Curating as Activism

Here’s a little video (3min) a fellow Termite TV Collective Member Deb Rudman did on me and the Flickering Light about curating as a form of activism.

Another Arguement Against Film School?

This week I went to a screening of Slingshot HipHop at the International House that was part of this great new series called Planet Rock .

Now available on dvd!

The film is very strong in its production quality, use of animation and graphics as transitions, and its narrative focus on a few different artists and following their stories as we become familiar with their music.

It does what my favorite type of documentaries do well–focus on personal stories as a reflection of a larger system of policies and opinions. It humanizes a situation in which people are so often faceless and dehumanized–which in my perspective on social change is the key to shifting power imbalances and oppression.

If you are looking for a primer on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the history of that region, or context for the Intifada(s), however, this is not going to provide you too much of that. Which is totally fine. Its strength is that it pulls people in through their interest in hiphop and then pushes them to want to learn more about the situation and people there.

The filmmaker, Jackie Reem Salloum, was at the screening. From her comments after the screening and the brief exchange I had with her, I couldn’t help but revisit a conclusion I’d been tossing around in my head the past year or so: is film school actually the best route for becoming a documentary filmmaker?

Jackie is the third documentary filmmaker I’ve met in the past few years with no formal academic film training who said something along the lines of “If I had known it would take me 4-7years and $200,000 to make this film, I might have never done it.”

The potential problem with film school is that you learn about every aspect of producing a feature length documentary film beforehand.

And it’s daunting.

It’s hard to wrap your mind around how you’re going to spend the next 4-7 years (average length to make a feature length doc) fitting this project into your life.

And figuring out the money and resources is enough to make you give up completely.

Abeer, from Lyd (still from Slingshot HipHop)

I admire people like Jackie who had no idea what was ahead of them and as she said just thought, I’m going to Palestine to visit my family, I should bring a camera with me and make a little film.

And she made it work.

I remember a year or so ago when she found out that she got into Sundance and there was a mass grassroots fundraising effort from friends and supporters to raise money to finish the editing and sound mix in time and lay down a master cut. It was amazing to witness.

So if you asked me if you should go to filmschool, my answer would still be I’m not sure.

Approaching Job Searching Like Fundraising

Several of my friends have marveled recently at how lucky I am to have gotten so many jobs in a recession time. And not just any crap jobs, but really interesting ones that also allow me the flexibility I need.

I’ve been marveling at it everyday myself.

It occurred to me though that given my background and experience as a fundraiser, it kind of makes sense that I was able to hustle income for myself so readily. I realize that the same basic premises and approach applies to both job searching and grassroots fundraising.

Me collecting money from people while Papo makes a pitch when I was Development Manger at Bread & Roses Community Fund.

I think getting a job is some percentage based on your skill and experience, but also based on who you know and pure luck of good timing. I’m not sure what exactly I think the split is, but I think your skill is actually by farthest the least. Significantly.

Almost every job I’ve had in my life has drawn on social capital. The only exception is when I was “Bottom Bun Girl” (yes, that was my official station title) at Checkers pushing meat patties with one circle of mustard and two circles of ketchup up the counter to “Top Bun” for $4.25/hr.

Your social capital is by far the most important resource you have and will always lead to your financial capital.

And it doesn’t have to be friends or classmates or colleagues.

Of course, if you’re hanging out with people who have more financial resources your chances increase. That’s how class operates to keep people stuck in this country. So I recognize that what I’m saying here assumes at least a middle class context.

When I was 19 I was office manager at a women’s health clinic because I had done a condom distribution at my high school and gotten in trouble for it and called in the help of the local chapter of NOW and met all sorts of women’s health folks in the area. And, my mom knew the RN’s husband. That was a huge upgrade from Bottom Bun.

Once, in my more transient days, I moved to Colorado for 5 months. I ran into this guy who I recognized from the small southern town I grew up in–Biker Dave. He used to cook at a restaurant I often went to with my mom. I said hi to him and chatted and told him I had just come to town and was looking for a job. A couple of weeks later I was liquifying hundreds of pounds of chickpeas in an industrial kitchen with him while he blasted Michael Franti and we made thousands of containers of hummus.

Another time, I got a job at a daycare center because I had gone there as a kid.

And even now, one of my current part time jobs I got because I was doing petcare for someone in my neighborhood who I had met originally at dinner parties at my ex’s house and it turned out his company was hiring. My other two jobs are because I sent an email to any person involved in film and media making in the Philadelphia area that I’d ever met and said I was looking for a job in the field.

