Project Steev

Latest News From Ciudad Juarez

The brutal murder of young women and girls continues in Juarez. Here is a message from there about the last month of violence:

Please help publicize the disappearance of 15 year old Adriana Sarmiento Enriquez. She is a friend of one of our Amigos. She disappeared on her way home from school on Friday, January 18th. She is fifteen, 55 kilos, 155 cm, has hazel eyes and long brown hair. She was last seen by her friend when they departed from a bus stop on their way home from eating after school. Adriana disappeared sometime on her walk from the bus stop to her home.
Her mother, Tina Enriquez can be contacted in Juarez at 0115265666327463. She has a daughter, Veronica, who lives in El Paso and can be contacted at 915-564-5206.
http://www.amigosdemujeres.org/missing

Most recent murders
The level of violence in Juarez has escalated Since January 1, 2008, there have been 29 murders in Cuidad Juarez. Three of these were women. The latest murders are:

Jan. 18th, Maria Guadalupe Esparza Zavala died of stab wound to the heart. Her 12 year old daughter told police she and her stepfather had been arguing.

Jan. 20th, Mirna Yeremia Munoz Ledo Marin was found nude inside her house, stabbed several times.

Jan. 21st, Ericka Sonora Trejo, 38 and 8 months pregnant was found in the bathroom of her house. Police said her father-in-law allegedly bludgeoned her with an axe.

United Nations and EU meetings
Some members of Amigos [de Mujeres de Juarez] will accompany members of Justicia para Nuestras Hijas and Centro de Derechos Humanos de Mujeres de Chihuahua to Mexico City and meet with delegations from the UN and EU. Both groups have been involved in a bringing the continued injustices to the attention of these international bodies.

On The Edge podcast continues

The podcast of my documentary about the Juarez femicide continues, with the 3rd installment posted yesterday. I'm getting quite a few hits on it, and a link from Narco News, and other good reaction, which is great to see. The podcast is really turning out to be a great way to encourage a "long tail" to a project, in addition to a "leading edge buzz" for a project in-progress.

new podcast of my juarez film

My film "On The Edge: The Femicide in Ciudad Juarez", will become available, in sections, online over the next several weeks. I'm starting a podcast, so that every Monday, beginning this week, another of the 10 different sections of the film will be posted for anyone to watch and download.

The first section of the film, the 7-minute introduction, is available now, at http://panleft.net/cms/ote-podcast1
The podcast page is here: http://panleft.net/cms/taxonomy/term/186
And to subscribe to the podcast with iTunes or another podcast-viewing application, use this address: http://panleft.net/cms/taxonomy/term/186/0/feed

you can also watch it in-browser right here:

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

More Trouble in Juarez

As if life in Ciudad Juarez weren't hard enough, things are heating up even more in Lomas del Poleo, the little colonia on the western outskirts of the city where government and corporate forces want to build a new highway and border port, thus obliterating the neighborhood of lower-income people. This struggle has been going on for a few years now but apparently it is heating up, with the Zaragosa family hiring armed thugs to even stop people from organizing. There are more details on this spanish-language blog, and an english translation of a press release about the Lomas del Poleo "Breaking the Siege" Forum.

Mothers Mad About Crappy Juarez Films

The El Paso Times reports that the mothers of Juarez femicide victims are unhappy with the quality and/or fate of 2 recent Hollywood depictions of their situation, J-lo's "Bordertown" and Minnie Driver's "Virgin of Juarez". The latter went straight to DVD and the release date of the former still keeps getting pushed back again and again. Will anyone outside of booing Berlin audiences ever see it, I wonder? Will I ever even get the chance to hand out flyers at a theater that say "You've seen the inept and cheesy hollywood version, now read the facts..."?

The movie flop is the latest setback for the mothers-turned-activists and their Mexican and international supporters, whose global campaign to find justice in the face of endemic impunity is becoming a losing cause.

IMDB Finally Lists 'On The Edge'

I'm not sure how long it's been there, but the entry for my film about the Juarez femicides is finally on the Internet Movie Data Base. I submitted it over a year ago, in March 2006, and for months afterward I repeatedly went back to check if it had been approved and posted, wrestling with the extremely irritating and difficult IMDB bureaucracy. There seemed to be some mysterious reason why they wouldn't post it and nobody to ask what that reason was. Eventually I gave up. Now suddenly I stumbled across the entry while searching for other Juarez information.

They also cite a review I had not seen before. In related news, the cheesy J-Lo movie about the femicide, "Bordertown," is supposedly being released into limited theaters at the end of this month. I have planned for a while to make flyers for people to pass out at screenings, explaining the real facts so people can learn that this isn't quite how the hollywood version portrays it. With my luck, the film won't even show here in Tucson.

Big Confernce on Femicide at Stanford

What looks like a really great conference on Femicide is happening at Stanford May 16-19. I wish I'd known about it sooner. All the big names in the 'movement', both activist and academic, look like they'll be there. There's even a new doc about the femicide in Guatemala that will have its US premiere there.

Showing My Film in San Diego

I'm going to San Diego to show my film again twice, once at SDSU April 24 and then the 25th at San Diego City College.

Mixed Reactions to J-Lo Juarez Movie

Buzz is starting to pick up again about "Bordertown", the Hollywood thriller directed by Gregory Nava and starring Jennifer Lopez that is based on the real-life femicides in Ciudad Juárez. Stories are coming out about death threats and stolen eqiupment during shoots (but production was 2 years ago for this film, why is this news only being told now... hmm, oh wait, maybe because the premiere was last week?)

Last week the film had its premiere at the Berlin Film Festival. Amnesty International gave Lopez an "Artists for Amnesty" award at the festival, but according to some reports, the premiere was met with boos and laughter at how bad and disrespectful the film is.

A user comment on IMDB says

If you regard this as a drama - zero points for bad script, bad actors (except Banderas, who's just great as always), bad directing, bad music, bad...etc.

But if you regard this as a comedy - 10 points. The whole cinema was laughing. This movie contains a very subtle humor. Especially in its dialogs. The whole script seems as if it was written in 10 minutes - as a product of boredom.

Nevertheless the film is creating further press attention about the situation, with Lopez getting interviewed and saying how important it is to tell the story.

But they still have no distribution deal, and Nava says it might not even be till after this summer, and that "Hollywood is just not interested in movies about social drama and social situations... They are more interested in making movies about super heroes -- escapist entertainment. And so we had to do this independently and it's going to be distributed independently." But if this is the case, why are films like "The Constant Gardener," "Blood Diamond," and "Children of Men" coming out on the big screen, and in high profile? Maybe because they're just better films that treat their subjects with more respect?

Another IMDB commenter makes the interesting (and debatable?) assertion that

Obviously the movie was so important to Nava he failed in the end. A good journalist should never be too involved with the topic he is working on. A good filmmaker neither, it seems. Still: If this movies actually helps changing things in Juarez, if it makes same movie-goers research a bit more - thumbs up to 'Bordertown'. I personally would recommend reading about the killings though.

Meanwhile J-Lo's first all-Spanish language music album is about to be released.

