By: Bari Faye Siegel, Tri-Town News - February 28, 2008. link
JACKSON - People with disabilities want one thing more than anything else in the world: they want others to see them as people who live, learn, laugh and love - like everybody else in the world. They dream of a world where everyone is able to see that they are so much more than their disabilities.
Filmmaker Susan Nussbaum brought that dream to life in the film "Beyond Disability: The Fe Fe Stories." The film, which runs about 30 minutes, depicts a group of girls who refuse to be defined by what others seem to think holds them back.
A showing of the film and a rousing discussion on the topic is set for March 8 at 1 p.m. at the Jackson Branch of the Ocean County Library, 2 Jackson Drive. Seating is limited and registration is requested. Contact senior librarian Meagan Toohey with questions or accommodation requests, as well as to register to attend, by calling (732) 928-4400, ext. 5, or by sending an e-mail to mtoohey@theoceancountylibrary. org.
The program is sponsored byAllies Inc. and the New Jersey Coalition on Women and Disabilities (NJCWD). The film, which won the Spirit Award at the Superfest International Disability Film Festival, is closed-captioned. Additionally, interpreters will be present at the March 8 showing. Refreshments will be served.
"Beyond Disability: The Fe Fe Stories" is about a group of young women with disabilities who call themselves the Empowered Fe Fes (slang for female.) The group hits the streets of Chicago on a quest to discover the difference between how they see themselves and how others see them. Their revelations are humorous, thought provoking and surprising. The young women grapple with issues as diverse as access, education, employment, sexuality and growing up with disabilities.
Filmmaker Nussbaum started the Empowered Fe Fes in 1999 and made the film in 2004. The Fe Fes are a part of a youth program at Access Living, a disability rights organization in Chicago.
"These girls did not want to be depicted as pathetic or saintly or any of the other paternalistic portrayals of disabled people put out there by the dominant culture," Nussbaum said.
That's when the Fe Fes learned how to work their own sound and camera equipment - thanks to Beyondmedia.
Toohey has seen the film and was so moved that she felt compelled to share it with others.
"The film is very positive, and girls who made the film in high school talked about their experiences, the challenges they faced, their hopes and dreams. I thought it was very humorous and I knew it would get a good dialogue going between those with disabilities and without," she said.
After watching the film, attendees will have an opportunity to discuss the issues, talk with students with disabilities and learn from local organizations that empower people with disabilities. Invited guests include Brick Township resident Jeanine Niemira from the NJCWD, Ms. Wheelchair New Jersey 2007 Kelly Rouba, and Kelly A. Matula, a Princeton University student and NJCWD scholarship winner.
Physically, Niemira is wheelchairbound.
Emotionally, spiritually, intellectually … nothing can keep her down. She was born prematurely, resulting in a diagnosis of cerebral palsy. She graduated from Monmouth University, West Long Branch, with bachelor's and master's degrees in social work. In her presentation onMarch 8, she will show it is possible for disabled people to lead fulfilling lives with a healthy dose of "patience, planning and laughter."
"It is important to make the general public aware of concerns facing the disabled population, because as we get older we all face some form of disability. Unfortunately, for those of us who are permanently disabled, the process of gaining access and equality has been a long, difficult one. If we all work together these changes will come in a more timely manner and this will benefit all community members in the future," Niemira said.
Toohey hopes that many people - those who are disabled and those who want to be enlightened by the message - will come out onMarch 8 and see the film.
"Sometimes you can tell someone is disabled and sometimes you can't. A disability might be invisible to the naked eye," she said. "People are afraid to approach people. We want to share the idea that you shouldn't make assumptions about people. It might take more time to figure out how to interact with someone with a disability, but it will always be worth the time."
By: Ingrid Hu Dahl, Youth Media Reporter - February 14, 2008. link
Beyondmedia Education is a Chicago-based 501c3 nonprofit organization whose mission is to collaborate with under-served and under-represented women, youth and communities to tell their stories, connect their stories to the world around us, and organize for social justice through the creation and distribution of media arts.
Recently, Chicago Public Television station WTTW’s Image Union refused to air Beyondmedia Education’s award-winning documentary Turning a Corner, claiming that the content is inappropriate. As part of the award, Turning a Corner was to be screened on WTTW’s Image Union program. Created in a media activism workshop with members of Prostitution Alternatives Round Table (PART)—15 women who had been street-level sex workers in Chicago—the film recounts their battles with homelessness, violence and discrimination and provides insight into Chicago’s sex industry. Beyondmedia Education recently won the Chicago Reporter’s John A. McDermott Documentary (short) Film Competition for Turning a Corner. WTTW’s refusal to air the program cites the sensitive subject matter—sex workers in Chicago—as the reason for their decision.
In response, and due to other recent events that have challenged access to free press in Chicago (including Loyola’s takeover of WLUW and the buyout of the Chicago Reader and the firing of key writers) on January 17th Beyondmedia Education organized a meeting at Columbia College for community and independent media makers to come together to build a media justice plan for action addressing issues of censorship, inequality in media access, and the increasing corporate control of media in Chicago.
In January, YMR interviewed Salome Chasnoff, Executive Director of Beyondmedia.
YMR: In your own words, please discuss the important issue of community access to public media as it relates to the youth media field.
Chasnoff: It’s to recognize the reality that young people are part of our world. We are all in this together. We all need to communicate in the same space. Adults are very quick to complain that young people don’t communicate with them—that there is an invisible divide between the generations both in the public and private spheres. For example, “I don’t understand their music, dress, etc.” Media—public communication—is a way for these divides to be bridged and the public forum to be rebuilt.
In some ways, media reflects what is happening on the ground and in some ways it constructs what is happening. We can see the public and private as co-creative. Through media making we can repair the social fabric. Youth media is key to that enterprise. Technology is the means but the end result is larger. Youth are going to run the world and they are the vibrant voice of today. That has to be reflected in everything—including public access—and adults need to be accountable to young people. The only way to do that is to hear them. But young people also need to take responsibility for speaking and participating—and fight for the space in which to do it. If youth have something to say in the public space and that access is blocked—that is censorship.
YMR: About 30 people attended the media justice meeting you organized at Columbia College. What was the overall outcome?
Chasnoff: There were all kinds of groups that attended the meeting. Beyondmedia works with many different cohorts. Attendees included policy makers, media makers, academics, and youth media. Unless we are trying to develop an initiative, it is normally difficult to get these groups together. Everyone is so busy. People need to have a particular, shared objective.
In the break-out groups, there was a concern for university accountability (journalism/media programs). Students are being trained for jobs that do not exist—therefore, universities must share resources and be transparent in their programs.