As a grassroots fundraiser, you are always strategizing ways to bring people in as a donor at whatever level you can and then draw on their social networks to expand your reach. As social change fundraising guru Kim Klein says, you already know everyone you need to know to raise the money you need.

Kim Klein, grassroots fundraising guru

This summer I took every childcare and petcare gig that came my way. In past transition periods I’ve done the same. Hustled in whatever way I can and then trusted that it was increasing my reach and would eventually pay off more.

And, I market myself. Like here, right now.

People have to know you exist and that you’re up to good things. Promoting yourself can feel scary, uncomfortable, maybe even selfish and gross to some. But at some point I realized that being broke and alone was even scarier. And being chained to a desk all day was potentially frightening for me too.

Like my “guru” says to grassroots fundraisers in her trainings: the fear of your community organizing work not happening has to be greater than your fear of asking people for money. Which is scarier to you?

The rest was all pure luck and good timing.

Here’s to wishing the best of luck for the rest of you in your job search! Go hustle!

Nitty Gritty Sweaty Summer Night Update

I hate to say this outloud in the wide world web and somehow jinx it, but I can’t believe how good my life is right now.

By good, I don’t necessarily mean easy or constant pleasant sensations.

More just that I’m resisting myself less and less each month. In that mulchy, juicy process of abandoning words like “should” or “success” or “supposed to be” all sorts of beautiful things are growing.

This time last year I was scrambling to hold together a relationship I was surrounding with a barricade of those words and phrases, coping with my mom’s health uncertainty and crying to strangers in airports on my weekly flights to Florida, and crying over print deadlines at work and then crying again over the fact that they made me cry. And totally artistically uninspired.

But let’s skip the contemplation and get to the nitty gritty.

Did I win the business plan competition? No. But really and truely I was fine with it. I’ve already raised half the amount of money I would of gotten from it (which was $10,000 split between 9 people it turns out, not $10,000 each) in business sponsorships for the season. I have a solid business plan. I have what I want. And, there were really good cream puffs at the dinner.

Did I find a job? Yes. My dream was to never have to leave Mt. Airy during the day. And I got it! I have two part time gigs that are both work from home with flexible hours. And, it turns out, that I’m getting paid well enough between the two that I’ll be making the same salary I’ve been making at Bread & Roses, but spending less with no commute and being able to eat from home. What? What.

One job is working part time for Independent Television Service (ITVS)–which you probably know for their films they screen on PBS on the show Independent Lens–coordinating their community cinema program.

Coordinating film screens for pay=dream job.

Dream job=current reality.

The other job is working part time for Digital Divide Data, which you may have read about it Thomas Friedman’s book. The people are great. It doesn’t hurt my brain or my heart. And I get to work in my pjs if I want with very flexible hours.

And my other job, which I’ll hopefully get to pay myself a tiny stipend for this fall, is my business, The Flickering Light.

I’ve also been hustling all the ways  I know how as I transition out of Bread & Roses and into these jobs, getting paid while babies sleep and scooping cat poop out of litter boxes while their owners are gone.

Did I make it to the final round of the Leeway Foundation Transformation award? Yes. $15,000, unrestricted. Soon, if I’m lucky.

Am I feeling like my “artist self” is emerging? Yes.  Non traditional relationship. Non traditional employment. This is SO much more me.

What I mean by that, is inside I feel so much more whole. At the risk of sounding like a self help book, I have to say that caring increasingly less about how it looks from the outside has allowed me to finally settle into that peace and wholeness within.

I think you get to lead a creative life, or a life where you care what other people think of you. But never both.

Practicing my face

Tonight, I find out if I won the business plan competition.

Oscars style, which I think is kinda horrible. Because it means that I have to practice my face. My if I win face, that won’t be too too excited so I don’t make the other three women feel too bad, and my if I don’t win face so I’m not captured in photos with some quiver lipped look of defeat like I’m in a boxing match with the voices in my head.

The thing is,  I feel really, really proud of myself for making it this far. Enough so to declare it publically on the internet!

A year ago, I was steeped in stories about how horrible I was at managing money, how I’d never be able to run a business. I was doing the exercise in The Energy of Money and having very challenging revelations about my relationship to money and class.

So the fact that I even made it this far and some business minded people thought my plan was sound enough to make it through two rounds of eliminations is actually quite incredible to me.

I’m celebrating that as already being enough.

(Not that $10,000 wouldn’t be nice. Or however much it ends up being–they also don’t tell you how much it is!)

I’m also celebrating feeling incredible love and support from friends–which, as I’ve shared in earlier post, is not a feeling that comes easily to me. I’ve gotten heartwarming emails, tweets, and texts that quite honestly already make me feel all giddy and loved and confident without winning. At the risk of sounding totally corny: I think feeling this love and support right now is what I’ve really won.

