Directory of Sponsored Projects

ON THE DIVIDE follows a community in McAllen, TX which is adjacent to the U.S./Mexico border, and situated between multiple patrol checkpoints. McAllen is a majority Latinx and undocumented population and is home to the only abortion clinic serving the entire Rio Grande Valley as well as the largest immigrant detention center in the United States and the location of the construction of Trump’s Border wall. ON THE DIVIDE follows the stories of people in McAllen whose lives are directly impacted by these issues that continue to divide their own community and the larger public all around the country. From the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, who could overturn Roe v Wade, to troops being sent to the border to stop the migrant caravan-- activists and citizens on both sides of these debates are emboldened by the political climate, creating further division within the community. Our characters, however, are caught in the crossfire as they contend with their community being torn apart by conservative politics and policies.

At the southern edge of Japan, the construction of a new U.S. military base has sharply divided the residents of Okinawa Island, an island dominated by 32 U.S. military facilities. In 2016, a local woman is brutally murdered by an American contractor, igniting tensions that have been brewing since the U.S. occupation began in 1945. In late-2016, Okinawan anti-base activist Hiroji Yamashiro is arrested and thrown into solitary confinement on charges related to protest activities. An indigenous shaman continues to breathe life into the dying traditions of the Ryukyu era, while supporting the conservative, pro-military government. More divided than ever, Okinawans must choose sides during a critical gubernatorial election that will determine the future of the island. A meditation on nature, history and the deep insidious effects of imperialism, Okinawa Documentary carefully examines the complexities of a little-known island that is vital to regional politics.

Sixty years ago, Louis Kelso, a successful San Francisco business attorney, foresaw an American economy throttled by stagnant wages and mounting inequality. His solution was to “take the best of Marxism, namely the goal, and take the best of...the Capitalist system, namely the free market means, put them together and make it work!” It was much in the spirit of the Homestead Acts that granted land to settlers earlier in our history, but instead of land, individuals would acquire income-producing capital, like company stocks and bonds. Senator Russell Long of Louisiana, as Chair of the Senate Finance Committee for two decades, championed the Kelso Plans, giving tax breaks to corporations willing to share ownership with their employees. He wasn’t above (in his words) “using a lump of sugar to get a horse into the barn.” Kelso’s Employee Stock Ownership Plan became federal law in 1975 and since then eighteen laws have been enacted to help the idea evolve, and to include citizens beyond ESOP companies. Its successes and failures received considerable press coverage in the 1980s and 90s, and there were a few frauds against which Kelso spoke out publicly. Today more than 11 million workers have a capital stake in over 7000 ESOP companies, and stock grants are widely used in other companies a few of which will be featured in the documentary.

Ohero:kon - Under the Husk” is a 26-min documentary following the journey of two Mohawk girls as they take part in their traditional passage rites to becoming Mohawk Women. Kaienkwinehtha and Kasennakohe are childhood friends from traditional families living in the Mohawk Community of Akwesasne that straddles the U.S. / Canada border. They both take part in a four- year adolescent passage rites ceremony called Oheró:kon “Under the Husk” that has been revived in their community. This ceremony challenges them spiritually, mentally, emotionally and physically. It shapes the women they become.

Hala, a young Arab woman from a traditional, conservative city in northern Syria, wants to be free and find love. However, while she is chatting with boys on WhatsApp, her family plans to marry her to an IS fighter. Hala flees her family and the IS-occupied city of Manbij, for the Kurdish area of Rojava, on the other side of the Euphrates river. Here she joins the Kurdish women’s police force (Asayiş), where she gets military and ideological training. Central to her new education are the values and goal of women ́s liberation. This includes, also, a rejection of love and marriage. After her education, Hala crosses the river once more, returning to her recently liberated hometown, which the Kurds now have control over. Full of enthusiasm, Hala dedicates herself to her role as a fighter for women’s rights. While Hala, armed with a gun, walks proud and confident across the city and becomes a commander of the women ́s police force, the tension between her and her family grows. She receives menacing letters from her cousins, in which, they threaten to kill her if she doesn’t quit her work for the Kurdish police-force. After one year, the situation escalates. Hala, armed with a Kalashnikov and a grenade, threatens her parents and forcibly liberates her underage sisters from her father. After this action, she gets kicked out of the Asayiş. Now, Hala needs to find a way to manage her life, unprotected, spurned by both her family and the movement.