Review in Pop Matters

A very extensive review of my film appeared the other day in the webzine Pop Matters. I like reviews like this in which the author actually has obviously researched the topic of the Juarez femicides beyond just watching the film and reading the promo material. Cynthia Fuchs even cites some website sources that I hadn't even seen. Of course it's not a super glowing review of the film itself, but that's pretty much beside the point. It's getting people to write about the issue, and that (not pop) is what matters.

Juarez and Women's Self-Defense

In this article in the Pasadena Weekly, the author discusses the situation in Juárez and its tip-of-the-iceberg status in the global problem of violence against women. She is the director of a new documentary as well, Beauty Bites Beast, which focuses on efforts to make self-defense skills accessible to women in Juarez and elsewhere and how important that is.

Violence against women, a pandemic as maiming and fatal as any deadly microbe, is not unique to Mexico. It's global. Ironically, Juárez may ultimately be useful by shining a spotlight on the ubiquity of violence perpetrated against women. It often takes a particularly blatant example of deadly misogyny to focus attention on more banal crimes perpetrated daily against women and girls worldwide

Yes yes yes.

"Bordertown" World Premiere

The 57th Berlin Film Festival will include the world premiere of Gregory Nava's "Bordertown", the J-Lo film (also starring Martin Sheen and Antonio Banderas) about the Juarez murders that we've all been waiting to see if it will ever get a distribution deal. Rumors on the IMDB discussion board say that it has a distributor and release date is january 31, but don't say who or give any references to prove it. However I would think if it's showing in festivals it won't be out for another few months at least.

I Give Good Interview

Hey, this worked out pretty well, an interview I did with Andrew McKibbin of The Red Alert about my film about the Juarez femicide, On The Edge. I especially like the snappy concluding remark I managed to make. oh and this was an actual phone interview, not one of those wimpy email interviews.

A Samurai Sword Should Do It

On the YouTube page for the trailer to my Juarez film, someone named NissanSkylineFreak left the following comment:

i have a samurai sword a black trench coat and i'm a black belt in tai quando[sic]..i swear to god that i'll handle those basterds[sic] for killing women and destroying peoples families

Ok. Good luck with that, dude...

phone version of "On The Edge" Trailer

Here it is. So, if you have a video-capable phone or iPod, you can throw this on there and show people wherever you go. yeah. yay.

Really Nice Review

Just saw a really nice review of my film.

The reviewer obviously was very effected by watching it, which is really gratifying to see.

In addition to putting together a presentation about an important problem that simply isn’t getting enough attention, Hise has produced a moving body of work. His camera becomes our eyes, and he triggers the questions we have as we learn more about the murders and the conditions that exist in Ciudad Juarez.

I certainly got more than I’d intended when I asked to review this DVD. It’s something that’s going to stay with me for a long time, and probably something I’m going to write about again.

Hmm, A Play Set in Juarez

This review in the LA Weekly mentions a possibly interesting play with the Juarez femicide as a backdrop:

IPHIGENIA CRASH LAND FALLS ON THE NEON SHELL THAT WAS ONCE HER HEART (A RAVE FABLE) Loosely based on Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis, Caridad Svich’s ambitious play with music is set near the killing fields of Ciudad Juarez. Facing a tough election, General Adolfo (Richard Azurdia) plots the murder of his daughter, Iphigenia (Sharyn Gabriel), to secure the sympathy vote. She escapes, soon meeting up with the Fresca Girls (Alexander Wells, Jonathan C.K. Williams and Azurdia), three ghostly maquiladora workers who lead her to a rave where she encounters Achilles (Doug Barry), a drug-addled pop star. (All of this is set against the background of the unsolved murders of young female factory employees in Ciudad Juarez.) Matthew McCray’s stylish direction more than compensates for the occasionally awkward juxtaposition of rave aesthetics, social commentary and Euripides.

Border Social Forum

here are my photos from the Border Social Forum, which was 2 weekends ago, October 13-15.

I'm finally getting around to writing about this. I wish I had time to write in more detail about it but i will say that the forum's official existence was largely a waste, and very frustrating, in my opinion, but it was great as an opportunity to meet people and build connections. For that it was worth being there. The organising of the forum was inept at best. They also, in my opinion totally dissed me and indirectly anyone who does work around femicide, regarding the showing of my film, such that the Juarez premiere of the only film about the Juarez femicides to be shown at the Forum ended up being shown in a small classroom with a tiny portable speaker system rather than in a real theater or lecture hall with proper equipment and space.

I was happy to show it there anyway, especially because some mothers of victims were able to be there and see the film. But it really should have been given more priority - or they should have at least properly screened some other, better film about the subject. It's not like I'm just saying this because it's my film. It's a matter of prinicple.

'Bordertown' Delayed More

Today is the day that j-lo's film "Bordertown," based on the real murdered women of Juarez situation, was supposed to be released, according to information from this summer that MGM and the production company put out. But it's obviously not in theaters. I did some research and found out some important information.
I just sent this information to the mailing list i have for informing people with news about that film and my film.

Review of 'On The Edge' in the Austin Chronicle

An interesting review in the Austin Chronicle of my film:

Just across the border from El Paso, Juárez holds countless secrets. A major center of drug trafficking and the scene of hundreds of unsolved femicides in the past 13 years, the industrial hub of northern Mexico is a nest of corruption. Producer/director Steev Hise takes an international perspective on this localized tragedy with his low-budget documentary. Through a rough-and-tumble filmmaking technique, Hise overmanipulates his footage, using color saturations and unrelated archival material to punctuate some of his points. But despite having a filmmaker at the helm who was a little too trigger-happy with his aftereffects, the movie tells a heart-wrenching story that remains ignored in any significant international capacity. Since 1993, more than 400 women have been murdered. The victims are predominantly young women (ages 15 to 25), students, and employees at maquiladoras (assembly plants that manufacture finished goods for export to the United States, i.e., cheap, outsourced labor). In most cases, there were signs of sexual violence, abuse, torture, and in some instances, mutilation. Wading through the social, political, and economic effects of these crimes, Hise asserts his position: Using the femicides as the lens, the film contemplates international issues of malfeasance, free trade, drug trafficking, and poverty. Clearly operating with limited resources from a grassroots perspective, Hise interviews mothers, activists, scholars, and writers to paint the portrait of a city in a state of severe crisis. Footage of and interviews with mourning mothers thrust into the role of activists is both agonizing and compelling. However, Hise's breadth is so far-reaching that it's difficult to maintain a through line. I started to tune out when the film began to make its case for the legalization of marijuana. But multiple agendas aside, the subject matter is devastatingly honest. Indeed, the film attempts to make everyone more aware of a harsh reality, and for that we should all take notice.