People want to continue meeting and bring in more groups and definitely more young people (for youth voice). We are developing a listserv and the next meeting will be at Southwest Youth Collaborative in order to change the context of each meeting to reflect the diversity of voices. We are committed to win-able battles.
At the meeting, we talked about a live weekly forum where people could express their views on a particular issue (a hot issue) that could be broadcast locally. This would work well for young people and all different marginalized groups. Parents are complaining that they do not know what their teens are thinking. Youth can speak through media and adults can learn a lot from that.
YMR: How can educators, media justice organizers, community members and young people collaborate and support each other in doing this type of work?
Chasnoff: An important thing is to remember that we are all involved in the same project. What we do is about all of us. We don’t have to actively collaborate to keep each other’s best interests in mind. If what we are creating is for everyone, than we are collaborating. We have to remember to keep our blinders off and always expand our vision so it includes more and more issues, people, and audiences. If we are acting out of a social justice model, than ultimately, what we do will serve the greatest good.
YMR: What role can independent and community media play in accessing young people within public media?
Chasnoff: This is already happening. I’ve been a media maker for twenty years and I have seen youth media grow from something non-existent to a viable field. Part of that is the way technology has grown—young people have more access to media tools and knowledge. Public media must create a space of access for marginalized voices.
For example, independent/community media must have opportunities for young people to become involved and expand their frame as a result of talking to young people. Youth must learn how to engage media with solving issues or problems that concerns them.
YMR: One specific question at the meeting was “what kind of a job is Chicago public media doing in representing the public interest”? How does this relate to youth media?
Chasnoff: I think people would find youth media (and marginalized voice/media) interesting in Chicago. The Chicago public likes to be challenged and entertained. Many want to be active, critical viewers. The work we make here in Beyondmedia is not entertainment based and yet we get a lot of positive responses from a diverse array of people.
Rarely has my breath been taken away by mainstream media. But when someone is taking public space for the first time after making their story their entire lives, it is totally unique, fresh and surprising. It has the capacity to capture people’s imaginations and they can learn from that. It is not a story that is made to sell a product. It is a story that is expressing lived experience and, therefore, something most people can relate to, recognizing the truth in storytelling. The problem with a lot of university filmmaking programs is that state-of-the-art equipment is available to learn on but you might as well watch the products on mute—they are boring. The focus is warped in my opinion. Young people that really want to grab the power of these tools in their hands and use them to express their unique vision and get something that would make their world better—that is exciting.
YMR: What strategies can youth media educators use to access public media more effectively and consistently?
Chasnoff: Develop relationships with gatekeepers of public media and educate them to what youth media could bring to them and their audiences. Try to work creatively together. Develop programming that would allow youth to “see” behind the scenes how public media is made (and even develop roles for them such as internships and/or career paths). Work with public media such as NPR, PBS and even universities to develop resources. If taxpayers support and “own” these outlets, then they should reflect our vision. Young people and adults must fight to own public voice. We can’t take our ownership for granted—we have to fight for it on a daily basis. The relationship between public media and free speech/democracy is indivisible because you can’t have one without the other.
For example, as a result of the response from our colleagues and peers, Beyondmedia did win a battle. It’s not official yet but, despite the set back with WTTW’s Image Union, it looks like our full documentary will be aired on WTTW’s regular programming in the spring in an even better time slot and not just the initial short version proposed to air. This proves that there are win-able battles out there when you mobilize your troops in the field and beyond.
Dannette Hoarde Honored with $5,000 Avon Hello Tomorrow Fund Award
Avon Foundation - February 12, 2008. link
Dannette Hoarde was named this week’s winner of the Avon Hello Tomorrow Fund, a weekly $5,000 award program from Avon Products, Inc. to support the empowerment of women. Dannette’s award will help fund Beyondmedia’s computer literacy workshops for formerly incarcerated women, integrated with their project website, Women and Prison: A Site for Resistance.
A recent poll showed the number of women in Illinois state prisons was 2,520 – a 173% increase in ten years. Additionally, more than 60% of the women entering prison have not attained a high school diploma. Post incarceration, women often return to their communities with few, if any, marketable job skills, yet they are often responsible for their children as well as themselves. With little sense of community or support, they are often become isolated and have minimal exposure to successful role models. As a formerly incarcerated woman herself, Dannette understands this problem firsthand.
Dannette manages womenandprison.org, a project of Beyondmedia Education, a non-profit that collaborates with under-served and under-represented women to tell their stories and organize for social justice through alternative media and arts. Dannette was also a participant in the the workshop that produced “What We Leave Behind,” a short documentary in which women former prisoners presented the issues of women in prison and its impact on their children.
Dannette’s outreach on behalf of the Web site extends to current and formerly incarcerated women, as she encourages them to share their stories and engage with the online community. This online exchange is a way for women to learn from one another as they create lives for themselves after prison, and it helps women “on the inside” stay updated on legislation and feel supported. In addition to serving women and their families, womenandprison.org has also become a unique resource for scholars, educators and policy makers. To extend its impact, Dannette began conducting outreach to organizations that work with post-incarcerated women, and discovered that many of these organizations lack computer equipment and resources, therefore excluding women access to this powerful support system. The award will support the purchase of laptops to expand access to formerly incarcerated women and equip them to submit their oral histories to this unique archive.
Thanks to her Avon Hello Tomorrow Fund award, Dannette will be able to reach an estimated 500 women this year by conducting two to four workshops per month in Chicago, serving women of all ages and backgrounds with training in computer literacy skills. “I hope to be an inspirational role model, helping women obtain employable skills, connect with other formerly incarcerated women and have dreams,” says Dannette. The award will fund the purchase of two laptop computers, curriculum materials, professional development courses and software, and cover transportation, advertising and communication costs.
Beyondmedia’s winning was selected from a pool of strong contenders by an expert panel of judges, including Suze Orman, America’s most recognized expert on personal finance. Dannette is one of thirteen weekly winners to be selected from more than 900 applicants from across the U.S.
Good Intentions
The Chicago Reporter held a documentary contest. Not even the winner’s happy.
By Michael Miner - The Chicago Reader - December 6, 2007. link
Do you believe art drives social change? Venita Griffin does, and as director of marking and communications for the Community Renewal Society, she found herself in a position to act on this belief. CRS publishes the Chicago Reporter, which this year sponsored the first ever John A. McDermott Documentary Film Competition. It was her idea.
The good news is that Griffin and Alysia Tate, editor and publisher of the Reporter, say there will be a McDermott competition next year, and hopefully many more to come. The bad news is that the first time out, the competition ended in something of a shambles. The winners feel rooked because their film won’t be shown as expected on WTTW’s Image Union, and the producer of Image Union wishes his program weren’t getting blamed for breaking a promise he says it never made in the first place.
