Turning a Negative into a Positive

Years ago, I had an abusive boyfriend who had very few qualities, but one of those qualities was his ownership of an iMac with a few peripherals. When we broke up, he owed me a bit of money that he "repaid" me by slashing prices on these items and sort of splitting the difference with me. Since then, I've gotten back on my feet and finally got a new computer set-up...which is where you, dear reader, potentially come in to play.

You see, the only good way I can see to dispose of the iMac and its scanner, printer, zip drive and Alpha Smart is to sell all of it in one sitting for a very affordable, reasonable price and to turn the money over to the charity of my choosing. If you would like to help in this endeavor, please email me at: fleet528@hotmail.com.

You'd not only be helping me out; you'd be helping to support the arts in Pittsburgh, and I can't think of a better way to support the arts in Pittsburgh then to take something with negative memories and practically give it to someone who can't relate.

Please, if you can, help make history history.

Update: as of 1 April 2007, this offer has been met.

Local Filmmaker Dishes on Hard Knocks

Friendly City in the Land of the Free

What's the hardest part of making a documentary film in Pittsburgh? "Getting people to call you back, getting people to trust you," responds Pittsburgh filmmaker Chris Ivey of Hyperboy Media. "Getting people to take you seriously. But mainly trust. And support." The premiere of the first leg of his urban renewal triptych East of Liberty: A Story of Good Intentions come and gone in December 2006 at East Liberty's renovated Kelly-Strayhorn Theatre – and with the second, third and fourth showings also fading notches on his belt – Ivey glows as he talks about the various interviews that are keeping him busy and one panel discussion that really energized and excited him. Then he rolls his eyes.

An altercation broke out shortly after the Hill House screening in Pittsburgh's historic and controversial Hill District, when one member of a group of black, Muslim males made an offensive remark to a group of black lesbians. Although enthused about the sparked Q&A session that the film had elicited, the young filmmaker shakes his head as he recalls the incident. When the group tried to smooth things over by saying that he had meant no offense the lesbians, said Ivey, "weren't having any of it." The Muslim faith provides no leeway for acceptance of sexual orientation, nor does the black community in general, he confirms, shrugging. "It's a sin."

Similar conflicts pepper the ongoing spectrum of Q&A sessions that accompany each showing, and Ivey's enlightening film continues to engage a cross-section of people of various races, most of whom happen to live in an area doomed to be repopulated and possibly even renamed "The East Side" as a consolidated neighborhood, losing its distinctiveness. At the first showing, when he announced the follow-up leg and its focus on black-on-black violence, one audience member fumed, upset that white-on-black or even white-on-white violence was not being addressed. "I told her that I understand where she was coming from, but it was important to me to address that if I knew someone who was a victim of white crime, I would address that – but what I've been seeing is black-on-black violence exploding – and I wanted to address that."

The thirty-four-year-old Hyperboy Media founder has been living in Pittsburgh since 1995, his personal MySpace page sporting an old wound proudly, like a Purple Heart, as it declares his hometown to be "Monroe, NC…Same town as that damn Jesse Helms." His awareness of black history in Pittsburgh is up to snuff, though, as he talks about watching another documentary about East Liberty in contrast to the one on PBS. "That's the nice one," he smiles as he sits back into a chair at the Southside's Gypsy Café. Friends with the owner and nearly everyone employed there, Ivey looks incongruously at home in décor he describes as "old-school romantic," pausing to consider one of the many modern art works that incorporate old world iconic images of the Madonna and Christ.

Somehow, the renovated Greek Orthodox Church setting suits him.

For two years, the high school and Pittsburgh Filmmakers-educated filmmaker has been working on a PBS documentary about the consequences of AIDS in the African-American society at large. It reminds him of a lot of the woes entrenching an entire race, both in reality and in the media. He recalls a TV show that surfaced at the tail end of the Cosby years, Under One Roof, which included appearances by Joe Morton and James Earl Jones. "It was a really good show, and it only lasted a month," Ivey laments. "One thing from the black community is that you never see any positive images portraying black people in a strong way. It's either comedic, music or sports. It's never anything enlightening." After two years of interviews mainly set up by the AIDS documentary's Connecticut producers, Ivey's no stranger to African-Americans' lack of acknowledgment, which he pinpoints in a word: "Shame. If someone dies of AIDS, [the family] is likely to say it's cancer."