Review in Resonance

This is the nice review of On The Edge that will appear in the forthcoming issue of Resonance magazine:

ON THE EDGE: THE FEMICIDE IN CIUDAD JUAREZ (ILLEGAL ART / DIR: STEEV HISE)
It sounds more like a folk legend than a news story. In the Mexican border town of Ciudad Juarez, more than 400 women have been murdered since 1993, with each case shrugged off by authorities more interested in narco graft than justice. This isn’t the work of one crazed suspect, but rather a community diseased by violent drug trafficking, pervasive poverty and a general culture of misogynistic indifference in which taking a female life isn’t anything to sweat over. Often resembling an impoverished 60 Minutes episode, On the Edge is less documentary than screed, exposing the long-range effects of American drug appetites at the expense of crafting a pretty picture. Cinematic weaknesses aside, it’s a haunting story that might make viewers reconsider that next line of coke. FRED BELDIN

Posted by steev at 09:45 AM | Comments (0)

Another Review

Stop Smiling Magazine recently published a review of my film. It's nice, except that it's the first review to complain about the soundtrack. Perhaps the most edgy thing about the film, the soundtrack is quite 'experimental' to some people's ears, so i'm not surprised that it would irritate a few. oh well.

My Film's Juarez Premiere

It turns out that my film will have its Juarez premiere screening at the Border Social Forum, this Saturday at 11:15 AM. It will be at the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juarez, Building K, Audiovisual room. A complete schedule of the Forum is not even posted yet on the forum's site, which isn't even a real website but just a blogspot blog. And it's less than a week away. I only found out because someone posted the schedule to Houston Indymedia.

It's been extrememly frustrating dealing with the "organizers" of this Forum. They have not been very communicative at all. I was all ready to buy a little projector and go anyway even if my film wasn't being shown, and do some guerilla screenings around the campus. But I'm happy that it will have an official place in the forum. It really only makes sense. I wonder if any of the other filmmakers who have done recent films on the subject, like the 3 I met in Las Cruces in April, will be there?

Anyway, if you're going to the forum, I hope you make it to the film and say hi.

On The Edge Screenings coming up

I'm appearing at a screening of my film on the U of A campus tonite. Three of the interviewees will be there too. Should be cool.

I also recently got confirmation that it will have its Juarez premiere soon, at the Border Social Forum, October 13-15. This is exciting.

I'll also be showing it at Arizona State in a couple of weeks. There are various other potential dates too. keep watching the film's site for news.

In personal news, things are starting to get a little better, gradually. Whew.

What a perfunctory blog post. sorry. too busy today. gotta get out of the house. now.

I'm On A Mexican Radio

Sorry for that silly reference to the Wall of Voodoo song. I just had to do it, because I was just interviewed for a college radio station in Mexico City, talking about my Juarez film. It went really well. She spoke excellent english, luckily. I really wish I had been keeping in practice with my spanish for the past year. Anyway, the station is Ibero 90.9 (because the school is the Iberoamerican Unversity, I think). I'll try to link to their stream soon. They also want to try to bring me down there to show the film and talk about it. Exciting.

Another Review of My Film

Reviews are starting to slowly trickle in after the release last month of the DVD. This one from a Salt Lake City magazine is mixed.
They seem to like the content but not the form, which is something I'm very used to hearing by now.

Full of face-to-face interviews and statistical analysis, On the Edge offers much as far as explanations, but little in terms of feeling. It presents numerous first person accounts, but you never get an inside look at the problem. There is an element of theatrics within filmmaking that must be administered in order to capture attention and then hold on to it, and while the makers of On the Edge should be commended for their efforts, their film comes up just short of quality.

White and Blonde, Coverage. Brown and Brunette, No Coverage

Excellent story on Thomas Paine.com about the media, child murder/rape, and racism. It's mainly about the new attention given to the JonBenet Ramsy case while simultaneously the story of U.S. soldiers raping a young Iraqi girl is getting almost no coverage. The author mentions the Juarez murders as well.

I had the same thought over and over last summer as I worked on my film about those poor Mexican girls disappearing and dying and meanwhile had to sit through the inordinate amount of media about the young pretty blonde Utah girl who went missing in Aruba. It made me furious.

Review of 'On The Edge'

An actual review of my film that doesn't just cut and paste my copy, in the Canadian music ezine "Exclaim." They obviously actually watched the film. Cool.

The Femicide Continues

Via Amigos de Las Mujeres de Juarez:

Sadly, another woman’s body was found today in Juarez.
From Ester Chavez Cano of Casa Amiga [domestic violence shelter in Juarez]:
A young women’s body was found. She was the 27 year old mother of 3 children. Her body was found thrown in a pool of water in a colonia of the city, wearing a black brassier and pants. The authorities do not know the name of the victim nor her cause of death.
You may have seen the news – The Mexican federal government returned all the cases back to the state after the release of their final report. DEMAND a binational INVESTIGATION.
Visit our website http://amigosdemujeres.org to read news reports on the Mexican government’s dereliction of duty. Also see It’s not a myth the response to a concerted media campaign by the elites of Juárez to portray the victims as the criminals.
Amigos de las Mujeres de Juárez is asking those of you who live in border states to contact your state representatives and governor and ask that a binational INVESTIGATIVE body be constituted to begin an investigation that was never done by the Mexican government on the femicide cases. We hope to have this presented at the Border Governors meeting August 23rd to 25th.

Yes, I'm done with my tour and I'm back in Tucson and things are going well for me, but things are worse than ever in Juarez. Remember.

Tour done; Returning to Tucson Tonite

Well, the screening tour is over and I am about to head to the airport and catch my plane back "home" to Tucson. In this case "home" just means the place where most of my belongings are stored - I don't know what the future holds. I need to couch surf a little and find a new place. Annoying, but, oh well. And I need to figure out so many other things, too. sigh.

Anyway, the last 2 screenings, on Friday and Saturday, were both interesting in their own way. One was in Tijuana for a group of sex workers who organized to resist police abuse, called the Mary Magdalenes. Most of these women are peasants from the south of Mexico who were recruited by pimps and brought up to TJ. They weren't mislead or told they were getting maquila jobs, they new they were coming to El Norte to be prostitutes. Wow. Anyway they seemed sort of shy and still processing the film afterward so there weren't a lot of questions, but the leaders were appreciative. I also got to meet Victor Clark, from the Comite Binacional Derechos Humanos. He's a major major figure in human rights work in Tijuana and he is who set up the show for the Mary Magdalenes. He has a bodyguard, who went to the screening with us, gun tucked under his shirt at his waist, scanning the surroundings constantly as we walked down the street.

Saturday evening was a pretty different event. I rented a car and drove 2 hours to El Centro, a small town about 10 miles from the border, north of Calexico/Mexicali. A group called MANA arranged the screening. They are a local chapter of a national organization that is sort of professional/career group for white-collar latina women. Or that's what I understand it to be. Anyway, they were really good people and judging by the record number of signatures on the mailing list signup sheet that I always have out, people were really enthused. I also signed my autograph on like 4 copies of the DVD, and sold about 8 copies, all the rest that I had on me. Interestingly, all these purchases were made with checks except for one in cash from a high-school girl. At all other screenings combined only 1 other purchase was by check.

Anyway. Just got back from the beach, my first San Diego beach experience. was fun. now off to airport. back to tucson. I hear it's been raining A LOT there. 7 inches in the last 7 days. crazy. wetter than Portland lately! Hello global warming! Hello chaos!

I just want to travel all the time and life to be one constant adventure. But I also want to just sit still and lie in someone's arms for a long long time. suspira.

San Diego Indymedia Rocks!!!