The late John McDermott founded the Reporter some 30 years ago to explore issues related to race and poverty that the mainstream press wasn’t paying enough attention to. More agenda driven today than it was when it simply laid out grim facts for a city that wasn’t eager to hear them, the Reporter put out a call last April for films that examined “racial and economic disparities.” This criterion would be loosely applied, and so would another, that the entries “should not exceed 15 minutes.”
The call for entries promised a public screening of the top three entries. Moreover, it said, “one winning entry will be aired during WTTW11 Chicago’s Image Union.”
On October 14 Beyondmedia Education, a production house that focuses on marginalized women, got an e-mail from Griffin that began, “Congratulations.” Turning a Corner, a Beyondmedia documentary on prostitution in Chicago, had won the McDermott. There’d be a screening and panel discussion October 19 at the Cultural Center and other screenings at “several venues” to be determined.
Associate director Joanne Archibald e-mailed back. “There was also a statement that one of the films would be chosen to be on Image Union. Is that Turning a Corner?” she asked. “Sorry for the confusion,” Griffin replied. “Turning a Corner is our main winner—so yes, you guys will be shown on Image Union. I will put you in touch with the Producers there.”
But Image Union producer Eddie Griffin had a different idea. “We were asked to be a judge and we were asked if we’d be willing to pick a film and put it on the air,” he says. “And that’s what we did.” They watched the DVD the Reporter sent them, which contained six films, and picked No Half Steppin, a 17-minute documentary on local rapper Sharkula, a dreamer who hustles his recordings on the street.
Six judges graded the six films according to such criteria as “Social justice issue tackled was clear and apparent” and “Film successfully communicates the challenges/special needs of a certain economic and/or racial or ethnic group.” Filmmakers Brendan Kredell and Tom Bailey do a nice job of capturing Sharkula’s charms and torments, but No Half Steppin doesn’t reflect those judging criteria, which probably helps explain its appeal to Image Union. (The anthology show likes work that’s “out there,” says Eddie Griffin’s predecessor, Annie Porter.)
“We’re the only winner that was ever announced,” says Salome Chasnoff, executive director of Beyondmedia and director of Turning a Corner. “It’s like they pulled the other one out of a hat.”
On October 26, Venita Griffin e-mailed Beyondmedia to let them know that an upcoming screening of Turning a Corner at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Pilsen had been canceled.
“Also,” she went on, “Image Union has decided to air the second place winner of the McDermott film fest on its show, saying it fit better with the theme of the episode they planned to show it on. I am truly sorry that Turning a Corner won’t be shown, but Image Union has final say on what show they will air.”
Second-place winner? “That’s what really grabbed our attention,” says Chasnoff, “because there had been no mention of a second-place winner or any place winner as far as we knew.” (Tom Bailey says he and Kredell found out from the Reporter “significantly later” than October 14 that their film was the runner-up and would be shown on Image Union.)
A conference call with Alysia Tate followed. According to the notes of the Beyondmedia participants, Tate said Image Union had turned down Turning a Corner because of the “sensitivity of the material.”
Tate and Griffin have apologized, and apologized again. “We do regret any miscommunication on our part,” they wrote in a November 19 letter to Beyondmedia. “At this time we feel it is most appropriate for you to speak directly with Image Union around your questions and concerns about why your film was not selected for airing.”
Eddie Griffin is new in his job. Venita Griffin originally negotiated WTTW’s role with his predecessor. But Annie Porter and Eddie Griffin both say Image Union would never have committed itself to the judges’ choice. “The jury selected Turning a Corner and we selected No Half Steppin,” Eddie Griffin told me. “We reserve the right to make our own decision.”
As Tate suggested, Archibald called Eddie Griffin. “I said, ‘What’s objectionable?’” she says. “And he said it was the subject matter, prostitution. ‘This isn’t HBO.’ And I said you can see more controversial material on prime time any day. There was no nudity. The way it was presented was not lurid or sensational. It’s real.”
HBO? “I’m not here to speak out against the film,” Griffin told me, declining to discuss his conversation with Archibald.
It’s not like the fate of Turning a Corner hinges on Image Union—a program that airs at the not-so-prime times of 10:30 PM Thursday and midnight Monday. What Beyondmedia entered in the McDermott competition was a 14-minute preview of a 53-minute film that premiered at the Northwestern University law school auditorium in February 2006 and has been screened frequently since. “Image Union is not that important to us,” says Chasnoff. “What was important to us was the false promise and the lack of information we were getting so we couldn’t figure out what was going on, and we felt it was wrong. When we started talking about it in the office and researching it we began to expose a lot of issues that concerned us, like the lack of access to public media and censorship.”
Censorship? Does she believe that’s what this is about? “I do, I do,” she says. “If public media isn’t a place where these women can have a platform for their message, that’s censorship. If they’re not considered part of the constituency for public media, that’s censorship to me. Look at it from our point of view. First of all, we were told the winner would get a screening on Image Union. We were told we were the winner. We were told we were top winner and we’d get a screening. All of a sudden we weren’t going to get a screening. What’s that about? It felt like censorship.”
In other words, Beyondmedia isn’t mad at the Reporter for meaning well but making some mistakes. It’s mad at WTTW for stiffing their film. Chasnoff made it clear to me that she likes the Reporter. She regularly reads the Reporter. Last year the Reporter ran a long interview with her on the making of Turning a Corner.
Chasnoff might want to get in touch with Barbara Allen and Dan Soles. Allen’s a WTTW producer who sat on a panel that talked about independent media and social change the night Turning a Corner was introduced as the winning film at the Cultural Center. She admired it. “I had to reevaluate what I thought about prostitution,” she says. “I’d never thought about it on that human level.” Soles is WTTW’s senior vice president of TV content. He told me about other locally created documentaries coming to WTTW, and he said that if Chasnoff and Archibald send him the full 53-minute version of Turning a Corner he’ll certainly consider it.
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Beyondmedia Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- December 6, 2007
Chicago, IL – Chicago Public Television station WTTW has refused to air Beyondmedia Education’s documentary Turning A Corner, claiming that the content is inappropriate. Beyondmedia Education recently won the Chicago Reporter’s John A. McDermott Documentary (short) Film Competition for Turning a Corner. As part of the award, Turning a Corner was to be screened on WTTW’s Image Union program. Their refusal to air the program cites the sensitive subject matter as the reason for their decision.
Turning a Corner is far from sensational, containing no nudity or language that violates FCC regulations. Rather, it tells the stories of people involved in the sex trade – through their own voices – and depicts their efforts to raise public awareness of systemic injustice and promote legislative reforms. Created in a media activism workshop with members of Prostitution Alternatives Round Table (PART), 15 women who had been street-level sex workers in Chicago, the film recounts their battles with homelessness, violence and discrimination and provides insight into Chicago’s sex industry. The film has screened nationally and won a number of awards, including a Hometown Video Award from the national Alliance for Community Media and the Beloit International Film Festival’s Best Documentary Midwest.
