Speaking in Tongues

Images

Website

http://www.speakingintonguesfilm.info

Topics

Economy: Business
Human Development: Children, Education, Youth
Human Rights: Social Exclusion
Information & Media: Communication, Culture, Knowledge
Peace and Conflict: Conflict Resolution
Politics: Activism, Globalization

Project Geography

US: National, California
International: Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, South America

Identity Niches

African American, Asian American, Caucasian, Children, Indigenous, Latino, Native American, Student, Youth/Teen

Budget

Raised to date: $474,500.00
Estimate to complete: $50,000.00
Total Estimated Budget: $524,500.00
The budget numbers above are accurate as of 03/11/2010

Status

Distribution

Media Type

Video

Project End Use

TV

Key Personnel

Marcia Jarmel
Director

Marcia Jarmel founded PatchWorks with Ken Schneider in 1994. She has been producing and directing documentaries for over 15 years. Her best-known work is the ITVS-funded Born in the U.S.A., which aired on the PBS series Independent Lens and was hailed as the “best film on childbirth” by the former director of maternal health at the World Health Organization. The documentary has been used to educate hundreds about childbirth options, and to lobby legislators to reform midwifery laws. Nine years after its national broadcast, Born in the U.S.A. continues to engage families, communities, and health care professionals.

Marcia’s other films include Collateral Damage, a mother's lament about the human costs of war that screened worldwide in theatres, museums, festivals and schools as part of Underground Zero: Filmmakers Respond to 9/11. Her Return of Sarah’s Daughters examines the allure of Orthodox Judaism to secular young women. The hour-long documentary won a CINEGolden Eagle, National Educational Media Network Gold Apple, and 1st Place in the Jewish Video Competition. It screened on international public television, and at the American Cinematheque, International Documentary Film Festival, Women in the Director's Chair, Cinequest and numerous other film festivals. Her first film, The F Word: A short video about Feminism, uses whimsical animation and interviews to foster discussion on this so-called contentious topic. Still in distribution after 15 years with Women Make Movies, The F Word screened on KQED's Living Room Festival, AFI's VideoFest, and the Judy Chicago film series at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. 

Marcia’s additional credits include producing and directing films for the San Francisco World Music Festival, co-editing the Academy-award nominee, For Better or For Worse, and assistant producing the Academy Award nominees Berkeley in the Sixties and Freedom on My Mind. She was a resident at Working Films Content + Intent Doc Institute and has guest-lectured at Stanford University, San Francisco City College, San Francisco State University, and New York University.

Ken Schneider
Director, Producer, Editor, Sound Recordist

Ken Schneider is producer, editor, and sound recordist for PatchWorks films. He is also an accomplished freelance editor whose credits include award-winning documentaries on a broad range of subjects, from art and literature to war and peace, immigration, disability and social justice. Ken co-edited the feature documentary Regret To Inform, winner of the Peabody Award, Indie Spirit Award and Sundance Film Festival Directing award, as well as the IDA Award for most distinctive use of archival footage. Regret also was nominated for an Academy Award and a National Emmy.

Other editing credits include Bolinao 52, about Vietnamese boat refugees; the PBS American Masters specials Orozco: Man of Fire and Ralph Ellison: An American Journey; P.O.V. special Freedom Machines, about the convergence of disability, technology and civil rights; PBS primetime special The Good War and Those Who Refused to Fight It, which aired on Martin Luther King’s birthday and won best historical documentary awards from both the American Historical Association and Organization of American Historians; PBS special and Golden Gate award-winner Store Wars: When Wal-Mart Comes to Town; Frontline's Columbia-Dupont Award winning School Colors, a look at integration and segregation 40 years after Brown v. Board of Education; and Ancestors in the Americas, Part 2: Pioneers in the American West, about the Chinese-American experience.

Ken has collaborated with Nina Wise, the dancer/performance artist; Charlie Varon, the solo theater performer; Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, Academy Award-winning filmmakers, and Richard Beggs, Academy Award-winning sound designer, among others. Ken has consulted on dozens of documentaries, and lectures at San Francisco City College, the San Francisco Art Institute, and New York University.

Outreach/Engagement Plan(s)

The Speaking in Tongues engagement campaign focuses on improving cross-cultural competency and immigrant integration in the U.S. by helping communities create opportunities for children to become truly bilingual – both by learning a second language at school and nurturing native languages at home. Our goals are to increase awareness of how bilingualism contributes to cultivating the kinds of citizens the 21st century demands; and to create more opportunities for public school students to become bilingual by giving communities access to the stories and tools that make the case for bilingualism.

In order to leverage the film’s broadcast and grassroots potential, we have developed an engagement strategy that builds towards a fall 2010 national PBS broadcast, and continues as a robust campaign across multiple platforms to reach five key audiences:

• Youth
• Parents
• Educators
• Community activists
• Policymakers

These audiences will have the chance to see and engage with the film through:

• Online multi-lingual mash-ups that combine user-generated content with footage from the film to create community-specific videos
• Online social networking, where users can discuss, debate, and share stories and ideas
• Classroom screenings with curriculum support
• National broadcast on PBS affiliates in the fall of 2010 and at pbs.org, where Speaking in Tongues will stream post-broadcast

We are approaching our engagement campaign as a strategic collaboration between PatchWorks Films, educators, policy experts, language specialists, and immigrant advocates. We developed our outreach strategy at the Working Films Content + Intent Residency and have consulted with Active Voice since the project’s inception. Other partners include the National Association of Bilingual Educators (NABE), the Alliance for Multicultural and Multilingual Education, the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, California Tomorrow, the National Education Association, and the Migration Policy Institute.

Funders

Location