Things have been going really well here in San Diego. I've had 2 screenings, one here on Wednesday and one last night in Tijuana. Both were great, both attended by about 80 people, which is the record for this tour (interestingly, the only screening I've done so far with bigger attendance is the one in Albuquerque at The Guild. 105 people. My theory is that this is because that's the one screening I've had in a "real" theater, in other words, a place where the general public is conditioned to expect to go to watch movies. A church, an infoshop, a dance theater, lots of people just don't go to those places to see a film, or to those places at all).

Not only that but both these screenings included the involvement of local groups. The San Diego one even had donated food and beverages for the audience. The Tijuana screening had 2 mothers of girls who'd been killed or almost killed in Tijuana and had been experiencing similar problems that the mothers of victims in Juarez have been facing.

So this is a shout-out to San Diego Indymedia Center. Especially to Yolanda, Miguel, Jonathan, Jenny, and Mark. They have all really been super enthusiastic and dedicated to making these events happen and they did such a great job, promoting and organizing. It's just incredible and touching to me, to see that something I've made inspires people enough to put real work into getting other people to see it. So, thank you, everyone. And thanx too to Lotus and Kat and Matthew and everyone else at the 2-house compound where I've been staying. Your hospitality is much appreciated.

By the way, last night's screening was the Mexican premiere. It was really nice to see that a Mexican audience really got something out of the film, and it was fascinating during the question and answer period to hear pretty much a completely different set of questions and comments than what I get from gringo audiences. There was much more of a sense of personal responsibility for the cultural and social factors. There were people who talked about how important it was for parents to protect their daughters and educate them about dangers, and a few men that mentioned gender roles and family and how men needed to work on improving how they treat their wives, their daughters, other women. It was amazing.

One young hombre who looked like an art student or something asked how I felt about art and media being able to change things. I replied that of course since I was doing it I believed there was some possiblitiy for a positive effect from it, but the important thing to remember is not to make art in a vacuum but to communicate and collaborate with grassroots people who work on and are effected by the issues that you're addressing, and make sure you're actually serving their interests and telling their stories accurately and compassionately.

Toward the end someone said, I wish there was a film by a mexican about this. I told them there are at least 2, "Batalla de Las Cruces" and "Preguntas Sin Respuestas," both done in the last year by Mexican directors. I think for Mexican audiences either of those films would be better than mine, but both of them appear to be in pretty limited availability.

The evening really re-energized me, I think. It was great to show it. I want to show it in Juarez soon, though I'm a little nervous about safety concerns. I wonder how scared I should be.

Tonite, I screen the film again in Tijuana, in a private event for a sort of union of prostitutes; a bunch of sex workers who got together to organize. they're called the Mary Magdalenes, because there are theories that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. That's pretty cool, and it should be very interesting.

Then tommorrow I go to El Centro, a little town about 90 minutes from San Diego, to show the film there to a Latina women's group called MANA.

I still need to get to the beach one of these days.

Hop Skip Jump to L.A.

After 5 days in San Francisco I have now zipped down to the City of Angels on a plane and am ensconced in the Los Feliz home of friends José and Ana. It was an extremely short flight without incident. The Burbank airport is extremely small and convenient to here.

San Francisco was great, for the most part. The two screenings went really well. One was attended by less than I expected, and one by more, so things evened out, I guess. The first one had some music beforehand by 2 of the musicians who did the soundtrack. So it was interesting because some fans of theirs came, and then there were people who came just to see the film, and I'm happy to kind of mix up those 2 demographics and jostle some expectations. Sadly most progressive activist types are culturally regressive, in my experience, so the music was a little "challenging" to some people. oh well.

It was really nice being back in SF. I got to spend one great afternoon at the beach with a friend. Put my DVD on consignment at 3 different places. Saw several people again that I like to spend time with. Sadly one person that I most wanted to see refused to see me, and that made me sad. She's my ex who has continued being my good friend for 4 years since we broke up, but now it looks like we won't be friends anymore and that sucks. I only got a couple hours of sleep last night because I was upset about that and talking to other friends about it all night. Tough times.

Well, now to explore the neighborhood. I want to see if I can impress myself with L.A. this time. I lived here for a year, 10 years ago, and didn't like it, but I think I just didnt go to the right parts, maybe.

Made It To SF

After a 24-hour train ride that was only supposed to be 18, I finally reached Oakland a couple hours ago and then took the BART into San Francisco. Noticed for the first time that in the tunnels all down Market Street stops, there's perfect cell reception, but as soon as the train heads into the Mission the signal disappears. Talk about digital divide.

Anyway, I'm sitting in a cafe feeling slightly grotty after the trip and waiting for my friend Wobbly to meet me here and bring me to his place where I'm crashing. He's one of the musicians who did the soundtrack for my film about the murdered women of Juarez - the reason I'm in town. At the screening tommorrow night (sunday) at ATA at 8pm, he and Thomas Dimuzio will be playing a live set before we show the film. Then monday night there's another screening at Station 40 ( 3030B 16th Street, (across from Mission bart plaza) )

I'm so very happy to be in San Francisco. It's such a pleasure, in a way, to travel to places you once lived, places that you're very familiar with. There's no stress after getting off the train or bus about how to get somewhere. It's just a great feeling of familiarity and comfort and homecoming. And yet it still has the thrill of travelling, though not quite as intense as some brand new foreign city.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the 2 screenings here and if you're in the bay area you should definitely come to one or both.

Trying To Fix Things

A blog called Fishbowl NY mentions the Juarez situation in the process of commenting on the NPR program "On The Media" (which I've listened to before and I always thought they were saying "Omnimedia;" Hah!). The blog and the program's latest episode (July 7, which has 2 segments about the issue) talks about how journalists can actually help make things better in the process of being journalists:

Or how the journalistic objectivity we Americans profess to hold so dear might not always be what best serves humanity. Sometimes, if something's wrong, you can try to fix it, and maybe even still be a good journalist. To wit:

"A border town sustained by multinational factories that draw workers from across the country, Juarez has seen the kidnappings, rapes and murders of some 400 girls and women since 1993. Many locals say if the Juarez mystery is ever solved, it will be because reporters have stretched the boundaries of their jobs. Local coverage has attracted international attention and the murders are slowly becoming a worldwide human rights issue."

First Screening on Tour

Last night was the Portland date on my film tour. I'd say it was a success, for some definition of success. There was a much better turnout than I'd feared, 50-60 people, the donations were generous, and the Q&A was very good, with really intelligent and dedicated comments and questions, some of which were fairly challenging. Most of those were of the type "Why didn't you cover ______ or cover it more?" I think I managed to answer everything without sounding defensive.

On the subject of intelligent questions, this is a sign of people already familiar with and dedicated to the topic. I think I'd prefer, actually, to have audiences full of people who were totally or mostly unaware. Comparing notes with fellow activists is one thing, but activating brand new people is the most important. However, I'm not sure how to get that sort of audience.

Anyway, last night was a good start to the tour. 5 more days in Portland just hanging out and connecting with friends, and then I take the train south to San Francisco...