Image Union has shown films that portray violence against women, including one fictional film in which a woman tricked her abusive husband into murdering her. Unfortunately, women who do not want to be abused or murdered have not received the same representation. Beyondmedia argues that WTTW’s refusal to screen Turning a Corner exposes the underlying issues of censorship and access to public media. WTTW features an entertainment-heavy, non-representative schedule of programs, yet claims in its mission to represent the issues of the “diverse audiences in Chicago and its communities.”
Beyondmedia Executive Director and the film’s director Salome Chasnoff stated, “This action by WTTW raises important questions. If community-licensed, publicly funded television isn’t a place where the women represented in Turning a Corner can have a platform for their message, who is it for? Who does have access to the media? How committed is our public media to representing all of our voices? WTTW’s action shows a lack of understanding of what censorship actually means. At Beyondmedia, we have always tried to draw attention to the pressing issues of media control and the silencing of voices.” Beyondmedia is urging concerned community members to contact WTTW and express their support for screening Turning a Corner.
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Did WTTW commit censorship or something less sinister?
By Michael Miner - Chicago Reader Blog - December 21st 2007 - link
"Censorship" is a fighting word. It's what WTTW was accused of in my December 6 column. Chasnoff's the executive director of Beyondmedia Education and the director of Turning a Corner, a 53-minute film on prostitution in Chicago that Beyondmedia completed in early 2006. My story was about a 14-minute version of Turning a Corner that this fall won a documentary competition sponsored by the Chicago Reporter yet wasn't given a screening on WTTW's Image Union as expected. Chasnoff thought a screening had been promised the winner and that WTTW reneged: "If public media isn't a place where these women can have a platform for their message, that's censorship," she told me. "If they're not considered part of the constituency for public media, that's censorship to me."
But neither the station nor Image Union had ever committed to airing the winning film in the Reporter competition -- IU simply agreed to select one of the entries and show it. What's more, WTTW's senior vice president of TV content, Dan Soles, told me that if Beyondmedia sent him the full 53-minute film, he'd watch it and consider it. That's the note on which I ended.
That note didn't satisfy Beyondmedia. It asserts on its Web site that "WTTW's refusal to screen Turning a Corner exposes the underlying issues of censorship and access to public media." It site urges friends of Beyondmedia to post comments on the Reader Web site after my column and to e-mail WTTW in protest. It even provides a letter to Soles that can be sent to WTTW with a couple of computer clicks. "Public media holds the responsibility of ensuring that all community members have a space for media representation," says this letter. "By censoring the voices of marginalized women, you undermine their ability to participate fully in our democracy. I hope that WTTW will take this event as an opportunity to live up to its mission and screen work that represents all of Chicago’s communities."
Some of Beyondmedia's friends have done what they were asked. These comments follow my column. "When you combine shameless lack of courage and programming cowardice you get censorship. Sadly, this is what we’ve come to expect from WTTW." "This is a very real story that shouldn't be censored just because it involves sex work." "WTTW, get over your puritanism and show something that matters to us." "To hear of this competition-turned-censorship-move isn't just disheartening, it's angering."
And here's an e-mail to the station that didn't simply repeat the boilerplate: "I, and many other Chicagoans, rely on public television and radio to be objective voices in a world full of censorship and spin -- I hope that WTTW has not fallen prey to these same things." A reply from WTTW's "Member and Viewer Services Department" said that "unfortunately, 'Turning a Corner' is not currently scheduled to air on WTTW 11 as our programming director has not been given the opportunity to review the program by its producers. We will gladly forward your request to our programming director, but the program will not be aired until it can be reviewed."
That's pretty much what Soles had told me. But when I called Chasnoff and asked if she'd sent Soles a copy of the full movie, she said, yes, she had, and then she told me something that neither she nor Soles had mentioned to me before. She'd also sent WTTW a copy in early 2006. She got a reply in May of 2006 from Sarah Warner, WTTW's "community partnerships and outreach assistant," who said "our programmer" (that would be Soles, Warner tells me) had some reservations but by and large found the film "very powerful and moving. . . . He would consider airing it, if it were shorter (half an hour)."
Chasnoff wrote back to say she'd be happy to edit a half-hour version of Around a Corner (ed. Turning A Corner) but first she wanted to find out what the programmer liked and didn't like. Warner replied, "I spoke with Dan and he would be happy to speak with you." But Chasnoff tells me that weeks later she still hadn't been able to reach Soles. Eventually she gave up on the idea of getting his feedback for a shorter version. "I felt I was spinning my wheels," she says.
So what doesn't quite feel to me like censorship does feel a lot like a runaround. Censorship's more flattering -- more flattering to Beyondmedia, certainly, but also to WTTW, which at least can be said to be acting with intent. "We get so many submissions I can't honestly recall seeing the film." Soles told me, estimating there were about 50 DVDs on his desk. I said there might be as many as two copies of Turning a Corner in the pile. "I'm glad she's resubmitted it," he said, "and I look forward to viewing it."
The number of women in prison is on the rise and yet they are often left out of discussions on issues directly affecting them.
In this episode of "Community Media & You", Thom Clark discusses these issues and how Media Arts is being used to include incarcerated and formally incarcerated women in debates that will shape their lives. The show's guests include, associate director of BeyondMedia, Joanne Archibald and project manager for womenandprison.org, Dannette Hoarde.
Last month, on June 27, 2007 early in the morning, I was on a bus on my way to Atlanta Georgia where the US Social Forum took place. Thanks to Girls Best Friend Foundation for giving me the opportunity to be part of the US Social Forum. It was a great experience, I learned a lot about many people. It was exciting for me to see different kinds of people that are working together on many different issues to make their communities safer and better . There were people from all over the world. I especially remember this guy from Columbia that was at one of the workshops. He talked about how the U.S is killing all the crops in their attempts to stop cocaine growing. They spray chemicals that kill all the plants, not just cocaine.
I participated on several workshops. At one, “Other Politics Is Possible,” a couple organizations, like Incite and the Garment Worker Center talked about the different ways that they organize, such as marches and rallies. The Garment Worker Center talked about the way they try to educate the workers, through workshops that they offer. I also watched a few films from the film festival. One of the films that I remember is ‘Salud!,” that talks about the health care in Cuba and how everyone in Cuba has health care. This has been in the news lately with Michael Moore’s “Sicko,” but Salud! focused entirely on Cuba to show the global need for universal healthcare. It’s not just a US problem.
Over all the US Social Forum was a great experience. The US Social Forum was an inspiration to continue my work. The energy that you can feel being around so many people that are working together on so many issues is just incredible.
