing- it was white-then yellow-then blue. This is my theory on that: perhaps the camera guy WANTED his audience to feel stigma toward his shots as an ANALOGY to the stigma held toward people with AIDS! Bingo.

ROCKAWAY AFTER SANDY
Immediately after watching the first few seconds of this film by Karen Binger, Jing Wang, and Claudia Zamora, I thought the lively rock DID NOT fit the low and sad atmosphere of the Rockaways after Sandy. I liked how the camera guy for this film was very good at defining spaces, particularly moldy basements and apartments. Using the synthetic method of shooting, the student put together close-up shots of moldy kids' bedrooms, ceilings, wrecked walls and floorboards, along with the ex-residents of these  homes to emphasize the seriousness of the neglected health hazards. There was also use of tracking when following volunteers carrying things to experience their journey to the garbage bin.

OUR SPACE, OUR FOOD, OUR BED-STUY
 This film by Samantha Riddell, Makia Harper, Uki Lau, and Phung Tran-Khamphounvong was pretty good in terms of lighting. I could see faces clearly and even though I saw people's hair blowing in the wind, I didn't hear the wind. The camera person boomed through shelves of rotten fruits at a local bodega to show the lack of demand in fruit in the neighborhood, panned through community gardens to show the progress of local farms, and dollied through an aisle of vegetables at a local farmer's market to show that there is a place of hope and vegetables so you don't have to eat chips and nuts everyday! The feeling I got while watching this film was inferiority, because two young looking ladies managed to turn a vacant lot into a community garden, and there I was sitting through a documentation of their amazing accomplishments.