The staggering difference between the gay community's early-1980s response to AIDS and HIV awareness and that of the black community weighs on him, too. "Not many people [in the community] care that the African-American community is number one for AIDS. People only choose what affects them. If it doesn't affect them directly, they don't get involved. I think that goes for everybody, but it goes double in the black community." Those words manifested themselves with the culmination of the first part of his film, which witnesses the destruction of the East Mall Tower, an over-the-street apartment building that once signaled the entryway to East Liberty on Penn Avenue as surely as the Gateway Arch heralds the West. Ivey recalls the building's former residents in plaintive tones. "From the mid-90s until 2 years ago, you could turn on almost any news broadcast and if it mentioned East Liberty, either somebody got shot or something."

Because of the media connection of the East Mall Tower with violence and drugs, the city government made a field day of the building's demise, turning the event into a paintball free-for-all as the inhabitants of the building looked on in stupefied horror and fascination and an entire community repressed mixed feelings too diverse to list. Despite that – or, perhaps, because of that kind of trauma – Ivey had difficulties locating support nerves in the community. "If certain [city officials] felt like the direction of certain things weren't going the way that they thought they would, phone calls would slow down and maybe take a month. And they assumed the worst of the project, like the worst was going to happen and make them look bad."

When waiting for calls to inbound ceased to be a virtue, Ivey took action and went after the foundations himself. A pre-established relationship of sorts from a different project with the Multi-Cultural Arts Initiative helped significantly, as did partnering with other organizations like the Pittsburgh Foundation. "It's kind of funny the way that I saw things a certain way, and the foundations got it, but the development companies saw something different," Ivey reminisces. He had an easier time finding people to talk to him who were hacking out a living on their own, pooling a variety of perspectives to concoct the film.

Two of the documentary's featured interviewees, married couple Ebony McKinney and Davu Flint, hold a role integral to the film's evolution, something that Ivey's waiting to unveil in the second leg set to premiere in September. "[Ebony] pointed it out well when she said that people hear what they want to hear." Learning how to grab people by the ears may have been a critical lesson to him during the documentary process, but reaching people beyond the point of hearing what they want to hear interests Ivey more. "I love being able to create things and express my thoughts and, maybe, entertain and enlighten people. Make people talk, make people dance, and occasionally make people talk back to the TV," Ivey laughs. "I like that a lot."

East Liberty has undergone enough changes in the last few years to keep people talking to their TVs indefinitely, if for no other reason than to bide time while awaiting the arrival of more catapulting paint and a wrecking ball just outside their doors. Changes like signs sporting the greeting, "Welcome to the East Side," the rapid growth of corporate stores that have ousted small businesses through skyrocketing rent payments and the arrival of strange architecture make it denizens leery.

One such oddity exists at what is now an architectural firm on the corner of Whitfield and Baum. The renovation of the building included two massive wooden doors that one morning attracted a crowd of spectators. It wasn't the light coloring of the doors that had pulled people from the East Liberty branch of the Carnegie Library, though. It was the doorknob, a steering wheel-size sculpture of a bronze man climbing the doors in a loincloth. In order to open the door, a brave soul has to tug on the sculpture's tummy. One African-American library employee seemed especially alienated and turned off by the hardware seemingly placed to fit in to the urban landscape. Before trudging back to work, she managed to mutter, "Well, they're never building anything for me."

Such complacency is pretty much par for the course in East Liberty. Changes are made and people rubberneck without really getting involved. That's where Ivey comes in, exciting people and waking them up. But he also likes the easy sense of brotherhood that exists among most African-Americans, mentioning the understanding that when you see someone on the street, you greet them. He sees this as a good thing, a positive affirmation among blacks. "That doesn't fly in London, though," he smiles. East of Liberty pond hops to a similar neighborhood for a May 7th screening in Hackney, and Ivey will be riding shotgun because gentrification, like poverty, is universal.