OR VIDEO AND INSTALLATION ARTIST Salome Chasnoff, involvement in women’s issues was a matter of personal evolution. Feminism, as expressed through women’s arts and literature, spoke to her while studying performance in graduate school in the 1980s. Chasnoff adapted the work of female writers and artists for the stage, eventually implementing film and video in her performances and adding a new dimension to women’s progressive initiatives through media. With these skills, Chasnoff founded and became executive director of Beyondmedia Education. The Chicago-based nonprofit extends unconventional media access to diverse groups of women and girls, giving a compelling voice to women’s issues—incarceration, prostitution, the media’s representation of women, reproductive health, and more—through the subjects’ own voices. Chasnoff teaches marginalized women to express stories through media activism; in doing so, she changes their lives and the lives of others through poignant video documentation.
PLAYGIRL: How does Beyondmedia connect with women?
SALOME CHASNOFF: The media we produce emerges from authentic collaboration with women and girls. It’s not a media expert’s interpretation of people’s experiences; they are told through the voices of people themselves… A professional doesn’t come and sit with them for three hours, tape them, then go off and edit—it’s part of a whole process where we work with a group as a team and take them through the whole process of media production, from learning basic production skills to exploring issues together, to kind of growing together as a group and then producing this thing together and getting it out to the world.
What women’s sexual issues need attention the most ?
Reproductive health. We’re seeing rising HIV and AIDS infection, especially among young women, because of the government’s exclusive funding of abstinence-only programs and all the other ways it uses religion to what I feel violate women’s basic human rights. Another thing is media violence and how it normalizes actual violence against women.
Tell us about covering prostitution in the film Turning A Corner.
We worked with a group in Chicago called the Prostitution Alternatives Round Table (PART), a part of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. It’s an advocacy group for people exiting the streets and sex trade. It emerged out of a workshop I facilitated with 15 women who’d worked in street prostitution… One of the most powerful things we did was go around Chicago, where they told personal stories on the same streets where in the past they had traded sex.
Beyondmedia also addressed the plight of disabled women attempting to gain or regain their sex lives.
We did a fun and different kind of video called Doin’ It: Sex, Disability and Videotape. We took these young women with disabilities, The Empowered Fe Fes, and did a feminist sex shop and talked about masturbation… I think people who view sexuality as having sex only, and people who view sex for procreation only turn out to be, generally speaking, pretty frustrated.
[Laughs]
What has been the group’s greatest accomplishment?
We gave a voice to the most marginalized women and girls among us. It’s deeply affected the people who contributed to the making of the works and also to many who view them. We’ve also become a community for women artists and activists; we have so many people who hit our web site and say they’ve discovered an island in the middle of a harsh sea… They see our site and want to get involved.
February 2007
Feministing.com
by Celina De Leon
Photo by Audrey Cho as it appeared in The Chicago Reporter.
Salome Chasnoff is executive director of the alternative media nonprofit, Beyondmedia. Salome is a video and installation artist, media activist and educator, whose work is dedicated to expanding media access for marginalized communities. She has been an arts educator for the past 20 years in university and community settings, and an artist-activist in the prison moratorium movement for 8 years.
Beyondmedia, for the most part, works with young women between the ages of 13 and 25. They also partner with many women’s and queer youth groups.
Here’s Salome…
According to Beyondmedia’s mission statement, if underserved communities can document and communicate their stories and serve as educators to others, they can generate social transformation. Can you talk more about this, and give some examples from Beyondmedia’s work?
I think when other people tell our stories, they are necessarily doing so through the veil of their own biases, experiences and agendas. This can’t be helped. Marginalized communities are by definition invisible to or misrepresented by the corporate media. So, taking your own representation into your own hands gives you tremendous power. Sharing your story with those who are uninformed can open their eyes to your humanity.
It’s particularly true for people who are at the bottom of the social hierarchy. For example, women who work in the sex trade industry. We did a documentary with women in the sex trade industry recently, “Turning a Corner.” We trained them to tell their stories and they lobbied legislators in Springfield [Illinois] around specific bills that were pending. Several of the legislators said that it was through hearing the women’s voices—hearing the women’s stories through their own voices—that their minds were changed, and their votes. The women ended up winning some major policy victories in Illinois because of that.
Also, people who are incarcerated are often out of sight and out of mind. We don’t know what goes on [in prison], so it’s very easy for us to carry all kinds of stereotypes about them. We have a website, Women in Prison: A Site for Resistance, and it has stories and interviews with women inside. They send us tales of their experiences which are first-person, detailed, and filled with truths that we don’t get exposed to, so they inform us differently.
We do workshops. We specialize in media production workshops which take people who have no previous experience with media making through the whole process from developing and learning basic media literacy and production skills, to learning how to focus on the issues that affect them and their communities from a politicized perspective, to developing a project and creating it as a team and taking it out to the world. The media that we produce at Beyondmedia emerges from authentic collaborations with women and girls. The stories that we represent are not a media expert's interpretation of people's experiences. They’re told in the voices of the people themselves. [The people] have control over how they’re being represented. The media speaks in a profound way to viewers. It can also be a life changing experience for the makers themselves because many have not had their stories heard, their realities recognized and valued. In this way, the making of media becomes the medium for community building, for healing, for social transformation.
From your work with young women, what issues do they often choose to work on or explore?
Sometimes they’re already exploring them. Sometimes they haven’t given it a thought. We have all kinds of collaborations and everyone is different. But pretty consistently, the issue of violence is often an issue; sexuality permeates all of the issues; and media representation, and how these are all connected and feed on each other. We become so used to living in a misogynistic society that the violence against women has become normalized. So, when the young women have the experience of taking the media into their own hands, it’s a way of talking back.
What are some projects Beyondmedia is working on now?
We’ve been working for the past four years with a group called The Empowered Fe Fes. It is a group of young women, primarily young women of color, who are disabled in a variety of ways. We’re showing one of the pieces that we made in a double feature. The main feature is called “Doin’ It: Sex, Disability, and Videotape.” It’s about letting the world know that young women with disabilities are sexual beings with sexual needs and sexual desires, and have a need for sex ed. They have the same dreams and hopes and ambitions that everybody does, and the same medical and educational needs.
The short tape is by young girls. It’s on bullying and how it has become a new topic, but somehow young people with disabilities, how they’re treated, is not seen as bullying. It’s a pretty virulent form of discrimination and has a big impact on their educational experience with long-range implications.
