American Dreams Deferred

Directed by William David Caballero

More evidence that some of the most affecting art is made from exploring personal experience, William David Caballero’s American Dreams Deferred received its world premiere at the 2010 HBO NY International Latino Film Festival on Thursday, July 29^th. Filmmaker, animator and composer Caballero decided to film his tight-knit extended Puerto Rican American family on trips home to Fayetteville, NC while getting his masters in film at NYU. The story unfolds against the backdrop of the impending demolition of their old neighborhood, Coney Island, where Caballero recalls fun-filled days and nights with his parents and cousins in the 1980s, until his 9 year-old cousin Wati was injured by a stray bullet while attending Bible study, and the family made the move south.

But in North Carolina the challenges continue: when we meet the family in 2008, Junior “Chilly,” Caballero’s father is diabetic in need of a kidney transplant. Though he is a candidate, he cannot prove he can afford the associated medication and the family struggles to keep him on the transplant list. Caballero’s mother Millie cares for Chilly in a trailer in back of her mother’s house, where we witness the bantering sparks of Caballero’s grandparents’ on-again, off-again 50-year relationship. Caballero finds Wati and his other cousins Jay and Vito dealing with their own complex issues including prescription drug abuse, unplanned pregnancy, incarceration and illness, and his aunt Maritza struggling for peace of mind amid trying to help her children. Caballero – whom they all call David – is the one who “made it,” as they remind him pretty regularly.

Caballero’s self-aware narration and the way in which his family interacts with him paint a subtle portrait of the person behind the lens in this reflexive documentary. The filmmaker’s grappling with what sociologists call “survivor’s guilt” as he pursues his career in New York City is evident in gloomy and evocative animation sequences, when he returns north and symbolically retreats into his thoughts after visits to his family. A moving shot of Caballero riding the subway over the audio of a phone conversation with his aunt about his troubled cousin Jay and the slow fade of the subtitle “He would’ve graduated” is a monument to the filmmaker’s awareness and restraint.

But his sense of responsibility is informed by Caballero’s knowledge that his creativity is inherited and absorbed from his family and the film sparkles with that same family’s love, humor and big-screen personalities and their obvious respect for and comfort with him, even as he turns the camera on their personal crises. 

When Caballero mentioned the idea for the film to one of his professors at NYU, they discouraged him from the project, the director recalled after a screening of the film on Saturday at Clearview Chelsea Cinemas. His professor was worried that Caballero’s family would feel intruded upon, but as he explained, this was because the professor had never met his family. In American Dreams Deferred, we are lucky to get a chance to, through a thoughtful, beautifully shot portrait of a modern Puerto Rican American family who face challenges, but are not defined by them. A must see.

Now you have an opportunity to help support this important project, by making a donation via Kickstarter. As of today, they have just under $800 left to raise of a $15,000 goal - and they must raise this money by Monday, Aug. 2nd.

Support HANDS THAT FEED:

http://www.handsthatfeed.com/

For Tickets and more information visit: http://www.documentary.org/docuweeks2010

View the trailer here:  http://www.freedomridersfilm.com

Show times: August 13 - August 29, 2010:

New York City

IFC Theater - 323 Avenue of the Americas @ West 4th NY, NY 10014

Fri. Aug. 13:          12PM          5:30PM

Sat. Aug. 14:         1:45PM      7:30PM

Sun. Aug. 15:        3:30PM     9:35PM

Mon. Aug. 16:      12PM          5:30PM

Tues. Aug. 17:      1:45PM      7:30PM

Wed. Aug. 18:      3:30PM     9:35PM

Thu. Aug. 19:       12PM          5:30PM

Los Angeles

ArcLight Hollywood - 6360 W Sunset Blvd @  Vine Street, Los Angeles, CA 90028

Fri. Aug. 13:          3:40PM       9:45PM
Sat. Aug. 14:         1:40PM       7:35PM

Sun. Aug. 15:        5:20PM       9:50PM

Mon. Aug. 16:      1:40PM        7:35PM

Tues. Aug. 17:      5:20PM        9:50PM

Wed. Aug. 18:      1:40PM        7:35PM

Thu. Aug. 19:       5:20PM       9:50PM

FREEDOM RIDERS screens as part of the International Documentary Association [IDA]’s 14th annual DocuWeeks™ Theatrical Documentary Showcase. This year’s selected films includes a strong lineup of 17 features and 5 shorts to screen in New York City and Los Angeles.