Beginning of Tour

Tonight is the first screening in my west coast tour of my film about the murdered women of Juarez. I'm a little nervous about what the attendance will be like, because Portland Indymedia folks that set up the show have done next to zero promotion for it. I actually felt the need to staple up a couple hundred posters myself yesterday. Ya know you haven't really hit the big time when you're postering for your own shows the day before an out of town event. (What if all tours were like that, and all bands and artists had to hit town a couple days in advance to flyer their own shows?) Of course this isn't about "hitting the big time," this is about getting as many people as possible to learn about this issue. Never forget that, Steev.

In other news, the opposite effect seems to be happening in San Diego. Colleagues there are promoting the screening there and some have set up all this stuff in Tijuana for me - radio appearance, 2 or maybe even 3 screenings.... it's incredible. That will be the Mexican premiere, and i'm a little nervous about that. I've always been nervous about how a Mexican audience will perceive it, ever since the fateful night I showed the rough cut to some people from Chiapas Indymedia and Chiapas Media Project in San Cristobal. That night changed the course of the film, made me go and make it something I know I won't be embarrassed to show to Mexicans, but I still feel like it might meet with some unique criticism from Mexicans that I'm still ill-equipped to deal with.

Off the topic of the film, last night I sat in for a while on a jam session with some friends. they're in sort of a party band called the Golden Greats, and they were asked to play at a party tonite, but their horn players are out of town. so they decided to do a more "experimental," improvisational incarnation of the group, and they asked me to do some laptop stuff with them.

It didn't work out for me. I keep forgetting that the definition of "experimental" for lots of people is pretty different than the one I'm used to, the one that comes out of the academic and art world tradition. For a lot of people who haven't made a life of making experimental art, experimental just means maybe a little less planned, with maybe a little stranger instrumentation. Let's throw in a circuit bent casio keyboard! yay! let's band on some miced metal! But let's still play standard, 4/4 time in a standard tonal key signature and let's never sway from a groove and for god sakes let's not annoy anyone at the party, keep that beat going.

At least the experience didn't turn me off to the idea that I've been thinking of lately: forming a band. I just want to form a band on my own terms with plenty of communication about what the goal is. It might not even be "experimental," but it will be something very concious and aware. (once again I'm reminded of how much bands are like relationships. )

Anyway I ended up bowing out and going with some other friends to see a band downtown called Gin Gang. They're a sort of gypsy eastern-europe folk-rock-goth band. I couldn't understand most of the words, sadly, cuz of the acoustics, but the guy that leads the band had an awesome alto croon. One of the songs for some reason was partly understandable, the chorus came through loud and clear and I could hear him sing over and over: "I know you're not in love but listen to me...."

sigh.

Stretched Too Thin

If my blogging software permitted, this post would be marked not only in the personal category but in every other category that I've defined, and more. That's because this entry is about how many different things I'm involved with and how that's a problem.

But before I get too far into that I will link to a post i just published on another blog that I seldom use, on the delete the border site, relating recent news about arizona border crossing deaths and stuff.

Now I move on into saying this: I'm doing too much and I need to figure out how to jettision some stuff if i intend to feel better about myself and stay sane, because very little of it is getting done in a quality way. Here's the list, or everything i can think of now:

1. dry river
   
2. no more deaths media work
   
3. arizona indymedia
   
4. panleft (i've just agreed to be a board member! argh! what am i thinking!?)
   
5. Root Force
   
6. new Tucson "border radicals" group
   
7. my juarez film - setting up the tour in july
   
8. War Tax Resistance video projects
   
9. editor of Indymedia Newsreal
   
10. bolivia computer project

11. a newish relationship that's very important to me and needs lots of care.
    
12. work, for a new job with lots of annoying bueaucratic obstacles to being paid what i'm supposed to be, not to mention lots of work that requires my creative and thougtful input.

13. green scare - at least this will be over after the event we're having this saturday.
    

The most important things are 2, 7, 11, and 12. A few other things are impossible to get rid of right now. The rest I need to just tell people "sorry, I can't be there." Sigh.

The nice thing, though is that, as usual, just making a list of everything makes it seem like a lot less of a problem. so, yay....

Femicide in Guatemala Still Growing

An excellent article details the rise of sexual murders in Guatemala and discusses the simliarity to the Juarez situation, though the numbers are much worse. One interesting thing to note:

In May, the Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights brought Batzibal to New York to testify before a committee at the United Nations, which was evaluating Guatemala's compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, or CEDAW.

Widely seen as an international women's bill of rights, CEDAW was adopted in 1979 by the U.N. and ratified by Guatemala in 1982.

La Opinion

i was just interviewed about Juárez films for tommorrow's issue of:
http://www.laopinion.com/entretenimiento

It's interesting how there's now this whole little sub-topic of "more and more films about the Juarez situation", separate from "the Juarez situation," itself. I guess this is good because it means journalists on the Entertainment beat can and must write about the Femicide.

Also, I've said it before and I'll say it again, I love how spanish-language newspapers and magazines use the word "Espectaculos" for Entertainment. Literally, "spectacles," right? underlining the fact that these things are things for us to view, not participate in, not even to neccesarily enjoy, as the english "entertainment" would tend to imply more of, but just to be held in rapt awe by the flickering light on Plato's cave wall. Hi there, Guy Debord... is it any wonder why you were an alcoholic?

Back from the Pressing Plant!

UPS just arrived this afternoon with 3 big boxes - 300 copies of the DVD of my film. 800 more went to the label that is releasing it.

It's always so exciting when a CD or DVD, or a zine or whatever, is done and you finally see a huge number of copies all folded and packaged and wrapped the way they're supposed to be in their final form. Wow. Now I'm excited to start sending them to everyone that I owe one to. If you've helped in any way and I don't have your address already, send it to me.

Excellent Report on the Justice for Women Symposium

What looks like some sort of NMSU student web zine called The Merge has done a special feature covering in great detail the symposium on the women of Juáurez that I attended back in late March. The design is really nice and the articles are well written. There are descriptions of just about every panel discussion. (via Stevie)

NYT article about Juarez films

This article was going to mention my film but according to the writer her editors cut that part out. oh well, it's still an interesting piece. i'll paste it here:

400 Dead Women: Now Hollywood Is Intrigued
By PAT H. BROESKE
Published: May 21, 2006
THE killings, nearly everyone agrees, began in 1993. The victims, all poor women, were raped, strangled and mutilated, with signs of ritual murder. Because they were a particular type — young and slender, with brown skin and long brown hair — there was speculation about a serial killer.

The crimes took place in Juárez, Mexico, just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, and they have continued for 13 years, with no end in sight.

With a body count now estimated at some 400, the killings have been called the maquiladora murders because some of the victims worked in the city's factories, which are also known as maquiladoras.

Given that kind of sensationalism, it was inevitable that Hollywood would enter the picture, and now it has, twice. "The Virgin of Juárez," a drama with a supernatural subplot starring Minnie Driver, was made for just $1 million and is playing the festival circuit. Meanwhile "Bordertown" — an action-thriller with Jennifer Lopez budgeted at $35 million — is in post-production, though a release date has not been set. The scripts for both were read in advance by Artists for Amnesty, the Hollywood arm of Amnesty International, for suggestions about the depiction of the case facts. But based on a screening of the former and the screenplay for the latter, neither movie suggests the scope of the issue.