We have a women in prison program and two really powerful projects happening. One is Women and Prison: A Site for Resistance—it’s a website—which I mentioned earlier. It’s a collection of first-person oral histories of women in prison and formerly incarcerated women—articles, reports, journals, poetry, art, scholars and activists’ contributions, video, and audio. It’s a really unique place to hear the voices of women and girls affected by the prison system. We also recently got a grant to hire formerly incarcerated women to manage the site. We’re doing outreach to people in prison, and formerly incarcerated, to submit their stories. We’re providing workshops to show them how to use the site and how to contribute their stories. It’s a really powerful project. I’m really excited about it.
And then “Turning a Corner,” which I also mentioned earlier, which was made by women who were in street-level prostitution, that is in distribution in a lot of festivals. We’re doing screenings all over the country. Actually distribution of all our works is a major project that we’re strategically and intentionally expanding because it’s a great opportunity for universities to bring the voices of people [many students] are not ordinarily exposed to, into the classroom. Film festivals, cable, public television, we’re really trying to get the work out there.
One project that we’ve been working on for the past couple of years with LGBTQ youth is called “Can LGBTQ + School=Safe?” It’s a set of media organizing tools for queer youth in school settings. We’ve got the video and we’re working on the website. We are creating one guide for the students and another guide for teachers and adult facilitators. A lot of our projects have different components to make them complex tools.
For another project, we’re collaborating with two local organizations. One is Broadway Youth Center, which serves queer, transgender, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and questioning youth, many of whom are homeless; and About Face Youth Theater. We’re doing a project, HIV: History in Voices, which is a cultural history of HIV. It’s a long project; a documentary and a theater piece are going to come out of it.
What are your views on mainstream television? Do you recommend any shows to watch?
For me, mainstream TV, I use it for entertainment only. I think it’s really dumbed down, and interviewers don’t challenge their interviewees, even when they know they’re lying. For me, it’s a place to—when I’m tired—to crash, and do what everybody else does. I watch “The Daily Show,” “The Colbert Report,” “Grey’s Anatomy.” I love “Roseanne” reruns. Sometimes, when I’ve been working really hard, I’ll stay up late and watch garbage. I watch “The L word” when I can get it in.
Do you have any Oscar picks?
I haven’t seen them all. One film that I saw that I loved is “Volver.” I love Pedro Almodovar’s work, especially the later stuff. Penelope Cruz is up for an award. “Volver” is up for best foreign. I’m not really sure why they’re separated; why it has its own category. I think maybe that needs to be looked at a little more. I would vote for that.
I loved Eddie Murphy’s performance in “Dream Girls.” I just thought it was a stand-out performance.
What is the first step to becoming a media activist?
Learn to see and read mass media against the grain, critique it. Even if you enjoy it, be aware of how it might degrade or misrepresent people. Don't take the news on TV or in the newspapers at face value. Be suspicious. Educate yourself. Read widely and track down other sides of the story so your opinion can be better informed.
Then, find a way to take media into your own hands. Media literacy, which is about learning the concepts that allow you to critique media, also needs to involve learning the tools that will allow you to make your own.
Also, look at alternative media. Even stuff, by so-called professional standards, that is considered good. Professional says who?
I used to be on the board of the women’s film festival here in Chicago that is now defunct. I learned more from films by emerging artists—films that defy mass media standards. They were so wonderful, so memorable. Little pieces that I saw 10 years ago, I still remember. They were so moving. There was something so true to them. Just having something polished and slick that’s not—just look at the Oscars, actually—they fulfill all the standards of excellence and yet you walk away and say, “So what?” You don’t feel changed by it. And then next week you’ve forgotten it. To me that’s not great work.
Some people think alternative media is too biased to the left, and for some reason mainstream media is objective. What do you say to people who hold these beliefs?
[Laughs] First of all, alternative media is made by the right also. It’s just not generated by the corporate media machine, which is what makes it alternative. Media isn’t just movies, it’s also magazines, internet, music videos—there’s such a broad range of information. There are many forms to media.
I think a lot of alternative media is progressive because we’re smart and creative. [Laughs] Does anybody still believe mainstream is objective? Does anybody still believe that objectivity is possible? Everything that’s been going on in the media and around the Iraq war, you’d have to be living in a cave to believe that mainstream media is objective. The purpose of mainstream media is to earn money for its stockholders. Not to inform us. So, whatever serves that end is what is going to be published. For example, in order for Exxon Mobil to make record profits every year, they have to suppress the truth about global warming. Exxon Mobil funds a lot of media. Now it’s just been reported that they’re paying scientists to debunk global warming.
Another movie I would like to win [an Oscar] is the Al Gore movie, “An Inconvenient Truth.” That’s up for best documentary. It’s not just about its value as a viewing experience, but the impact it’s had, it’s awesome in terms of widespread education. I think taking that lecture he’s been doing for years—and we’re not talking about just some insignificant guy, this is Al Gore, he has a lot of power in the world—he has been doing this lecture all over the world. But once it became a film, it just escalated its effect, its impact, its reach, and the power surrounding it. The power of the message became amplified. It’s a wonderful example of the power of media—its ability to focus our attention and reframe it. I see it all the time in the work that we do. Bringing that power to the experience, to the realities of marginalized people—it has the same effect on a smaller scale at Beyondmedia.
January 2007
Beloit Daily News
BIFF WINNERS:
• Midwest Feature: “American Gothic”
• Midwest Short: “Auteur”
• Midwest Student: “An Open Door”
• Midwest Documentary: “Turning a Corner”
• Best of Wisconsin: “Side Effects”
• International Feature: “Johnny Was”
• International Short: “Die Besucher”
• International Animation: “Mantis Parable”
• International Documentary: “Downtown Locals
The director and a producer of “American Gothic” are such perfectionists they could find reasons to tweak the movie for the next five years, they acknowledge.
They must have done something right to have won the Beloit International Film Festival award for best Midwest Feature.
The men, Paul Kampf and Robert Last, were just two of the filmmakers who joined community members in walking the red carpet at La Casa Grande Friday night for the BIFF version of the Academy Awards, where directors received a Biffy instead of an Oscar.
Movie theme songs drowned the excited chatter of the semi-formal crowd as people circled around candlelit tables that featured - what else? - bowls of popcorn.
Nine silver Biffy statues sat beneath the movie screen before the ceremony began, but few seemed to notice their presence. Though an honor, winning a Biffy wouldn't define the festival for many of the participants. The experience and conversation with other filmmakers made everyone a winner, Kampf said.
With more than 100 submissions, filmmakers knew they were up against stiff competition. Winning a Biffy would be “insane,” 18-year-old writer and director James Haney said, but participating in the festival was an honor within itself.
“It's dream world and back to finals on Monday,” the California high school senior said.
Haney completed his feature film, “Viola,” in 10 months with the help of 300 West Coast teens from 12 high schools. The 80-minute drama depicts a Chinese boy and an American girl overcoming social boundaries as they connect through music, he said.
