 |
|
|
Welcome to the ITVS Community Connections Project (CCP) outreach page for:
The CCP is supporting the WORLDS APART—COMMON VOICES campaign through a variety of community and classroom engagement activities and resources beyond the original television broadcasts on the PBS series Independent Lens beginning May 2004.
Get involved! Email outreach@itvs.org.
Worlds Apart—Common Voices (WACV), looks at Asian Pacific American stories that highlight differences and commonalities in cultures and communities.
In the late 1970s, many Southeast Asians, including the Mien and Cambodians, fled war-torn countries and traveled to the U.S. as refugees. These families experienced tremendous turmoil, separations and culture shock, upon arrival in their new home in America. Often, these communities faced difficulties in language, education and employment.
Years later, the younger generation's exposure to this impoverished legacy and their increased fluency with the digital age has created a number of documentary films on this much-overlooked segment of American society. Through compelling personal stories and a broad-based community engagement campaign, Worlds Apart—Common Voices is designed to stimulate cross-cultural dialogue and encourage long-term partnerships for lasting social and educational impact. The following films are featured in WACV:
In REFUGEE by Spencer Nakasako, three young Cambodian American men, raised on the streets of San Francisco's tough Tenderloin district, travel to Cambodia wielding video cameras to capture their experiences of meeting fathers, sisters and brothers for the first time. These family reunions reveal the quagmire of Cambodian political upheaval and military invasion, as well as the heavy toll of years spent apart in different worlds. Check local listings.
DEATH OF A SHAMAN, by Fahm Fong Saeyang and Richard Hall, follows a path of self-discovery and empowerment as the Mien filmmaker, Fahm, retraces her family's path as refugees. From the Kansas Amish family that first hosted them to the gang-saturated streets of Sacramento and finally to Mien refugee camps in the mountains of Thailand, her mission is to finish the documentary film she had started together with her father before his death. In seeking understanding of her father as an ex-shaman and Mien in America she comes to a deeper understanding of herself. Check local listings.
ITVS's Community Connections Project (CCP) and National Asian American Telecommunications Association (NAATA) have collaborated to develop the WACV Community Engagement Campaign, which reaches out to:
- Southeast Asian youth and communities
- High school and college students
- Educators
- Community organizations
- Service providers
The goals of the campaign are to:
- Demonstrate how media storytelling can be used as a tool for empowering at-risk youth.
- Provide examples of youth leadership and community services.
- Acknowledge the complexity of identity in the Asian American community.
- Integrate diverse and underrepresented voices into curricula as a way to teach how world affairs and international issues can affect U.S. populations.
- Address the long-term generational effects of lack of support for refugees.
All materials are available to our national and local partners and public television stations at no cost. These include:
With the support of national partners, public television stations and regional organizers, we want to make a difference in your community by:
- Incorporating the film and discussion materials into sensitization workshops (parole boards, victim advocacy, support networks)
- Supporting professional development training
- Sponsoring presentations at related conferences
- Hosting preview screenings and facilitated discussion forums in the community and on campuses
| |
 
|