In a few hours I meet up with my good friend/creative inspiration/copy editor extraordinaire to put together an outfit that on her advice should ” should say ‘artsy film genius with snazzy biz acumen’. “

In the meantime I’m bouncing in my chair in the office trying to focus.  I tried to get rid of the bouncies this morning at a fly 8am new wave dance party that happened in my bedroom. But they’re still here. . .

Stayed tuned!

Fat Camp, Popsicles and Clean Toilets.

To celebrate my last day working full time at my job of 2.5 years (almost 5 years actually if you count the 2.5 years I worked there the last time around before I left for 2 years and then came back again) I went to Colorado to visit my father for 5 days.

Or that’s what I thought I was doing–celebrating.

Instead, it kind of felt like I was sent to “fat camp”–you know, when you’re told you’re going to summer camp but you show up and realize that you’re at a camp for fat kids and now you have to exercise nonstop and eat rice cakes all week.

Our family has both diabetes and heart problems. My dad is determined to beat them naturally–which I actually really commend him for. I just wasn’t prepared for what that would mean for my visit.

I was stuck in some pretty intense emotional eating my last few months at work. I usually felt like I couldn’t possibly make it through the 3pm slump without eating a brownie or cookie. So I’d been eating minimum one baked good a day on a regular basis when I arrived at his door. He, however, has decided to not eat any salt or sugar.

So it was me, some fruit, and about 10 miles a day of hiking. It was like a lighter form of detoxing. It was totally amazing to realize that when I’m not trapped in an office I can go past 3pm without sugar and still be quite functional. I did have to take some naps in between, so maybe that was the trade off. But the idea of not being so dependent on sugar was pretty liberating and something I celebrated going through, eventually.

Not that I haven’t had my fair share of sugary treats since I’ve been back this past week including Korean popsicles, Capagiros,  and the most insanely delicious ice cream from Franklin Fountain. (If you haven’t been to either of these places you must go.)

But in my new work from home life I’m redefining my relationship to sugar and my habits and find that kind of hopeful.

And, I’m finding in my new life that I have time to clean the bathroom. Not just a wipe down, but old toothbrush around the base of the water fixtures kinda cleaning. In 15 minute intervals between other work or watching a movie. It’s so incredibly satisfying.

I’m also riding my bike a lot these days to different errands in neighborhood as well as other nurturing places like the meditation studio to join in a group sit and the woods to go for a walk among trees (trees!).

I turns out that I do actually prefer health to wealth.

Late night lovin’

Video chat production meeting

Just had an awesome production meeting with Niknaz and Aghigh for Aghigh’s film project via video chat.

It inevitably ended up being a long reflection on what’s been happening in Iran this past week. These two are brilliant.

I’m feeling a lot of love.

I love talking with them.

I love that we have the technology to do this.

I love that I’m working on this film with two other Iranian-Americans who feel similarly estranged from other Iranians for being our artist selves. Through our artistic process we’re building community and contradicting that isolation.

I love when something can be educational, political and theraputic and healing all at once.

I love when, even just for a moment, like right now, I not just accept but am proud and confident of my “artist self.”

la la la.

I think this is what people mean when they ask, “What makes your heart sing?”

Name my newest boxing partner.

Today I want to write about failure.

Not about failblog.org, though I do recommend it for a good laugh.

Not about the failure of the Islamic Republic of Iran or #cnnfail and the inspiring use of social networking tools to communicate when major media conglomerates like CNN don’t step up. (There’s so many amazing bloggers out there already doing a great job writing about this.)

Nope. Instead I’ll continue with some naval-gazing self-reflection on failure.

But not without continually remembering how grateful and privileged I am to be living in the US, a country whose political stability depends on the instability of others. My parents decision to go on vacation in 1979, literally in the weeks before the last revolution in Iran started, allows me to sit around and muse about art and personal feelings in a way that my peers who are dieing in the streets of the city of my birth cannot.

Boxing Matches

Part of the reason I haven’t posted a blog entry in so long is because I’ve been busy in an international heavy-weight championship boxing match against the eternal champion team failure.

What’s that boxing match look like?

Not eating well even though I have a full fridge of beautiful locally grown organic vegetables from my CSA share.

Creating drama this past week and trying my hardest to convince some of my closest friends and my newish manfriend that they don’t care about me.

It was ugly.

And even though the match is over, I’m still nursing bruises with salve and walking a little funny.

Jenny Any

It’s embarassing to admit, but even though I’m this smarty arty bad ass brown girl, there’s a part of me that wishes I was some blonde white girl named Jennifer married to some dude, and working a professional job.