Continuing his work state-side, Ivey plans to hang out with kids in different neighborhoods most of the summer. This stage feels of monumental importance to him because it addresses the key issue of gang violence in the city as well as the growth of the black community. Money is also easier now that the first stage has been completed and the foundations are pleased with the progress, Ivey reports, along with a nagging feeling of irony that the project's bane has now become a source of contention. Everyone wants to be a part of it now that the hard part's over, and that frustrates him. "What does it really take for people to really see?" Ivey asks of the air. "It's like making this documentary into a court case, like you have no proof or disproof that this is really happening. If I hadn't documented it, nobody would really care. Nobody wants to talk about failure. Nobody likes to deal with failure. They want to move on. You can't just forget shit."

Spending time with kids rather than adults this summer may be a refreshing change of pace for Ivey, whose frustrations with the broken lines of communication may take a while to die down. He's tired of subservience, appalled at the absence of authority questioning. "Everybody's afraid. They're either living like a citizen or an evil-doer or just a…poopie-head," he laughs, a director already geared to deal with his new subjects.

The second leg of East of Liberty will air at various venues starting this Fall, including The Kelly-Strayhorn Theatre, The Hill House and The Union Project. Each screening is followed by a Q&A session. To get involved, all you have to do is show up.

For more information, visit eastofliberty.com or email Chris Ivey at hyerboymedia@gmail.com.

The Changing Sphere of Journalism

The following is the rough draft of a feature article that may or may not be sequeled in the future. It was originally going to be a part of a zine that has turned out to be more speculative than real.

I normally don't publish rough drafts, but I wanted to float this on my page for a couple of reasons. Feel free to add your two cents; as long as its your own two cents, it is welcome. That's why I'm here.

Cyber Journalism in the Age of Media Convergence

Journalism and imprisonment need no more introduction than rice and beans, but lately the relationship between journalists and their captors has put sand on the fires of democracy and given the definition of limited freedom of speech a stretch, particularly outside of the formally recognized coverlet of the press. Media convergence has taken on greater scope and new meaning worldwide, and a couple of factions have arisen to rally the efforts of those engaged in the field officially and those working under their own auspices. The goal is clear: freedom of the press should be unrestricted and universal.

One group inspired by a source more contemporary than the Bill of Rights is the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, founded by its current Secretary General Robert Menard as a non-governmental organization (NGO) and built upon the principles of free information and expression outlined in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As an international media watchdog, the NGO assumes several responsibilities that have ranged from campaigning to free 27 journalists in Castro's Cuba in 2003 to compiling a "worldwide press freedom index" that ranks 168 countries based upon surveys sent out to many sectors of the global media community.

According to the October 2006 index publication, 52 countries reported less press restraints than the U.S., with countries like Finland, Ireland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland scaling the top 8 while Russia, Singapore, Iran and Korea sank to the bottom 25. China's ranking at 163 places an especial perspective on the ongoing censorship laws that its citizens face. Shanghai blogger Isaac Mao and others like him have written open letters to businesses in the position to help loosen the flow of information, one notable example asking Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page to stop imposing filters that restrict search options, denying the Chinese government the censorship power. Pleas like this have also traditionally been backed up and reiterated by Reporters Without Borders.

After admitting in 2005 that a small percentage of its funding came contractually from the Center for a Free Cuba in Washington, though, the NGO's tactics and public statements have elicited magnified scrutiny from questioners of the group's motives who descry a furtherance of U.S. and other Western interests. One such critic has been studying Cuba and the Latin world extensively and published web-accessible articles all over calling out the NGO for its dismissive treatment of existing news organizations and outlets where and when the government is perceived to be a threat to press freedom.

