by Shine Global | Dec 23, 2015 | new blog, News, Shine News
Thanks to 238 backers, we raised 101% of our $50,000 Kickstarter goal! We had enough donations to activate a portion of a challenge grant to be pledged towards the campaign and additional donations outside of Kickstarter.
We are awed by how many people demonstrated support for Selling Our Daughters. Many of the donors are unknown to us and others have supported Shine’s films again and again over the years. We are so lucky to have them all.
Our team is hard at work finishing the film and we hope to have it done in time for a Spring 2016 festival premiere.
by Shine Global | Dec 14, 2015 | new blog, News, Shine a Light On
By Susan MacLaury
Just a month ago, we posted pictures of Victor, Zulema and Perla, the three American teen migrant farm workers we had profiled in our 2011 film, The Harvest (La Cosecha). We were reintroduced at Shine Global’s 10th anniversary party and over the weekend we had a chance to learn in depth how they were since making this film, the effects it had had on them, and where they currently were in their lives.
It was great hearing how Zulema was a college freshman, Perla was planning to go to graduate school, and Victor was achieving his dream of becoming a car mechanic. Still, we knew that all had family members, some of them younger siblings, a few of the hundreds of thousands still working in the fields with minimal protections.
That point was brought home to me today when a friend sent me this clip about a current Human Rights Watch campaign to educate the public about the poisonous effects of picking tobacco on underage workers. Memories surfaced about our research into this subject, interviews with prospective film subjects, production of The Harvest (La Cosecha), and our screenings on Capitol Hill in 2011 to try to convince lawmakers to vote in the CARE Act (Children’s Act for Responsible Employment) sponsored by Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard. Both she and then Secretary of the US Department of Labor, Hilda Solis, fought hard, but in vain, for legislative reform for young farm workers.
Human Rights Watch has commissioned multiple investigative studies on the wellbeing of young farmworkers over the last 15 years with some successes. In 2014, some of the major US tobacco growers banned children under 16 from working in the tobacco fields, but excluded older teens from their policies, teens who are still vulnerable to the dangerous effects of tobacco picking. Shine Global applauds them for their continued concern. We believe that the powerful imagery they employ as documentarians will make a difference in the lives of these children and urge you to watch and act.
by Shine Global | Nov 23, 2015 | new blog, News, Shine News
We have launched a Kickstarter campaign to help finish Shine’s latest film Selling Our Daughters. Check out the video and pledge to support!
Selling Our Daughters explores the dark side of child advocacy through the story of an “activist” who misrepresents Thai girls as sex trafficking victims for his own gain.
The film unfolds as a mystery, revealed to viewers through the eyes of the filmmakers as they themselves discover it. In 2013 we went to northern Thailand to film a story about girls who had been sold into the sex trade by their parents. Our guide was activist Mickey Choothesa. What we discovered instead is that Mickey has been deceiving both the public and those he claims to be helping. Since founding his non-profit organization, COSA, in 2005, Mickey has marketed it globally as a sanctuary for trafficked and at-risk girls while describing it to the girls it houses and their families only as a unique educational opportunity.
Watch the Kickstarter video with Directors Josie Swantek Heitz and Dave Adams to learn more about the film and why we need your help to finish it — then make a pledge!
Why we are making this film
Sensational and dramatic storytelling gets ratings, attracts an audience, and helps secure funding but it has a real world, negative impact on those we are (mis)representing. Power dynamics between storytellers, promoters, audiences, and subjects raise difficult ethical questions we face everyday as filmmakers. So when we became entangled in the deception Mickey was perpetrating, we knew we had to keep our promise to the girls and their families to share their story with the world.
Why on Kickstarter?
Thanks to the generosity of many individual donors and foundations including the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fledgling Fund, the Irving Harris Foundation, and Greystone Co., we have been able to complete the shooting and editing of the film. We are seeking $50,000 to help us finish it so we can premiere at festivals and bring the film to audiences around the world in 2016. We need to hire a composer to do the music, a sound designer to do the sound mix, and do color correction, HD mastering, and output the final film onto formats that we can play for audiences. We are so close to finishing this film but we need you to help bring this story to the world!
by Shine Global | Jul 8, 2015 | Events, new blog, News
Celebrate our 10th Anniversary with a dance party in NYC!
More details to come
Info: 646-535-6703
or Kiana@shineglobal.org
by Shine Global | Apr 22, 2015 | News, Shine a Light On
The first Earth Day was April 22nd, 1970 and the ensuing 45 years have seen people from all around the world push for the passage of groundbreaking environmental laws and more consciousness about how our lifestyles affect the world we live in. These environmentally conscious documentaries are some of our favorite films that remind us why we all need to take care of our planet – including the human beings who inhabit it.
1. Food Chains (2015)
Food Chains reveals the human cost in our food supply and the complicity of large buyers of produce like fast food chains and supermarkets.