For the mystery of the murdered women of Juárez has evolved into more than a crime story. Words like "femicide," "machismo," "misogyny" and "impunity" have entered a much broader debate about the city and its connection to issues of race, class and gender. And, less predictably, Juárez has become the heart of an impassioned grass-roots artists' movement.

"I realized I could put something together to echo the voices of the victims," said Azul Luna, a Los Angeles photographer and digital artist who traveled to Juárez to document the scene. The founder of an artists' collective that raises awareness about the crimes and the larger issue of violence again women, she once led a caravan of artists from California to El Paso and across the river to Juárez.

In Los Angeles, Rubén Amavizca's play "The Women of Juárez" ("Las Mujeres de Juárez") has become a staple at the Frida Kahlo Theater, with performances in both English and Spanish. Several books, both fiction and nonfiction, are in the works, and there have been songs about the killings by the Mexican groups Los Tigres del Norte and Jaguares, and by Tori Amos.

The Juárez violence has also become the subject of treatises in scholarly journals and university symposiums and has galvanized human rights and women's rights activists. And American celebrities have become involved: on May 9, Jane Fonda and Eve Ensler were among those who participated in a Mexico City reading of Ms. Ensler's feminist work, "The Vagina Monologues," with proceeds benefiting a women's shelter in Juárez. Two years earlier Ms. Fonda, Sally Field, Christine Lahti and Ms. Ensler led a much-publicized march from El Paso to Juárez.

Juárez, Mexico's fourth-largest city, with a population of about 1.3 million, is a teeming industrial center dominated by hundreds of multinational assembly plants. Women drawn to Juárez from villages across Mexico provide the majority of the cheap labor, typically for about $6 a day.

As bodies continue to turn up, so have a host of theories. Satanists, organ harvesters and drug cartels have been among the suspects. (Juárez is a major drug conduit to the United States.) So have the sons of wealthy men, who, it has been said, hunt and kill women for sport. Even husbands and boyfriends have been suspected. But so far the only consensus is that a phenomenon once attributed to a single serial killer has become a wider crime wave involving multiple murderers.

"Now it's a monster," the actress Vanessa Bauche said in a telephone interview from Mexico City. "You can cut off one head, and there will appear three more. This is one of the darkest stories in Latin America."

The founder of an artists' group that works with relatives of the Juárez victims, Ms. Bauche, the star of the Mexican New Wave film "Amores Perros," is co-producer of a documentary that will include interviews with victims' relatives, some of whom have received threats. "The only way we have to protect them is to make them famous," she said.

The killings have been the subject of numerous Spanish-language television programs in both Mexico and in the United States on the Telemundo and Univision networks, as well as several lurid direct-to-video movies. On a more literate front, the acclaimed Mexican playwright Sabina Berman has recently completed the script for "Backyard," a film based on four true stories. "My screenplay is very social minded, political minded," she said. "It talks about the politics of globalization. Juárez is just one example of what can go wrong with globalization."

Ms. Berman said she applauded Hollywood's interest in Juárez, "not just the crimes, but the wave of violence against women," adding, "Of course it would be better to not trivialize and sensationalize, or sexualize, the story."

Debbie Nathan, a journalist who has written extensively about border issues and sexual politics, questioned Hollywood's tendency to simplify. "This situation is about so much more than serial killers," said Ms. Nathan, who worries that movies about the murders "could be a kind of reality porn."

The Australian director Kevin James Dobson said he shared some of that concern when making "The Virgin of Juárez."

"Did I worry about exploitation?" he said. "In a word, yes. The attacks I showed are fictionalized, but the facts spoken are true."

Mr. Dobson said he first learned about the murdered women while searching a Web site about serial killers. "I had the idea to bring Joan of Arc to Juárez," he said, referring to a victim (played in the movie by Ana Claudia Talancón) who develops stigmata and has visions, and who is befriended by a feisty female reporter.

"Bordertown" is also about a female reporter, played by Ms. Lopez, who befriends an attack victim (Maya Zapata). Gregory Nava, the film's writer and director, who previously teamed with Ms. Lopez on the 1997 film "Selena," declined requests for an interview. And the publicist for Ms. Lopez, who is also the film's executive producer, did not respond to requests for an interview with the star.

Marisela Ortiz, a former teacher of one of the Juárez victims and an advocate for victims and their relatives, said she welcomed the prospect of a Hollywood movie about the murders, "in spite of the film presenting a different premise from reality." She was referring to scenes in "Bordertown" pointing to a group of bus drivers as the culprits, a theory that has since been debunked.

The catalyst for many of the artists, filmmakers and activists involved in the Juárez mystery was a 2001 documentary titled "Señorita Extraviada" ("Missing Young Woman"). The veteran Bay Area filmmaker Lourdes Portillo spent 18 months on the project, which received a special jury prize at Sundance four years ago and was broadcast on PBS in the United States. To this day it grips a viewer's attention, from the opening narration, "The desert is full of secrets, some of them buried in the sands," to its accusations of police and governmental negligence and cover-ups.

"You are talking about a very complex problem involving a culture that diminishes the role of women in life," said Ms. Portillo, a native of Chihuahua, in northern Mexico.

A number of new documentaries from both sides of the border are in the works, including Lorena Mendez-Quiroga's "Border Echoes" ("Ecos de Una Frontera"). A freelance television reporter and the founder of the Los Angeles-based Justice for the Women of Juárez, Ms. Mendez-Quiroga made more than 30 trips to Juárez and mortgaged her house to complete the film, which looks at the crimes through the eyes and investigative work of Diana Washington Valdez, a reporter at The El Paso Times who has long been at the forefront of the Juárez story. Ms. Valdez has said she is going to be "naming names" of suspects in the film, which Ms. Mendez-Quiroga hopes to screen at the next Sundance Film Festival.

Another project in development is an HBO feature written by Josefina Lopez, a playwright and screenwriter whose credits include the screenplay for the 2001 film "Real Women Have Curves." To research her project Ms. Lopez visited a desert area near Juárez called Lomas de Poleo, where the bodies of eight young women were found. "I'm very sensitive in that sometimes I can pick up energy," she said, "like ghosts and stuff like that. And as I stood there, I could feel the souls of the women, their spirits."

Ms. Lopez went on to talk about the women who ventured to Juárez from central and southern Mexico in search of work, only to die gruesomely. "When I stood and looked where the bodies had been dumped, I kept thinking, these poor women, their spirits, they're wandering," she said, raising a question that filmmakers and other artists are now left to answer. "How are they ever going to get home?"

"On The Edge" Update

There are a few recent developments regarding my film about the Juárez femicide that I haven't blogged about so I thought I would do so today.

Two Hollywood Juarez Movies Battle It Out, J-Lo Wins

Interesting article about how the 2 hollywood cheesefest films about the Juarez situation have been competing, and the one starring Minnie Driver has apparently been forced to go straight to DVD because everyone is choosing the one starring Jennifer Lopez instead. J-Lo is a bigger draw to theaters, of course. Her film is more realistic, but I think it's extremely bad that there won't be 2 films out there in the wide public eye. Having only one will make it more likely that audiences will not realize that there's a true situation behind the film.