Sorbonne University researcher Salim Lamrani, publishing mainly among counter watchdog groups like his home-based Voltairnet.org – self-promoted as part of the "non-aligned press network" – and Seattle-based Reclaim the Media.org, specifically criticized the NGO's ostensible purpose of aiding independence in journalism as self-contradictory and claimed that it has become "a transmission cable for the State Department." In addition to his suggestion that Reporters Without Borders may be helping the U.S. government plot an overthrow of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela (knowingly or not), he pointed out that, "In Cuba, 156 foreign correspondents of 126 press agencies of 37 countries have an accreditation that allows them to do their job. These professionals have all material and relational services to perform their duties completely guaranteed."

What Lamrani refers to, of course, is money and a network. Reporters Without Borders sent out surveys to those corners of the world where money, press networks and accreditation already existed to create its index. What the index doesn't show as a result are the millions operating as the proponents of the NGO's self-proclaimed mantra, Article 19. "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference," the article states, "and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."

Despite the debatable impetus behind Robert Menard and his outfit, the September 2005 publication of the Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents offered a tone and approach to independent journalism contrary to the NGO's opponents' sticking points. The online guide provides technological advice for setting up a web log and making it as salient and interactive as possible, while attempting to promote and cultivate a new kind of journalism. "Not all bloggers do journalism," notes former columnist Don Gilmor in the Handbook's introduction. "Most do not. But when they do, they should try to be ethical." Not only has the internet opened doors for freelance journalists to have audiences beyond what media outlets willing to pick them up have to offer, it has now given them basic acknowledgment of Article 19 rights and unlimited potential vis-à-vis guidelines such as these.

The Handbook has also helped to shape a new breed of political activism, tossing encouraging tips to those seeking to further or continue their causes online anonymously if they so choose, without fear of any retaliation or censorship from their government. One such dissident is Martyn See, guilty of having filmed a documentary in Singapore, a country noted for its very limited press freedom that likewise includes very stringent laws for film. A response to a public perception of Singapore as a market place without any notable political history, Singapore Rebel featured an interview with the National University of Singapore's Dr. Chee Soon Juan, stock footage of his attempt at a May Day rally and his subsequent arrest. The documentary cost See 15 months of police harassment and the seizure of his film, both of which constitute legal actions under the country's revised 1998 Film Act. See is just one of many political malcontents who continue to document their struggles online, but the virtual revolution only twirls so far.

Even in the U.S., Reporters Without Borders can appeal the lengthy imprisonment of bloggers held for reasons lying outside of national security concerns, but beyond that and some buried criticism the NGO can effect no real change. In July of 2001, freelance journalist Vanessa Leggett was arrested for refusing to give up a source name for a book she was writing about the murder of a Texan millionaire. She was held until January 2002. Prior to that, the only record of a journalist being held in contempt longer than one day was during the Charles Manson scare, when Los Angeles Herald Examiner writer William Farr was jailed for 46 days for not revealing the source of the hairy trial's leaks.

Since then accredited New York Times journalist Judith Miller was held for three and a half months for what was more a case of international administrative embarrassment than national security, but she and Farr and even Leggett were recently surpassed by American blogger and freelance journalist Josh Wolf, whose stay in the Dublin, California federal prison tallied up to over 200 days early this month. Wolf's crime? Refusing to surrender video files of a 2005 riot he observed at a G8 Summit protest in San Francisco, during which a police car was the alleged victim of arson. The police 's reason for the significance of the video files has changed numerous times, however, according to both the 24-year-old prisoner and his worried mother. "When Judith Miller was in jail for 85 days, it was in the paper almost every day. Journalist in jail! Journalist in jail! And my son has been in jail almost twice that long and it's gotten almost no coverage."

Liz Wolf-Spada's feelings concerning her son's unique situation were more sensitive to the media's treatment of him than police procedure. "And, to me, that's a total injustice, that because he's a video blogger in San Francisco who's not connected with corporate media his case is not getting the kind of attention that the Balco case is getting, and those two reporters aren't even in jail."

