Hartley Foundation Announces Outreach Support

[Source: Hartley Film Foundation, July 1, 2010]

Filmmakers Supported by Hartley Create Expansive Outreach Campaigns

THE CALLING
The Calling, a groundbreaking four-hour documentary miniseries, will follow seven men and women down very different religious paths. Director Danny Alpert explores themes of service and leadership in the U.S. through the eyes of these seven novitiates, including a Catholic, Protestants, a Muslim and Jews, as they enter and are trained for the clergy. The Calling is in the final stages of editing and is slated to air on the PBS/ITVS Independent Lens series in mid-December. The Kindling Group will leverage this national exposure with What's Your Calling (WYC), a national multiplatform engagement campaign. According to Alpert, "WYC engages the public around the series' themes, integrates the broadcast with online and offline components, and initiates dialogue about faith, service and purpose across faiths and cultures. These conversations catalyze action, rooted in our common motivation to do good. While the digital campaign will build a robust virtual community, people who are drawn in by the series, website, and social networking efforts will be directed toward on-the-ground interactions—with real opportunities to meet, learn, connect, and take action." Some of The Kindling Group's national engagement partners include Interfaith Youth Core, Yahoo! Shine, The Project on Civic Reflection, The Fund for Theological Education, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and others. The campaign will launch in the fall of 2010, three months before the PBS broadcast, and continue for up to six months after the broadcast. For more information, click on: http://hartleyfoundation.org/en/calling.

OUTSIDE THE BOX
The new option in the 2010 census to "self-label" one's race has stimulated discussion about the blurring of racial lines in transracial adoptions and biracial marriages. Film director Lacey Schwartz’s life mirrors that blurring of racial lines. In Outside the Box she tells her story; how at eighteen, she discovered that the white Jewish man who raised her was not her father. Her father was an African American. Faced with a new lineage, Schwartz joined a generation that increasingly desires to be viewed as authentic and original, and refuses to be singled out based on one aspect of self-identity. Outside the Box is in screenings. The documentary is also now a part of a multimedia project consisting of a moving art installation, educational discussion groups and an interactive website geared towards inspiring dialogue about identity and race in 21st-century America. Next, Schwartz intends to interview cultural icons such as Maya Rudolph and Malcolm Gladwell about how their identities have formed and remain "outside the box." Go to: http://hartleyfoundation.org/en/outside-box.

A JIHAD FOR LOVE
A Jihad for Love premiered in 2007, and continues to garner national and international plaudits and awards. The first documentary to raise awareness about the internal struggle to coexist as a Muslim and a homosexual, the film traverses twelve countries to film Muslims who hide their sexual orientation out of fear of governmental persecution. Jihad for Love recently screened in five Indonesian cities in a part of the world that is home to the largest Muslim population, also in eight cities in the Netherlands, and director/producer Parvez Sharma has visited twenty-six other cities on a national college campus tour. Sharma was invited to be a keynote speaker for the Geneva Summit for Human Rights, Tolerance and Democracy, a coalition of human rights NGOs that fights to place the most compelling human rights situations on the international agenda. New Delhi Television's August broadcast of A Jihad for Love reached the entire Indian subcontinent. The recently released DVD comes in seven different languages, including Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, Turkish, Hindi, French and Spanish, which extends the film’s reach to hundreds of millions. Check http://hartleyfoundation.org/en/jihad-for-love for details.

LEAP OF FAITH
Meanwhile, Leap of Faith is now on the festival circuit. The film follows four Gentile families who choose to put themselves through the rigorous process of conversion to Orthodox Judaism. With a world premiere at the Boston Jewish Film Festival in late 2009, the documentary sold out at the New York and Atlanta Jewish Film Festivals, and also screened at the Jerusalem, Berlin, Sarasota and Washington Jewish Film Festivals. Question-and-answer sessions featured the two directors, Antony Benjamin and Stephen Friedman, as well as Leslie, one of the film’s featured characters. The sessions generated lively questions and discussion around the topic of conversion itself and the differences between Conservative, Reform and Orthodox conversion requirements. Israeli company Ruth Diskin Films recently picked up Leap of Faith for distribution and the documentary will be available for purchase later this summer. For more, see http://hartleyfoundation.org/en/leap-faith.

FIVE FILMS IN DEVELOPMENT ADDED TO HARTLEY'S ROSTER

ONE WITHOUT A SECOND
Swami Dayananda Saraswati cleverly interweaves Advaita Vedanta teachings with storytelling, humor and insights into pop culture. Access to his ashram, set in a remote Indian forest, is limited, but award-winning filmmakers Jillian Elizabeth and Neil Dalal join a small international community of students for what could be the last of the aging Swami's lecture series. One Without a Second focuses on three students' study of a Hindu philosophy that is in the midst of radical change as it encounters modernity and changing social structures. They will navigate the austere intensity of monastic life, revel in compelling and delightful classes with the Swami and discover the core wisdoms of Vedanta that transcend its cultural and religious forms. Look for updates at: http://hartleyfoundation.org/en/one-without-second.

REGENERATION
How do you create an identity in a vacuum? That's the question a number of Polish women try to answer as they struggle to revive Jewish communities in several modern heavily Catholic Polish cities, in a country once the epicenter of the Jewish world. Before World War II, there were more than four million Jews in Poland, and after the war many of the remaining Jews hid their Hebrew heritage. It was not until the fall of Communism in 1989 that a young generation of Jews began to learn of their long-denied ancestry. Director Adam Zucker follows four of these young Polish women, who discovered that they were Jewish in their teens and are now dynamic leaders in their emerging Jewish enclaves. To learn more, go to: http://hartleyfoundation.org/en/regeneration.

RELIGION AND HEALTH
Religion and Health takes the viewer to some of the leading medical schools, teaching hospitals and research centers across the nation. Filmmakers Gerald Krell, Meyer Odze and Adam Krell follow physicians, educators, nurses, interns, students, chaplains and caregivers who study the origins of medicine and contemporary research in order to re-integrate religiously based tenets into the healing process. Compelling stories from patients and healthcare providers are ones of personal transcendence, courage and dignity that illuminate why religion is important to health. Further information at: http://hartleyfoundation.org/en/religion-and-health.

PATRIOT RIDERS
The emergence of a new spiritualism in America is chronicled in a documentary about the Patriot Guard Riders, motorcyclists from across the nation, mostly Veterans, who come together to honor and defend the memories of those fallen in battle. Filmmaker Ellen Frick travels with this all-volunteer organization on a solemn journey to funerals of young soldiers killed in action. The riders surround grieving families to protect them from picketers such as members of the Westboro Baptist Church, who gather at military funerals to harass the families of fallen soldiers. Patriot Riders investigates this growing movement: whom it attracts, how it interacts with the military, and how the families feel when they are supported by such an unconventional alliance. More on this documentary at: http://hartleyfoundation.org/en/patriot-riders.

STREETCAR TO CALCUTTA
Christian and African-American writer Fatima Shaik decides to explore her family tree, which straddles two religions, two cultures and two cities worlds apart, after Hurricane Katrina destroys her Indian father's family records. A New Orleans resident from birth, Shaik never knew her father’s side of the family. Traveling from New Orleans to Calcutta across geographical, spiritual and cultural borders, Fatima journeys with director Kavery Kaul, and they pool their expertise as a New Orleans writer and journalist and a Bengali-speaking Calcutta-born filmmaker. In India, Fatima will become acquainted with Islam in daily life and investigate what Muslims there associate with Christianity. It is a story of America and India, Christianity and Islam, New Orleans and Calcutta. Go to: http://hartleyfoundation.org/en/streetcar-to-kolkata.