Apparently even the J-lo film is having trouble finding a distributor. We'll see how long it takes for it to finally come up. One person I talked to said it would be late summer or fall, after the summer blockbuster season.

Amazing Screening

Well, the screening of my film in Albuquerque went incredibly well. The owners of the theater, the Guild Cinema, were very impressed with the turnout: 102. Apparently this is highly unusual, especially for a monday night and for an activist documentary. They want to show it again in a few months. The Peace and Justice Center here in town wants to show it, too.

I sold all the copies of the DVD as well.

Afterward a bunch of us went out for drinks and I received some very good comments, including some really helpful, filmschool-style critique from another filmmaker, who in fact is in grad school for film in Ohio and was back here in abq to shoot some final pickup scenes for a student piece he's finishing up. He was especially interested because for his next project he wants to make a narrative feature film about the border that touches on the Juarez situation, the Minutemen, drug and human trafficking, etc. He said my film has made him realize he has to totally rewrite the script.

Anyway. I head back to Tucson this morning in a few hours.

New Juárez Flickr Group

Last night I set up a new Flickr group for photos relating to the murdered women in Juárez and Chihuahua. It's located at http://flickr.com/groups/femicide/.

If you have photos that are relevant and you use or want to use Flickr, I invite you to join.

Into CJ Again

Hello from Albuquerque. I arrived here last night after a day spent with my Tucson homies over in Ciudad Juárez. We lucked out and had a really productive day. We'd been wanting to meet with some community activists in Rancho Anapra called Las Hormigas. But it was proving difficult to arrange something for Saturday and we had sort of resigned ourselves to not being able to see them.
However, as we wandered around Anapra we just stumbled onto their community center. Although it was closed, we had even more good luck. As we stood there reading their posters on the outside of the building, a volunteer drove up after finishing their daily cheap lunch program for the day. She gave us a bunch of literature and we talked a bit about what they were doing, including the resistance to a new highway that is slated to be built through the community and displace thousands of already poor residents of this neighborhood of shacks.

We said we'd follow up with the organizers later, and then drove into el centro. I showed my friends just a taste of what downtown Juarez is like and then we headed for the border bridge. We felt pretty happy with our visit. At the border, the guard gave me, the driver, the full round of questions about where i was from, why we were there, ran my license, etc. I explained we had been in Juarez for the day after being at a conference in Las Cruces for 3 days. He asked what hotel we stayed at and then what was the conference about. I told him the truth, it was about the murdered women of Juarez. I consider it a subtle form of activist information-spreading. It's not illegal to be interested in the femicide, so why not bring it up, keep it on people's minds as much as possible? I'm sure everyone in El Paso knows about it, but many choose to keep it tucked under the rug of their brains.

The conference, for me, was really about people coming together to help each other and help each other work on this cause. Almost everyone who was there already knew most of the facts about the situation, other than a few updates and perhaps some obscure numbers. It was in the form of an academic conference, but it was important not for imparting facts and figures, theories or findings, but for updating our emotional batteries. It gets so easy to work on these kinds of things and become almost desensitized, to work on it and know what it's about but disconnect from the real emotional reality. But by seeing and hearing the mothers one gets an inspirational recharge. One gets sad but then filled with renewed determination to try to make a difference and help. The mothers are the constant reminder, the reality check, the coming-down-to-earth connection.

This is not another academic topic to just write papers on and then go home. This is a real, constant, continuing, horrific situation that needs real action in response to it. Seeing the mothers speak, returning to the city and seeing the pink and black crosses still painted on poles, you know it's still there, that these women are still waiting. In fact, it was announced during one panel that a new body had been found just this week, the first day of the conference, right near the International Bridge. Was this a message, one of the many apparent messages sent using mutilated bodies in Juarez? Was someone trying to say, using "un lenguaje que no entendemos todavía" (as Marisela Ortiz said in my film), that you can have your little conference and give your little speeches and show your little films but the killings will continue? Was someone taunting us from the border while we sat in Las Cruces watching powerpoint presentations?

It's chilling to think like that but it may be true. I hope not, but it may be so, and it may also be so that there's no force on earth that can stop this. But judging by the growing tide of people working to fight it, I'm actually optimistic. It will be stopped. The final measure of the horror will only be determined by the time it will take to finish it, but it is a matter of time now. Eventually enough people will know, about this injustice as with many others, and it will not be able to stand.

From the Justice for Women in Juarez Symposium

For the last 2 days I've been in Las Cruces, New Mexico for a conference on the murdered women of Juarez. It's been a crazy, dizzying blur of panel discussions and networking. I sold or gave away many copies of my film. I talked to many people about my film, about screening it, about how to get it, open sourcing it, and other things. It's been so exciting and so intense too. I will post photos soon but for now check out this post on San Diego Indymedia from DJ Pepperbox, who is also here, she posted a good photo of the "redressing justice" exhibit.

Tommorrow we're going to Juarez. Then I'm heading up to Albuquerque that night.

I'm too frazzled to write more detail. It's just been incredible.

Bordertown Delayed

Nobody seems to know when "Bordertown," the Hollywood J-lo vehicle about the murders in Juarez is going to be released, but it's fairly certain now that it won't be in March, which is what IMDB still lists as the release date. I did find a silly movie-tracking site/blog with production stills. Hard to tell much about the film from them, other than it will be typically sensational, with exploding colonia shacks and all, it looks like. To date I don't think any young women killed in the femicide were killed by burning down their house. But, y'know, J-lo looks good, that's what matters, right?

And in other news, good news, I just got an email from a New York Times writer who wants to talk to me about my film. More on that after it happens.

Femicide On the Rise in Latin America

Reporting on a delegation of Latin American activist women who came to Washington D.C. on International Women's Day, this excellent article about the increasing trend of femicide across the area contains a lot of good information and points. There's the definite concensus emerging that the Juarez situation has raised awareness of a regional problem for which it is only the tip of the iceberg. And there are very serious related consequences:

In the view of Adriana Beltran, the power of organized criminal groups and the persistence of femicide serve to undermine the democratic transition Guatemala was supposed to experience after the peace accords. In former military dictatorships like Guatemala where civilian government institutions are still fragile, the security threats posed by organized criminal bands and their impunity are paradoxically reviving the former national security state apparatus as the military is being drawn into law enforcement. Beltran believes that this is a temptation that should be resisted at all costs. "We strongly believe that the lines between police and military should be kept separate, especially in countries that had armed conflicts," she says.

Posted by steev at 08:01 AM | Comments (0)

Raising Funds to Press DVD of My Documentary

Yesterday I sent out a mass mail to everybody I know that's ever shown interest, so you may already know this- but anyway, I'm trying to raise funds so I can manufacture a whole bunch of copies of the DVD of On The Edge (my film about the femicide in Juarez). You can donate and get a copy, or even order one for your school or organization. The more money I can raise the more copies I'll be able to have made, meaning the more people will see the film.

And in related news, there are only 3 sections of the film left to translate into spanish. Thank you to everyone who's been helping with that. Just a little more and we'll be ready!

Thanx, I really only asked for spanish, but...

Someone translated part of my film into German.