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FREEDOM RIDERS is scheduled to air on PBS’ acclaimed American Experience series in May 2011 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1961 freedom rides.

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FREEDOM RIDERS is the first feature-length documentary to tell the story of a courageous band of civil rights activists who risked death by daring to defy the laws of Jim Crow in the Deep South in 1961. They were America’s first inter-racial and inter-religious mass movement to challenge segregation in bus and train facilities. Because of their efforts, the signs “whites only” and “colored only” were taken down forever.

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Greetings from the Rada Film Group!
School’s out for summer but (as we all know) the learning never stops. Here are some updates:

The Achievement Gap in the News

SAT Study Reveals Long-Suspected Racial Biases
On the Tuesday July 6th episode of the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC, Washington Post blogger Jay Matthews discussed a study by a “rogue researcher” that showed that in the vocabulary section, African American test takers were doing better than their European American counterparts on defining the more complex Latin-based words and doing worse on the simpler Anglo Saxon definitions - that often had different connotations in communities of color. Examples included “bad” “slick” and “tight.”

New book Whistling Vivaldi by Dr. Claude Steele examines “Stereotype Threat”
Stanford and Columbia University social psychologist Claude Steele’s new book Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us further explores his groundbreaking work on “stereotype threat”: the idea that the awareness of commonly held notions about a group can affect members of that group’s performance and behavior. Listen to Dr. Steele talk about how to reshape expectations on NPR.

Anderson Cooper 360 revisits “the Doll Test”
In May, CNN host (and Dalton School alum) Anderson Cooper and Soledad O’Brien presented “Black or White: Kids on Race”  The program featured a re-staging of the famous “Doll test” created by Margaret Beale Spencer, wherein kids are surveyed on their positive or negative associations with skin color. The mixed results are both discouraging and uplifting, and moved some parents to tears.

Andre Robert Lee’s Prep School Negro Explores Culture Clash, African American Families and Independent Schools
In the 1980s, Andre Robert Lee attended high school at a prestigious prep school in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Twenty years later, he returns to his mother’s home to re-examine the journey that led him away from his mother and sister culturally, and meets teenagers today, at his high school and others, who are facing the same tensions. Learn more about the film.

Inconvenient Truth Director Tackles the Charter School Situation in Waiting for Superman
Davis Guggenheim’s new film Waiting for Superman explores the lottery system in which some students win entry to charter schools with high success rates, and the rest are left to an uncertain future. In theaters this fall. (Pledge to see the film here).

An American Promise Production Updates

The Rada Film Group hears beautiful music at Sundance
An American Promise co-producers/co-directors Michèle Stephenson and Joe Brewster just returned from the 2010 Sundance Composers and Documentary Lab where they met talented composers and made fantastic connections with fellow filmmakers in an idyllic natural setting. Thanks to the Sundance Documentary Fund for making this wonderful experience possible!

Ford Foundation Awards Production Grant to An American Promise
In June, the Rada Film Group was awarded a Freedom of Expression grant from the Ford Foundation. “When we got involved five years ago, we were taken with the filmmakers’ sense of boldness” said Orlando Bagwell, Director of Freedom of Expression Work at Ford, at the Britdocs GoodPitch Forum at the Tribeca Film Festival in April. An American Promise “connects to our public education and students of color initiatives… This film can help teachers think through successful strategies to change their own classroom.“

Join the campaign by making a donation through our fiscal sponsor, Third World Newsreel. (Scroll to the bottom and specify your donation for “An American Promise”)

Learn more about the film: http://americanpromisedoc.com

Get more updates on our projects:

Subscribe to our blog!