Although Haney has produced many shorts, this was his feature debut. Working with hundreds of people taught him many lessons, including coordination and communication, he said.
“Viola” didn't win in its category, International Feature. Instead, “Johnny Was,” a 90-minute drama from the United Kingdom, received the Biffy.
Still, the weekend was Haney's “dream come true.”
Fall 2006
Time Out Chicago
By Margaret Lyons
It's more than just an inside story, though. It's the most thought-provoking documentary we've seen in ages. What it lacks in technical finesse it makes up for in potency. Lucretia Clay tells the camera the story of how she was 14 when her mother sold her to a pimp. Brenda Myers talks of being dragged by a car. Many of the women talk about being sexually abused as children; of being addicted to drugs; about being kidnapped, raped and beaten. "All of them have experienced horrific violence on the job and in their lives," Chasnoff says. "But if they present themselves in an emergency room, or call the police, they're handcuffed and booked because they're criminals... None of these crimes against their bodies, against their person, have ever been prosecuted." Making the film was "as much about healing as it was about media making and advocacy. It was a very intense experience."
Turning a Corner is an intense film to watch, too, and not just because its subjects describe terrible violence and exploitation: It's because it's local. As part of the workshop, the women revisited places where they had transformative experiences. One woman shows us the abandoned three-flat where she used to live, where she would get high and bring her johns. One shows us a park where she was raped. One shows us a lot where her friend's maimed body was discovered. One shows us the stretch of Racine between 47th and 49th Streets where she used to work. Some cry, some remain calm; the unifying thread is one of pain, but each woman tells her own story in her own way.
Sex work is inextricably linked to poverty, homelessness, drug abuse, racism in the criminal-justice system and violence against women. "Street prostitution was the lens," Chasnoff says, "the nexus through which these different issues emerged." The lens focuses most sharply on incarceration. More than 5,000 people are arrested each year in Cook County on prostitution-related charges, and about 75 percent are prostitutes, 25 percent johns and less than 1 percent are pimps. This statistic is mentioned more than a few times. According to the film, around 40 percent of street prostitutes are women of color, 55 percent of people arrested for street prostitution are women of color, as are a staggering 85 percent of those sentenced to jail. In Illinois, prostitution can be prosecuted as a felony; pimping and solicitation are misdemeanors.
Chasnoff says she's in favor of decriminalizing sex work, but the opinions expressed in the film vary from the idea that pimping and solicitation should be felonies to all prostitution should be legal. Wherever you fall within that spectrum, the film makes a solid case that laws are inconsistently applied and skew unfairly to prosecuting women, and that police routinely harass sex workers. Chasnoff says that over the course of making the film, she became "more sensitive to how race, class, age, ability and education construct sex workers' identities." Watching the film has a similar effect.
Summer 2006
The Chicago Reporter: New Voices
By Erica Schlaikjer
While editing her latest film, "Turning a Corner," an hour-long documentary about prostitution in Chicago, Salome Chasnoff couldn't help but cry. The scene showed Lucretia Clay, a former prostitute, returning to the Sportsman's Inn motel on the city's Southwest Side, where she had spent 26 years of her life "turning dates" on street corners.
Clay "thought she had all this under control, that it was behind her," Chasnoff says. "Yet, when she was standing there, it was like she went right back to when she was 14 years old and she was sold to a pimp by her mother. I saw her battling with herself."
Clay's story is one of many that Chasnoff captured in the film, which premiered in February. The project was produced by Beyondmedia Education, a media activism group that Chasnoff created in 1996 in response to the exclusion of some women from the "information revolution" of the 1990s.
Since its inception, Beyondmedia has created almost 20 projects with marginalized groups of women and youth. Previous projects include a video about girls with disabilities and a multimedia art exhibit that recreated a prison cell through the eyes of female prisoners.
Chasnoff's documentary on prostitution gives voice to a group of 13 African American women, many of whom were beaten, raped or arrested during their involvement in the sex trade. The women were participants of the Prostitution Alternatives Round Table, a program of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless that addresses issues of homelessness and prostitution. Their stories were collected through a series of workshops facilitated by Beyondmedia, with support from the Chicago Legal Advocacy for Incarcerated Mothers.
For Chasnoff, the appeal of these stories is more than their raw emotions. "I don't want this work to be framed as though I'm some sort of tragedy junkie," she says. Instead, she insists there's a transformative power in storytelling, especially for the women in her documentary. "I witness time and time again É how [storytelling] helps you to see your experience differently, and how it promotes a healing process," she says. "Yes, the pain is always going to be there, but our relationship to it changes. The more we understand it and the more comfortable we feel with it, we can move beyond it."
Chasnoff recently sat down with The Chicago Reporter to talk about her project.
Now that you've made this film, what does prostitution mean to you?
My knowledge of the impact of criminalization has deepened. And so has my appreciation for the pain that so many of these women have experienced. And I think I have a much better understanding of how so many different issues intersect through prostitution: all the health issues, like HIV and AIDS; the bodily effects of violence and physical abuse, mental abuse, sexual abuse, domestic violence ...
And homelessness, drug use ...?
Exactly. And drug use has a lot to do with the economy---how people make money to survive. Prostitution is a work issue. And it's not just a work issue for the people involved in prostitution, but there are a lot of work roles that intersect with theirs. There are the pimps, the drug dealers, and then there are the police.
How do audiences react to your film?
When we do screenings, one of the major responses we get from people is, 'They chose to do that---so what are they complaining about?' In this society, problems and solutions are very individualized. People are reticent to see individual situations within larger systems of oppression. And 'choice' is a red flag because choice, for all of us, is limited. Free will, free choice, is a fantasy.
In the film, you said women in prostitution are both invisible and visible at the same time. What do you mean by that?
Women in prostitution are the most visible of the transaction. The pimp is always behind the scenes. And the John---if you don't catch him in the act, you don't know where to find him.
As an issue, it's very visible, especially in gentrifying areas, like Bucktown, where people want to eradicate prostitution from their neighborhoods because of the way it's affecting their property values and their experience of their million-dollar homes.
But women as individuals are invisible. Who's taking care of their kids when they're in prison? Who's paying for their funeral? Who's paying for their health care when they were beaten up? As individuals, they're invisible, and their voices are silenced.
Why are women in prostitution criminalized?
There are a lot of answers; I don't want to be held to one of them. But, in this society, we want to blame somebody, so you pick the person who's easiest to target. The kind of prostitution that happens on the streets is somewhere between 11 and 17 percent, and yet most of the arrests are there. And 75 percent of arrests are women in prostitution, and 25 percent are Johns---but that's a misdemeanor; it's not a felony. Now, in Chicago, women in prostitution can get a felony. It's a permanent mark. With a felony charge, it's not going to open any doors for them, for certain.