Despite the apparent push for coverage from various web-based media sources, accredited and otherwise, The Wolf case facts remain only slightly more traceable than dew. His story and the future of internet journalism await this July's expiration of the grand jury's investigation; beyond that, he could be held until a cumulative sentence of 18 months, the maximum allowed for contempt of court. In the intervening time, the sharp contrast between Judith Miller's now-household name and Wolf and Leggett's obscurity speaks for itself, as does the fact that despite its Handbook and its appeals, Reporters Without Borders will probably not be sending Josh Wolf a survey when it prepares to recalibrate its worldwide press freedom index.

Update: since this article posted, Wolf has been released from custody, an event that made the local, evening news.

A Short Documentary in the Making

Some of you have been following along with my activities in Greece. Here is an overview of what I'll be working on for the next month or so. I think my deadline is April 26, but don't quote me on that.

I plan to title this Gods In Disguise, playing off the ancient Greek belief that any person one might meet should be welcome, as he or she may be a god in disguise. What threatens traditional Greek life more than anything is the influx of immigrants (unfortunately I have no footage for that, although I came upon a couple of pocket populations in Athens' center), the rise in divorce (almost negligible, but of course a real problem when it happens), Gypsies and other vagabonds (of course), and the rise of certain political parties (the Communists hold 7% of the mandatory voting power) and anarchists like those that shut down the university system for four months.

Obviously, I wasn't in Greece long enough* or well connected enough to make this an in-depth project, but I plan to give the overview of the country's current state with an eye toward certain environmental developments. It interests me greatly that the country is able to adapt to the changing global scheme (environmentally speaking) more quickly than it is to the problems of its own people. Perhaps every country is like this. The recurring theme of this documentary, however, should address the bared teeth of the Greeks' smiles as they struggle to maintain the kind of hospitality that their ancient belief prescribes (and which is now mandated by the country's reliance on tourism second only to shipping for its GNP) while they see the people on the other end of those smiles as a threat to their way of life.

A very old story, is it not?


*I also broke my nose on last Wednesday, so my productivity dropped sharply for a day or two, as did my brain...

a lead...

Revolution has been sweeping Greek universities.

You may read about it here.

Tomorrow, being the good journalist and filmmaker I am, I will be heading toward the university to interview the students who remain at the University holding signs of protest and spray painting the buildings to talk to them about anything and everything. It's only about ten blocks from my hotel.

Preparing to Cross the Atlantic...12:50 East of Detroit

Last August I took my first adult flight to Montana to begin shooting an environmental documentary. Today I submitted an abstract to a committee for funding so that I can do it again next August, and perhaps even stay longer than ten days.

Saying a short but sweet prayer on the matter would not be inappropriate. Butte, Montana is in serious trouble.

Tomorrow morning, I hop a plane to Greece. Well, not quite. First, you see, we have to back up and get a running start, else we won't make it over the vast, vast ocean. So I'm flying first to Detroit and from there catapulting to Amsterdam, and then on to Athens. I'll be there for ten days and, more for fun and human sharing than serious research, I'll be interviewing a few Greeks here and there to ask them about life and to probe their environmental awareness.

It should be a wonderful time.

There's something you have to understand about Greece and me, though. We have a relationship. A history.

My father traveled there during his Navy days and of all his stories, the ones of Spain and of Greece were by far my favorites. To this day, the novels of Hemingway and Michener stand out not just in my memory but in my nostrils. Dad said the first thing he smelled when he stepped off the plane in Athens was the smell of olives. The man really loves olives.

Of course, that was the sixties and I'm sure things have gotten smoggier. Mostly, I hope I can track down an electrical outlet adapter so that I can recharge my single film camera battery. What can I say? Working conditions are not ideal.

I will also no doubt think of Tom, who was an excellent cook, a very decent poet and a rather good companion for a few months once before I realized what I always seem to realize too late. Perhaps I will even sit at some cafe where he once sat.

But mostly, I will revel in the peninsula's beauty and soak up the atmosphere. I will eat feta without hormones or additives. I will eat like I have never eaten before.

And I will dip my feet in the Mediteranean and feel the surf stir up the ghosts of Atlantis and countless others, lost to sea and wind and time.

the meeting (2006-2007)

This is the first treatment of my second film.

Debut of spring (2002-2007)

This is the rough cut of a silent film that still needs music added to it...