This Saturday, June 12th Freedom Riders has its New York premieres at BAMcinemaFest.  For more information, visit BAMcinemaFest.

Freedom Riders was produced and directed by Stanley Nelson, produced by Laurens Grant and edited by Lewis Erskine and Aljernon Tunsil.  It will be broadcast on PBS as part of American Experience during 2011, the 50th anniversary of the freedom rides.

The film chronicles the story of the Freedom Riders - an interracial group of young people who traveled the South in 1961 challenging segregation by demanding access to terminal restaurants, waiting rooms, buses and trains.  Tracing the civil rights movement before it became The Civil Rights Movement, the film explores the stories behind these courageous actions.

Congratulations to the team and Firelight Media on an amazing, important film.  Check out this exclusive NY premiere, and the rest of the offerings of the BAMcinemaFest:

You can watch all the films from this year’s festival, which cover topics like the crisis of the uninsured, the harmful impacts of bottled water,  anti-Haitian sentiment in the Dominican Republic, community reactions to the Sean Bell murder in New York City, homelessness in the UK and more:

http://www.mediathatmattersfest.org/

At the third IMPACT session offered on Thursday: EDUCATE, educators talked about how they have used films from the previous seasons of Media That Matters in their classrooms.

Kim Allen, a teacher at a predominantly white high school, uses the film Vision Test by Wes Kim, to facilitate a discussion among her students about white privilege:

http://www.mediathatmattersfest.org/films/vision_test/

Melanie Folstrom teaches a social justice class to high school students aged 16-21 at a transfer school in Brooklyn. Using a graphic organizer, Melanie has her students brainstorm about what groups have privilege and which are oppressed when it comes to race, class, gender, religion and sexual orientation. She uses the film Perversion of Justice from Media That Matters 8 to spark a discussion of the prison industrial complex - and what groups are privileged or oppressed within it:

http://www.mediathatmattersfest.org/films/perversion_of_justice/

Maria Hantzopoulos, who teaches aspiring teachers at Vassar College uses the short narrative film Immersion from last year’s fest to engage her students in a discussion of bilingual education and high-stakes testing:

http://www.mediathatmattersfest.org/films/immersion/

Some tips for educators and filmmakers:

*  12 minutes is the perfect length for media to be used in a classroom setting

* Independent schools get media from iMediaSource

* Organizations dedicated to helping youth make media: Educational Video Center, Reel Works

* There is a lack of short historical films that can be used in classroom settings

Thanks to Arts Engine and all the sponsors of Media That Matters for these informative, eye-opening events!

Yesterday, the George Jackson Academy, the Metropolitan Center for Urban Education and the NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, sponsored by the Clark Foundation, the Coalition of Schools Educating Boys of Color (COSEBOC) and the New York State Association of Independent Schools (NYSAIS) convened a promising practices symposium at NYU entitled “What Works for Boys.” At the symposium, sociologist Pedro Noguera of the Metropolitan Center for Education at NYU presented the findings of a recent study funded by the Gates Foundation on several single-sex and co-educational public, private, charter and independent schools.

The George Jackson Academy, an all boys 4^th – 8^th grade school founded in 2003 by Brother Brian Carty, was modeled after the De La Salle method – a pedagogy that created all boys middle schools founded by the Archdiocese of New York to combat de facto segregation and to prepare boys for successful high school experiences.

The day began with a panel moderated by David Arnold, George Jackson Academy head of school, and featuring Brother Brian Carty, founder of the school and Antwan Allen, assistant head of school for curriculum and faculty development. The panel also featured David Banks, President of the Eagle Academy Foundation which created the first all boys public high school in New York City, Kate Sciorba, lead researcher in the Gates Foundation study, as well as Lynne Algrant, Assistant Principal at De La Salle Academy who served as Director of Diversity and Director of Admissions at the independent Ethical Culture Fieldston School and has conducted longitudinal research into students of color at majority white independent schools.

