Real People | Real Stories

This is a 15-minute primer to the ins and outs of the Little Sisters Fund. It was made as a fundraiser piece, essentially–the idea being that it’ll inspire viewers to consider contributing to the Little Sisters Fund. 

For the best viewing experience, click on the little ‘expand’ symbol in the lower right corner of the viewing screen. This should give you a bigger window (or take you to the Vimeo page, where you can get a bigger viewing pane).

Watch, won’t you?

The Little Sisters Fund (raiser) from NonFiction Media on Vimeo.

This half hour documentary shows a day in the life of three Nepalese girls —Shanta, Pragya and Karuna. Their stories give context to the plight of women in Nepal and the invaluable role education plays in ending the cycle of female oppression. 
Three was funded by the nonprofit The Little Sisters Fund. For more information or to give a donation:
littlesistersfund.org.

Three: Impressions from the Struggle for Girls’ Education from NonFiction Media on Vimeo.

We’d love to hear your thoughts: How’d we do?

Week ago, driving down the road, I saw a truck with beverages inside. I said to Amy, “Hmm. Looks like Pepsi Cola changed their logo.”

Now, I’m not one of those design people that eat sleep and breathe logos. But I notice. 

I like the old (i.e., most recent previous) Pepsi logo, insofar as this kind of thing is important to me. 

Simple. Clean. Iconic. There’s a big neon one in Seattle I have long dug.

“What’s the new logo look like?” Amy says. 

“Now it kind of looks like that Obama circle thing.”

“Hmm.” She says. Today Amy says, “Hey, come look at this…”, calling me around to her computer, the YouTube below cued up.

“Hmm indeed,” says I.

Coincidence?

Looking at the video above, I’m already kind of annoyed about this kind of presentation. It’s kind of been done, right? But that doesn’t stop me being curious. Will it actually DO anything? Will people submit? Will people view the movies? 

Given that a major motivator behind this would seem to be to get lots of faces looking at screens with Pepsi’s smart, Obamarific new logo, I wonder how closely the content will be monitored.

A couple months ago we wrote about Shanta. Amy wrote, “…she really gets it!” –meaning that Shanta seemed to sense that being part of our film might have a bigger effect on her life than just the several days’ interruption us and our cameras made.

On our first day with Shanta, as we had with most of the other girls, we noticed that along with the pop singers and movie stars she had on her wall–there were snapshots from America. We suspected (and she confirmed) that these Friendly, nondescript looking foreigners on her wall were her sponsors. 

We looked a little closer, and–well I was actually reminded of this story a couple days ago when I ran across this posting on a stranger’s blog…. Read down a little and you’ll pick up the thread of this story (then come back here, cause it’s not over.) 

Or, if you can’t be bothered to click through, long story short: the sponsors are the parents of Chris F. a friend we knew when we were teaching in Ecuador. And we knew because we saw our old colleague in the pictures. 

In this photo, Chris is in the snap of people on the stairs, next to the older couple (his parents) dancing. You can click on it then zoom in to view in more detail.

Our email to Chris was in hopes of letting his family know the girl they sponsor now knows not just one, but two random (and randomly connected) sets of Americans. And Chris’s cousin, Suzanne (who’d set in motion Chris’s mom’s sponsoring Shanta by telling stories of the time she spent with ‘her’ sponsoree girl on a trip to Nepal)… well naturally Suze got wind of the chance encounter, and that’s how it came to be posted on her blog.

Well, when I came across this post on Suzanne’s blog, I made a comment, and she happened to be traveling through Seattle. She had a few minutes between the bus and the train, and we met up at a coffeeshop downtown.

I brought her a picture of Rakshya, the girl she sponsors, from a day we spent filming some of the graduates doing mentorship and tutoring in a school. This is actually a remarkable and wise aspect of the Little Sisters Fund program, but I’ll save that for another post.

We had a great conversation. Right here and now I want to invite anyone who sponsors a girl through the Little Sisters Fund to drop us a note. Chances are pretty good we met and photographed the girl whose education you’re supporting. We would love to meet you and deepen the connection, as we did with Suzanne and Rakshya and Shanta and the Friendly family.

A couple of years ago I made Amy a gift of a subscription to the remarkable Journal of Short Film. This is something pretty nifty: a DVD magazine, or a film festival for your mailbox. 

Sign up for the exceedingly reasonable subscription, and four times a year, a very nicely produced DVD volume of short films will wing its way to your TV set’s mailbox. 

In the two and a half years we’ve subscribed, the quality of the films has been consistently solid, ranging from perfectly-acceptable-worthwhile to utterly transcendent.

There is a range of genres and styles represented. As with any collection curated by other people (for other people), some of it resonates more with us than others, of course. But precisely in the variety is the interest. I’d get bored if it were just stellar documentary short after stellar documentary short. 

Abstract art films that strain conventional definitions of filmmaking, and flip books and straight up narrative stories and fables and Grand Cinema writ small all occupy the menu on these things. Apart from YouTube, this has got to be the best value in film enthusiast world.

I just re-upped Amy’s subscription. When we popped the latest issues/DVD in the player, she said, “Best. Gift. Ever*.”

(*And if you know her, you know Amy doesn’t take her superlatives lightly. Heh.)

We spent Saturday and most of Sunday at DocFarm, a structured/casual retreat for local documentary filmmakers and enthusiasts. This is the third year it’s been going on, and the first Amy and I have been able to attend (we’ve usually got a wedding booked that weekend, but this year, on account of we were in Nepal most of the spring, we had the weekend free).

Several really cool films got screened and discussed. Sticking out in my mind immediately are “Ars Magna“, the winning 2008 International Documentary Challenge short. Team Juicebox was more than ably represented at DocFarm by Amy Enser. 

James Smith showed a chunk of his forthcoming film “Floored“, about open outcry stock and future trading, which looks like it’s going to be a richly character driven film about something I know just about nothing about. 

Dierdre Allen Timmons screened “A Wink and a Smile“, a 2008 documentary about several women’s ‘journey’ through Miss Indigo Blue’s Academy of Burlesque. What a great film, particularly from a filmmaker’s perspective!–It’s local; it’s got a perfect (and finite!) natural story arc, a range of characters relatable by women and men alike. It’s sexy and surprising, and smart. There’s built in character development, as it focuses on individuals doing something new and risky. And it’s beautiful! Good criminy is it beautiful! The cinematography just killed me. An inspiration, really.

We also got to know (and become old friends with) our new pal Traca, she of Seattle Tall Poppy fame. Who knows absolutely Everybody, it turns out. Awesome. 

That’s far from a full report of the weekend. It was just great. We came home with some feedback on our film that we feel great about, just in time to find out we’ll be screening a version of it at next month’s Sun Valley Spiritual Film Festival. Yay!