Click here for where can you see the film
2. Virunga (2014)
In this Academy Award® nominated film, a team of brave individuals risk their lives to protect the last mountain gorillas in eastern Congo’s Virunga National Park from armed militia, poachers, and the dark forces struggling to control Congo’s rich natural resources.
You can see the film on Netflix or check out this list of screenings for one near you.
3. Blackfish (2013)
A mesmerising psychological thriller with a killer whale at its centre, Blackfish is the first film since Grizzly Man to show how nature can get revenge on man when pushed to its limits.
Click here to find out where you can see this film
4. The Cove (2009)
In Taiji, Japan, local fishermen hide a gruesome secret: the capture and slaughter of dolphins. Activist Ric O’Barry, who trained dolphins for the “Flipper” TV series, joins forces with filmmaker Louis Psihoyos and the Ocean Preservation Society to expose the brutal practice, risking life and limb in the process.
Click here to find out where you can see this film
5. If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Movement (2011)
This Academy Award® nominated documentary film by Marshall Curry, follows the remarkable story of the rise and fall of the Earth Liberation Front as told through the transformation and radicalization of one of its members, Daniel McGowan.
Click here to find out where you can see this film
6. An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
From director Davis Guggenheim, this film looks at former Vice President Al Gore’s fervent crusade to halt global warming’s deadly progress by exposing the myths and misconceptions that surround it.
Available on DVD and iTunes
7. Food, Inc. (2008)
Authors Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan offer insight into the food industry in America, including how food is produced.
Watch it or buy it on Amazon.com
8. Gasland (2010)
Winner of the Special Jury Prize at Sundance, Gasland is the controversial, acclaimed expose of “fracking,” the technology used in the largest domestic natural gas drilling boom in history, and the trail of secrets, lies and contamination in its wake.
Watch it or buy it on Amazon.com
9. Waste Land (2010)
Academy Award® nominee Waste Land follows renowned artist Vik Muniz as he journeys from his home base in Brooklyn to his native Brazil to photograph “catadores”: self-designated pickers of recyclable materials in the world’s largest garbage dump on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro.
Buy the DVD on Amazon or watch on iTunes
10. Planet Earth – The Complete BBC Series (2006)
Filmed by 71 camera operators in 62 countries, “Planet Earth” exposes the natural wonders of each continent, from jungles to caves to mountains to plains. Narrated by Sir David Attenborough, the 11-part series took five years to film, and won four Primetime Emmy Awards after it debuted in 2006.
As of today (just in time for Earth Day!), you can stream the original BBC version on Netflix
(and if you haven’t seen our film The Harvest (La Cosecha) about child migrant farmworkers in the US- we hope you’ll add that to your list too!)
by Shine Global | Mar 11, 2015 | News, Shine News
Hot Docs today announced that Shine Global’s Selling Our Daughters is one of the 19 projects that will be presented during this year’s Hot Docs Forum. Recognized as North America’s essential market for the international documentary community, the Hot Docs Forum will take place the mornings of April 29 and 30, during the 2015 edition of Hot Docs, April 23 to May 3. This year’s projects represent 15 different countries and were selected from 150 submissions. This good news follows on the heels of the announcement that Selling Our Daughters is also a finalist for the San Francisco Film Society Documentary grant.
“The Forum is the heart of Hot Docs’ industry programs, pumping life into so many incredible projects each year. This year’s selections represents every level of filmmaker, from master to emerging, and tell remarkable, vibrant and courageous stories from around the world,” says Hot Docs industry programmer Dorota Lech.
Attended by over 500 leading industry professionals, the Forum is focused around a schedule of pre-selected international project presentations made to a roundtable of key international commissioning editors and an observers gallery composed of fellow producers, distributors, sales agents, funders and other buyers. Participating decision makers confirmed to date include Al Jazeera America, Al Jazeera English, ARTE, ARTE/ZDF, BBC Storyville, CANAL +, CBC, CNN Films, DR Danish Broadcasting Corporation, EBS, France Télévision, HBO Europe, NDR, NETFLIX, NHK, PBS, RAI 3, SBS Television, Shaw Media, SRC, SVT Sveriges Television, Showtime, Super Channel, TVOntario, WDR, YLE, ZDF and others.
Shine’s latest documentary Selling Our Daughters explores the dark side of child advocacy. It unfolds as a mystery as we follow four Thai girls whose parents have sold them into sex work only to discover this story is a lie fabricated by the advocate who supposedly rescued them. They decide to fight back to reclaim their identities despite the risk of losing everything. Produced by Shine’s Executive Director Susan MacLaury, Selling Our Daughters is directed by Josie Swantek (who was a co-producer of Shine’s Oscar®-nominated War/Dance) and Dave Adams who is also the cinematographer.
To see the full list of selected projects click here.
