Power and Control: Domestic Violence in America

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Images

46th Precinct. The Bronx.

Vashawn. Survivor. Duluth, MN

Ellen Pence. Early leader, battered women's movement.

Screening in the ER. Baltimore, MD

Kim. DV survior. Duluth, MN. And her daughter.

Sarah. DV survivor. Brooklyn, NY

Budget

Raised to date: $125,000.00
Estimate to complete: $0.00
Total Estimated Budget: $125,000.00
The budget numbers above are accurate as of 09/07/2010

Status

Distribution

Media Type

Video

Project End Use

Other: Web, and social networking, TV broadcast, festival and community screenings, and widespread DVD and digital distribution to schools, advocacy groups and individuals.

Key Personnel

Peter Cohn
Director/Producer
Peter Cohn, director/producer, is a New York-based writer and film maker. "Power and Control" is his second documentary feature. "Golden Venture," his first documentary, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2006. The film also screened at the Amnesty International Film Festival and other festivals. In connection with the release of "Golden Venture," Cohn devised and implemented the highly successful outreach and library distribution effort for the film, including a web site and email marketing campaign. As a member of the New Day Films collective, Cohn recently managed the design and launch of an experimental digital delivery site, New Day Digital, the first digital initiative to focus solely on social-issue documentaries. He produced, co-wrote and directed "Drunks," a film set in a Manhattan Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, starring Richard Lewis, Faye Dunaway, Dianne Wiest, Parker Posey and Spalding Gray. "Drunks" was shown at Sundance in 1996, premiered on Showtime and was released in 1997 to widespread critical acclaim. "Drunks" won the motion picture industry's Prism Award for 1997, in recognition of the film's realistic depiction of alcohol and drug addiction.

Thavisouk Phrasavath
Editor
Editor Thavisouk Phrasavath co-directed, wrote, appeared in and edited “Nerakhoon (The Betrayal),” which has been nominated for a 2009 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and also for a 2009 Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary Feature. “Nerakhoon” premiered in the Sundance documentary competition in 2008 and has also been presented at Berlin, Hot Docs, Full Frame and other major festivals. The film will make its television premiere on POV later this year. Thavi was principal editor of “Golden Venture.”

Anne Paulle
Domestic violence adviser

Anne Paulle, the film’s domestic violence consultant and leader of our board of advisers, was most recently the Director of the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services/Bronx Domestic Violence Programs. She previously served as the Director, New York City Program, New York State Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence, New York City. She currently has a private consulting practice, helping individual domestic violence victims and working with public and non-profit organizations.

Outreach/Engagement Plan(s)

The web site and virtual community will start with people who have already been touched by the making of the film. Survivors. Advocates. Cops. Social workers. Prosecuters. Doctors. Nurses. Professors. Government officials. And the people who started the battered women’s movement in the 1970s. This core group -- in New York, Baltimore and Minnesotta -- has influenced the making of the film, and will, in turn, help to spread our content.

We will mine the digital resources collected over two years of production and make them available to advocates, teachers, students and the general public. In addition to our main feature, we are also producing specialized shorter films for three constituencies: law enforcement and the courts, the medical community, and a film specifically for people in abusive relationships.

To reach our audience, we will build on our successful track record in documentary distribution. Director/Producer Peter Cohn’s previous film, “Golden Venture,” has been the leading documentary about the immigration issue in the academic library market over the past year -- more than 600 universities, colleges, high schools and public libraries have added the film to their collections. Cohn is distributing the film through New Day Films, the leading member-owned film maker collective that was founded in the early 1970s to distribute feminist films. The “Golden Venture” web site has become a clearing house for immigration research and, more recently, the film has become available for online streaming at New Day Digital, New Day’s pioneering digital delivery service.

The priority would be to maximize the use of the film as a teaching and awareness-raising tool, and to get the film to advocates, doctors, lawyers, police officers and others on the front line in the struggle to end domestic violence.

Funders

Name	Amount	Date
Smith Richardson Foundation	$8,000.00	06/27/2008
Jewish Communal Fund	$10,000.00	06/20/2008

Location

6168 Delafield Ave Apt 2
Bronx, 10471

See Google Maps

Short Synopsis

At a time when the economic crisis has led to a sudden and sharp spike in domestic violence, the film seriously explores the complex and troubling persistence of violence against women in our country.

Description/Treatment

“Power and Control” is a documentary feature, and the center piece for a broad- based domestic violence outreach and education campaign. That initiative began with the launch of the film web site. The site aims to become a central hub for the domestic violence community, offering video excerpts and transcripts from the film, international domestic violence news (updated daily), blogs and links to social media. We will mine the digital resources collected over two years of production and make them available to advocates, teachers, students and the general public.

The film

In the summer of 2008, Kim Mosher, 30, packed her three daughters into her PT Cruiser and left her abusive husband. She had sworn she would never do it; she would hang on to the marriage at any cost. But now that her husband was yelling at the kids and hitting them, there was no choice. So she drove away from 10 years of emotional and physical abuse in her home in Wabasha, MN and headed for Duluth.

At the Safe Haven battered women’s shelter, Kim recovered from the difficult final weeks leading up to her escape, but her strength and inner resources were instantly apparent. She was stoically coping with life in the shelter, taking care of her three daughters while working full shifts at McDonalds. She was determined to make a new and better life for herself and her kids.

A few weeks later, Kim and her oldest daughter, Dakotah, eight, drove three hours back to Wabasha, walked into their house, and started packing up. The next day, Kim pulled a U Haul up in front of her new home, and her new life. Kim’s journey is at the heart of "Power and Control.” Her story, and the other intimate portrayals in the film, serve as powerful reminders of the progress we’ve made -- and of the major reforms that still need to be made in policing, medical care, advocacy and in the fundamental cultural and social institutions that perpetuate the cycle.

A revolution at a crossroads

The battered women’s movement has been one of the most powerful forces for social change in our time. Since the early 1970s, advocates have fought for a legal, political and cultural revolution that has transformed the way America responds to domestic violence. Still, domestic violence continues to ravage far too many.

More than 20 percent of all women are assaulted by an intimate partner at some point during their lives. About 4.8 million women are assaulted or raped by an intimate partner each year. And the often violent and misogynistic dimensions of youth culture -- and troubling statistics about teen dating violence -- offer a frightening prognosis for things to come.

Within the domestic violence movement, provocative new questions are being asked. Activists on the inside ask if compromises have diminished the movement, arguing that the original vision of women’s liberation has been replaced by an expedient rhetoric of law and order. On the outside, a new "post-feminist" viewpoint challenges the movement’s sacred principles. For advocates, the viewpoint represents a dangerous backlash, raising the prospect of undoing the achievements of the past three decades.

The Policy Context

With Kim’s story and the supporting narratives of Sarah and Inocensia as our main dramatic arc, the film also goes onto the front lines of the battle against domestic violence, and takes a probing look at what works, and what needs to be fixed: -- We go on 911 calls with police in Duluth, Baltimore and the South Bronx, and then explore how domestic violence policing can become more effective.
-- We follow nurses and doctors in the ER of Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore, and examine how the medical community has perhaps the most promise for making future progress in preventing intimate partner violence.
-- We explore the heated argument that has erupted between the post feminist critics and the domestic violence establishment.
-- And we seek out the perspective of the first leaders of the battered women’s movement, who still remain active in the field, 30 years after the founding of the first shelters in the 1970s. It is truly puzzling that no one has documented the story of the battered women’s movement or has profiled the founders of the movement, who remain active in the struggle after 30 years.

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