You would think that, in a logical, rational world, the people that make the money would be the ones to pay the higher price. But that's not how it works. The people who are making the money are getting off scot-free. Women working in clubs are paying between 40 and 60 percent to the club owner, and women on the street or that have pimps often turn over their entire take to the pimp and just get a little allowance to live off of. These are not the people that are benefiting from this system, and yet they're the ones getting criminalized.
Do you think there's something the city can do to prevent people from entering prostitution in the first place?
I don't believe in social controls in that way. But I think that offering people options---education, work options, treatment options---is the best form of prevention. Some people choose prostitution because that's what they want to do, and some people don't. They choose it because that's what's available to them.
Why do people get stuck in prostitution?
I think that varies a lot, according to each person. Some people are dealing with drug addiction, and there's not a lot you can do when you're in the grips of addiction. Other people's self-esteem is so low. You know how hard it is to get a job? When you have 10, 20 years of nothing on your resume, you're not just going to walk into some receptionist position---you know what I mean? There aren't very many choices for women who have been through that.
Did your workshops contribute to the healing process for these women?
People learned how to use cameras, how to interview, how to tell their story, but they also really healed, and I don't want to say from zero to 100, and everybody's fine now---that's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is healing is a lifelong journey for all of us. And people moved along in that journey. Part of it was just being together with all the people that they shared this experience with, and having the opportunity to talk about it openly with people that didn't judge them. For almost all of the women, this was the first time in their lives being in this kind of a setting.
What's one thing you want audiences to come away with?
I want people to put a human face on prostitution, to see that they're people that want the same things that everybody else wants. And that they deserve it.
March/April 2005
By Alison Parker
Clamour Magazine
Media provides the threads of a web that interconnect a community. Stories are shared, opinions are heard, and people are given the chance to hear perspectives that they may otherwise never know about. Making alternative media is crucial when so many relevant stories are pushed into the ground. Beyondmedia Education allows some of those stories to emerge from the earth.
Filmmaker Salome Chasnoff founded the organization in 1996 after producing a documentary about the 1995 United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China. Chasnoff emerged from the conference inspired and equally frustrated at the lack of media control women had. "There was a really strong need for young women to have increased media access and media skills, and also to have a different kind of education," Chasnoff says. "An education that not only delivers skills, but also supports them as developing women."
Beyondmedia's programs provide in-depth groundwork for each participant to learn and grow from. "[We have] year-long workshops in which girls and young women of diverse backgrounds learn to decipher the messages of dominant media and alternative media, and they create a wide range of their own media, including video, web design, digital imaging, audio recording, creative writing, photography and performance. Then they develop and distribute a group project."
The girls select a topic to work with, one that holds meaning and what they want to explore, many times ranging from race to sexual orientation to class issues. Says Chasnoff; "We talk about the topic through the many months and develop ideas about who the audience is, how we want to communicate the issues, and we create a project. They distribute it -- they have a public screenings and they package it, and they get out there with it."
The organization works with women in communities most in need of media education and services because of economic and/or social exclusion. Beyondmedia has partnered with over 90 community-based organizations and schools to produce media arts on subjects ranging from girls' activism to women's incarceration.
In the Women and Prison project, incarcerated women and girls, former prisoners and their families use media arts to voice their stories, promote public dialogue and community organizing. An upcoming online project, Women and Prison: A Site for Resistance will feature essays, personal narratives, creative writing, links to reports, studies, and other resources on women's incarceration.
Beyondmedia recently facilitated a media workshop with a group of young women with multiple disabilities. The group eventually produced their own video, Beyond Disability: The Fe Fe Stories. "After facilitating a support group for girls with disabilities for six years, I guess the most stunning and transformative thing that we ever did was to hook up with Beyondmedia," says Susan Nussbaum, founder and coordinator of the group. "Disabled girls are never presented with these kinds of opportunities by the systems that rule their lives. It's only natural that when they are given a challenge, they rise to the occasion."
Besides media literacy and production skills, these girls also gain personal empoewrment. Self-esteem, self-confidence and social consciousness are able to surface more freely, as well as a sense of personal power. "They become more aware of how their personal issues, their lives, and the community they build within a group become part of a larger society," says Chasnoff.
What perhaps the most important thing Beyondmedia provides is guidance, that gentle nudge to get one to do what they are fully capable of doing. Every woman has it in them, but it's difficult, Chasnoff says, to do it on your own, especially living in a society where women are marginalized in a male-dominated world. "Girls are more often prone to invisbility, and the inability to have an impact. They're more often voiceless; they more often accept that role. And a lot of them see their only opportunity is through their relationships with men. It's important that women shape public thinking, shape public dialogue, and shape public policy."
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"Art is not simply a product of culture but, more accurately, an agency of culture, an important means through which culture re-negotiates itself."A prison sentence is high on the list of things no woman wants. What are you going to do if you have to serve time? If you lose your kids, give birth in restraints, get bribed by guards or other prisoners, face employment discrimination afterwards, who's going to do anything about it? Who's responsible? Who's going to help you heal?
- Salome Chasnoff
Press
Film will serve as spark for discussion at library
February 28, 2007
Tri-Town News
Youth Media Reporter Interviews Salome Chasnoff
February 14, 2007
Youth Media Reporter
Womenandprison.org Wins Award to Support Computer Literacy Program for Formerly Incarcerated Women
December 2007
Chicago Reader
Good Intentions
December 2007
Chicago Reader
CAN-TV's "Community, Media and You" discussing Beyondmedia's Women and Prison website
CAN-TV
Zaida Sanabia talks about her US Social Forum experience
Playgirl Magazine interviews Salome Chasnoff
Playgirl Magazine
Feministing.com interviews Salome Chasnoff
February 2007
Time Out Chicago
Sex sells. But who pays?
Fall 2006
Time Out Chicago
Through Their Eyes
Summer 2006
The Chicago Reporter: New Voices
When a Whisper Becomes a Shout: Beyondmedia Education
March/April 2005
Clamor Magazine
Listen: The Empowered Fe Fes on Chicago Public Radio
November 30, 2004
eight forty-eight
Beyond Disability: The Fe Fe Stories
December 2004
Community Arts Network
Groundbreaking Woman: Salome Chasnoff
Spring 2004
Pistil Magazine
Behind the lens: Video artist focuses on women, media
August 25, 2003
Crain's Chicago Business
Zaida Sanabia
Our Ripple Effect
Chicago Foundation for Women
2003 Annual Report
Beyond Girl Talk, Young Women Find a Voice
OSI
Youth Media Reporter
June 18, 2002
30 Under 30 GLSEN Youth
Windy City Times
2004-06-23
When you take the inside with you
F News Magazine
March 2004