At a time when the Electoral College is making headlines in the national political discourse, One Person, One Vote? is a timely and urgent film that will inform a raging debate and fill a tremendous gap in what we know and understand about this age-old institution. This will be the first documentary to tell the full story of the Electoral College. Before the elections of 2000 and 2016, the Electoral College has been a largely forgotten component in our electoral process. These dramatic elections triggered a rude awakening for many who believed they had participated in the direct election of the President. Similar occurrences had not occurred since the 1800s, rendering the Electoral College vague at best in the minds and understanding of the general public. Those who oppose it call it antiquated and undemocratic, while supporters argue it is a vital institution to be cherished and maintained. The film takes its viewers back to the beginning — the 1787 Constitutional Convention — and unearths the passionate debates and wildly differing views among the Framers of our nation as they constructed a national system of government and how we choose the President. James Madison, historically known as, “The Father of the Constitution,” identifies the elephant in the room and what becomes known as “the big divide” at the great Convention — slavery. “I contend the states are divided into different interests not by their difference of size, but by other circumstances; the most material of which results…principally from the effect of having or not having slaves. These two causes form the great division of interests in the United States. It does not lie between the large and small states. It lies between the Northern and Southern.” — James Madison, Virginia Delegate, 1787 Constitutional Convention. In One Person, One Vote? we hear shocking arguments over the morality of slavery performed monologue-style by leading actors including Roger Guenveur Smith and Kelly McCreary, timelessly dressed in light linen and shot in stark black-and-white. They are voices from the ether — evoking the power of the spoken word — that bring back to life the eloquent and impassioned words of the Framers. “I can never concur to upholding domestic slavery. It is a nefarious institution. A curse of heaven on the States where it prevails. Upon what principle is it that slaves shall be computed in the representation? Are they men? Then make them citizens and let them vote? Are they property? Why then is no other property included? The admission of slaves into the representation when fairly explained comes to this: that the inhabitant of Georgia and South Carolina who goes to the Coast of Africa, and in defiance of the most sacred of laws of humanity tears away his fellow-creatures from their dearest connections and damns them to the most cruel of bondages, shall have more votes in government instituted for protection of rights of mankind, then the citizens of Pennsylvania or New Jersey who view with a laudable horror, so nefarious a practice.” — Gouverneur Morris, Pennsylvania Delegate, 1787 Constitutional Convention The film seamlessly shifts from the theatrical performances to interviews with scholars, historians, and leading subject matter experts who offer commentary, context, and analysis. “There are about 3 million people in the United States at the time of the Constitutional Convention—about 700,000 of them, or just under a third of the entire population, are slaves. The overwhelming majority of them are in Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. If those states don't get political power based on the numbers of slaves they have, they will feel denied the weight they need to protect slavery and to protect their own economic interests. Northerners throughout the convention scoff at this notion. They say, ‘How can you possibly think that you should have political power for people who you claim to be property?’” — Professor Paul Finkelman, Ph.D., Legal Historian After a long, protracted debate and the South threatening to secede unless granted protections in the Constitution that uphold the interests of slaveholding states, the Convention settles on the 3/5 Clause, also referred to as the “The Big Compromise.” This clause states that three out of every five slaves will count as population towards a state’s representation in Congress. This provided the basis for the Electoral College and three-fifths of 700,000 enslaved African-Americans, who are legally considered property, are factored into the number of electors to be allocated to the slaveholding states. Sterling Professor Akhil Reed Amar, Law and Political Science, Yale University articulates a searing rebuke: "A State should never get more seats in either the House of Representatives or the Electoral College because it has more slaves. It should never be rewarded for bad behavior. The system created horrible incentives to kidnap free blacks in horrible slave wars, in which a lot of people are going to die--snatch them up, kidnap people, put them in a ship and a third of them are going to die in a hellish middle passage and be thrown overboard as food for sharks, bring them to the States, put them on auction blocks--separate families--if a State did all of that then it would have more slaves than they had before, and would have MORE seats in the House of Representatives and MORE seats in the Electoral College--my god that is a horrible system of incentives.” Born from this legacy what role did the Electoral College play and continue to play in our elections? Is there still a place for this institution or is it time for a popular voting process for choosing the President of the United States? One Person One Vote? will delve into these questions as we examine subsequent key moments in Electoral College history. The electoral win of Thomas Jefferson (1800), the electoral win of John Quincy Adams (1824), the controversial Hayes vs. Tilden election (1876), Benjamin Harrison’s victory (1888), Bush vs. Gore (2000), and Trump vs. Clinton (2016). Through these explorations, the math and machinations governing the Electoral College are examined by statisticians and analysts such as Nate Silver and Nathaniel Rakich of 538 Blog. Robust maps and motion infographics provide a visual aid for the changing United States map as the country expanded and electoral math changed and evolved. The film follows real-world advocates, activists, and commentators on various sides of the debate whose stories and arguments draw a narrative thread stretching from the Electoral College’s long past to the present and possibilities for the future.

As Palestinian filmmaker Hala Gabriel grew up in America to refugee parents, trying to assimilate into American society, the questions about her birthplace as well as that of her parents became more persistent. The result of those questions is a thirteen-year journey of documentation and discovery, that led to the production of One Night in Tantura, named after her family’s village in Palestine. Hala’s family and former neighbours from Tantura paint a picture of a beautiful village with good relations with their Jewish neighbours which nonetheless was attacked. She confronts the commanders of the Israeli force that occupied Tantura and who candidly admit to killing over seventy people before expelling everyone else. She hears painful stories about massacres, mass graves, and internment camps where her father (aged fifteen at the time) and others found themselves for months at the start of a journey of being stateless which has transcended multiple generations to this day. The Israeli narrative for the establishment of the state conveniently neglects to mention the Palestinian people, to the extent of saying Palestine was a land without people for a people without a land. Through the story told by survivors of one coastal village, this film dispels that narrative.