I think a lot of us have that inside us somewhere.

I usually keep my Jenny Anykind (that what we used to call all the Jennifers in high school, when I was an angsty Winona Ryder in “Heathers” wanna be) on a very short leash. She might make an annoying yip every once and while, but mostly she has little control over me.

So it was really confusing when I woke up from a concussion mid-boxing match with this other monster creature on her team.

“You are a financial failure and you are about to make it worse by quitting your job during a recession. Rawr” Punch.

“You are unable to focus. You are lazy and selfish. While everyone else in your family works hard you try to be an artist. Grr.” Kick to the chest.

What’s your name?

I don’t know how to label this particular stream of sense of failure. I know it has something to do with class and expectations.

Most of the running dialogue in my head that’s had me so down has been around this issue of failing to be willing to lead a “professional” and “financially successful” life.

Most of that comes from being from a well-education middle class (upper-middle class?) family where everyone is an engineer, doctor, computer programmer or business man.

But the “distorted class expectations creature” isn’t that catchy, and doesn’t really work for me as a mental visualization like Jenny Anykind did.

Any ideas?

Remix.

Control!

The other day my friend was saying how great it would be if life was like a Janet Jackson video from the early 90s, where people would suddenly bust out into fresh dance moves.

On Saturday night,  while I was hauling thousands of dollars worth of projection equipment from my dead car to my friends’ who happened to be at the bar accross the street car, I really wished I was in an early Janet video.

What happened instead of a Janet Jackson video.

I spent all last week obsessing about the process of forgiving myself for lower attendance at Saturday’s screening since I had an intense month at work and didn’t have as much time to do publicity (and since everyone and their cousin had an event on Saturday).

I felt so proud that I had done all the emotional work to figure that out.

And, I felt good that I reached my forgiveness goal of at least 20 people (there were 25).

I thought I had emotionally conquered. I was in total control.

We loaded up the car, I sent the volunteers off.  And then, the unanticipated: my car didn’t start.

All sorts of things happened after that that I never could have anticipated.

Things I was emotionally unprepared for.

1. I realized that I didn’t know if I had roadside assistance service because my ex was supposed to purchase it for me. I called the ex and demanded the information, while they were doing who knows what–giving a toast–at their previous’ ex’s graduation party. (Hard to follow, I know). Turns out I didn’t have coverage.Then I called my sweetie, and my bestie, and no one answered. Panic. One of my closest friends who I’ve known since 5th grade and her sweetie happened to walk by at that exact moment on their way to the restaurant and I chose not to call out to them because I don’t know how to ask for help I was busy figuring out a solution on my own so I could curb my meltdown.
2. I discovered a group of friends who usually help at the screening but didnt’ this time all chilling together at a bar across the street. I immeadiatly launched into an intense delusion that they didn’t care about me or support me, and that quitting my job was a bad decision because if my own friends didn’t believe in me why should anyone else?Warp speed defeating stories pulsed through my mind. I pushed back tears, took their keys, denied their several offers of help, and borrowed their car to shuttle equipment home.I quickly recognized that I was DELUSIONAL, that my story of heartbreak was unjustified and I was taking everything too personally. But even though I recognized it, it took more than a day to finally come back to being totally present. It was exhausting fighting off those stories.
3. As I was shuttling equipment back and forth between cars (my car was dead on Germantown Ave where I couldn’t pull another car up next to it, so I had to walk all the equipment) and walked back to my car, the one person in Philadelphia who I have not been on speaking terms with for several years happened to be standing right next to my car talking to someone.It hasn’t been for a lack of love. And, it wasn’t a permanent cut off. I had told the person that they needed to work on something and if they felt they had they could contact me again. And they never did.I decided to say hello because it was just too absurd that they were right there. They were as shocked as I was. They asked how I was doing and I replied “Pretty shitty at the moment, actually.” That was the end of the conversation.It ended well though because they left me a note on my dashboard and I decided it’s about time to talk.
4. Another friend I know–though not that well yet–happened to be at a table at the bar next to the car friends. At just the right moment after I was done shuttling she texted to ask if I had Triple AAA.She and her friend who I only met once for 2 seconds stayed with me past midnight through a false start jump and harassment by a super drunk guy while we waited for AAA to come bring me a new battery. They were amazing. I am so grateful for their laughter and company and patience and help. They were miraculous.But seriously, next time I can’t wait for the person I know least well to miraculously offer. I literally had several close friends within 30 seconds of me, a bestie and and a sweetie calling and texting, and I couldn’t ask any of them for help.