The members of the panel all stressed the importance of teachers actively building a supportive community for students and being available to students in mentoring relationships. Lynne Algrant related an anecdote where a teacher expressed frustration and just wished that her male students of color would “meet her halfway.” Algrant’s response was simple, “From where are you measuring the halfway point?” For some students, she said, their halfway point might be walking out of their apartment in the morning to come to school. “Find their halfway point,” Algrant encouraged teachers, “not yours.”

Antwan Allen of the George Jackson Academy emphasized the importance of a curriculum that prizes critical thinking and challenges students to ask why – the skills they will use in life outside the classroom. He also mentioned the George Jackson Academy’s integration of English and History lessons in order to inform the literature the boys study with context, as well as encouraging the boys to think of themselves as scientists – defined simply as people asking questions and experimenting to find out answers. He also mentioned the importance of avoiding labeling students, but rather finding out the background of why they might be exhibiting certain behavior.

David Banks, of the Eagle Academy Foundation, observed that African American and Latino males were probably the most studied people on the planet for the past few years, but that they need what all students need: leadership at their school, supportive parents and committed teachers. But for African American and Latino boys, Banks said, the difference is that because they’re under attack from a variety of directions, they need more of it. The Eagle Academy places an emphasis on mentoring and parent involvement, and Banks explained, has shown a great deal of success in engaging parents.

Many of the same ideas were reiterated by the findings of Dr. Noguera’s study, which set out to explore the practices and impact of single-sex schools serving Black and Latino males to find out if these practices are more effective than co-educational environments.

Dr. Noguera began by summarizing what research has shown to be characteristics of schools effectively serving boys of color. These include:

• Transforming the culture of the schools by focusing on student needs including clear expectations and structure (as many boys come from unstructured homes)
• Demystifying school success – teaching study skills, organization and giving examples of what “excellent” work looks like – creating a culture of high expectations.
• Constructive use of discipline to build responsibility and character
• Creation of a school culture that challenges stereotypes and teaches kids the code of success, as well as the code of the streets, and when to use each – effectively teaching “code-switching”
• Working with parents and community – especially to make parents feel welcome at school through engaging workshops that serve their existing needs
• Commitment to hiring Black and Latino males in professional roles.
• Cultivating leadership through opportunities for community service and activism
• Channeling of boys’ natural energy – not trying to suppress it. This can be through sports, music and the arts.
• Teaching of emotional intelligence.

He then set out to find out whether single-sex and co-ed schools were doing this. His findings:

1)     It is inconclusive whether single-sex schools serving African American and Latino boys do this better than co-ed schools.

2)     While single-sex education for girls was clearly focused on expanding the perception of gender roles among girls – making professional careers open to them, e.g. – there is “no shared understanding of what boys need to be ‘saved’”

3)     Positive identity, engagement and safety are very important – students with higher levels of engagement reported higher grades. There was also a strong relationship between racial/ethnic pride and academic achievement. And positive “relational engagement [with teachers and school staff] was the strongest predictor of success.”

4)     Not all boys are the same. Middle school students performed better than high school students across the board, but were also more likely to report not feeling safe in school – and lack of safety correlated with lack of achievement. Immigrant students and students of immigrants were less likely to feel safe.

5)     Not all schools had a coherent educational vision.

Dr. Noguera reiterated that this issue should be approached with “a lot of skepticism” and that these are ideas that need to be interrogated, tested. “These issues are too important to treat with a simple, single solution,” he said.

The Gathering will also feature a discussion and briefing with education leaders and members of the Congressional Black Caucus, and a variety of compelling professional learning seminars focused on strategies for improving the educational experiences of African American and Latino boys.

For more information, visit the COSEBOC website.

Visit americanpromisedoc.com for updates, to donate, or to join our e-mail list for An American Promise.

An American Promise producer/directors Michele Stephenson and Joe Brewster will be one of eight film making teams presenting at the 2010 BRITDOCS GoodPitch forum at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 27th.  Visit the GoodFilm site for more information on An American Promise and the other films that will be pitching.