Hmm. Well, I guess if they do the whole thing and I have time, I'll put German subtitles on the DVD too. Except that would be a lot of extra work. Hmm.

"New" Trailer for "On The Edge"

I made a new version of the trailer for my Juarez doc. It's basically the same as the old one, I just took out all the people titles, so viewers don't have to try to read them in such a short time, and changed the end title so it's not time-specific (it used to say "coming soon in fall 2005." hah..) A couple other little visual things are spruced up too.

Necesito Su Ayuda Con Traducción

I've finished posting to the Indymedia Translation Tool all the english transcriptions of my film. If you're a native speaker of latin american spanish and would like to help translate, please click the link, and then pick a section.

If you've never used the Translation Tool before, you may want to read the instructions. The TT is a really wonderful thing - many people, when they hear about it first, think it is another crappy machine translator like babelfish or google translations, but it's really a web application that handles online collaboration, enabling the management of little translation projects - allowing those with texts needing translation to propose them, and volunteer translators to agree to do them and post their finished translations, as well as revise translations.

The wonderful Jenoun, who also helped me translate the spanish interviews into english, has already done the first section. I'm hoping I can get the rest done in the next couple weeks, in time for me to add the subtitles, have the DVD replicated, and take the DVDs on my little screening tour of Las Cruces, Albuquerque and San Diego, March 30 through April 5. Anybody who helps will of course get a copy or two.

Gracias!

"On The Edge" Moving Forward

Things are really picking up speed here regarding my film. It's almost as if as soon as I decided to stop meekly and passively waiting for various festivals to bestow their validation upon me and my work, things started to really get going in a nice way. It's exciting, and makes me wonder if it was a mistake to try the festival route at all. I guess it was good to try this once, but I may not bother the next time. Lots of activist filmmakers, Greg Berger being a good example, are going around that whole process because there are other ways to do things. DIY!!! I'm still waiting to hear from a few more festivals but I'm going ahead with other plans while I do that.

I just heard from the organizers of the Justice for Women symposium at New Mexico State University that they want to screen the film during that event, March 30. I'm also working on getting screenings in San Diego and Albuquerque around that time. I also just recently signed a non-exclusive license with Free Speech TV and they will probably start airing it in late March. That's a potential 11 million viewers so that's really exciting.

Further exciting things coming up - I'm planning to attend the symposium at NMSU and bring along some friends from Tucson, and we're going to go visit Juarez afterward and hopefully meet with some community members. There are also plans brewing for showing it in Arivaca in April, and also again in Tucson, perhaps with some of the musicians that did the soundtrack playing live the same night.

Meanwhile I continue to work on transcribing the English parts of the film, so that they can be translated to Spanish for subtitling. I hope to get the transcription done today and start posting sections of it to the Indymedia Translation Tool. Then when the translation is done I can have a bunch of copies of the DVD made, I start getting it out there even further.

nice show

We had a V-day event at the Dry River Space tonight, dedicated to the women of Juarez. I showed my film, and we also had speakers and we showed the short film that PMS Media did about the 2004 Juarez VDay.

There was a really good turnout, like, packed. And we sold several copies of the DVD, a little booklet that Mexico Solidarity Network published, and many patches and t-shirts that some dry river folks silkscreened yesterday. There was a really great discussion and Q&A at the end, and lots of great one-on-one interactions I had afterward with people, getting really good feedback and discussing possibilities for showings in other places in the future.

So, I'm pretty happy. Friday I'm going to Tempe for the Local To Global Teach-in, where I'll be giving a videoactivism workshop on behalf of Pan Left and Arizona Indymedia. I think it will be cool. I look forward to meeting Arizona IMC people from other cities. I know one or two from Phoenix but that's about it so far.

Sexism in Latin America

I just read a great Reuters article about the political gains that women are making lately in Latin America, marked by the recent election of the first female president in Chile, but marred by the fact that machismo and sexism and a backlash against independent, strong women is still going on.

Prominent lawyer shot dead in Juárez

Diana Washington Valdez of the El Paso Times reports that yesterday afternoon in downtown Juarez a well-known lawyer was shot and killed. He was lawyer for one of the bus drivers who was falsely arrested and tortured for some of the murders of women there. He mentioned recently that if he is killed he would blame a local police official who'd been harrassing him. Journalists from Spain are in town to report on the murders and were scheduled to interview him soon.

Good and Bad News over the last year in Juarez

The El Paso paper reports on the current situation with the murders in Ciudad Juarez. Basically there's some improvement, especially on the Chihuahua state level, and no new reports of tortured arrestees, but the murders continue, there were more in 2005 than in 2004, and locally the police and judges are still negligent and/or incompetent.

In June when I was there the count was over 427. It must be over 440 now. Yet I still see newspapers all over the world still using numbers like 300 or 350. Don't any of these writers ever think to themselves "hmm, ongoing problem, so maybe I should see if the number is higher."?

Resolution on Juarez Femicides

A subcommittee of the U.S. House of Reps has passed a resolution condemning the femicides in Juarez and Chihuahua City. If this goes further and is passed by the whole House and Senate, it could really help. Although it wouldn't be binding legislation, this sort of thing tends to put real pressure on other governments.

Novel Published Depicting Juarez Killings

According to the Philledelphia Inquirer (remember to use bugmenot.com to log in!), A native of the El Paso-Juarez area has just written a fictionalized account of the Juarez femicides called "Desert Blood: The Juarez Murders". From this review it sounds like a relatively well-done book. This has the same risks as the Hollywood films coming out about the issue, but overall at this point I think that as long as something doesn't completely misrepresent the facts, anything that increases awareness is good.

Pretty Much Done

I'm declaring my Juarez doc to be at "release candidate" stage - In other words, it's done, unless I notice some glaring mistake or glitch. I will sigh a big sigh of relief if i watch it a couple times and don't see something crying out to be fixed.

The last few days have been a haze of waiting for final renders and wandering the industrial wasteland around where the studio is, looking for sustenance while the clouds dump drizzle on the city. Right now i'm waiting for the DVD of the final video to render. It's frustratingly slow to turn a DV file into a muxed mpeg2. I wish I understood why. There's almost nothing slower in my computing world.

If only there was internet at the GAVEL (the studio) then i could while away the waiting getting and sending email, doing other stuff needing to get done. I had to bike over here to the Back to Back cafe where they have a computer, while my laptop sits in the video dungeon working away...

A Trailer For My Documentary

I'm still not quite done with "On The Edge", my documentary about the femicides of Ciudad Juarez, but last weekend I made a trailer for it. I'm not entirely happy with the trailer, and I will probably make a better one soon, but this one I am putting up there just to whet your whistle.

What I was going for was a sort of quick overview of all the different people in the film. But as a friend pointed out it would be better to do an overview of the concepts, the issues involved. Anyway, if you have comments, please leave them here. thanx.

Whether justice can be found

The New York Times published a major story about the murders of women in Ciudad Juarez yesterday. Their focus is on the corruption or incompentence of the police and state government. It's pretty impressive. oh an remember that if you dont have a NYT login and don't want to register, use bugmenot.com

(via jay)

New Amnesty International Investigations on Ciudad Juarez Situation

I just found a long article (which I've only skimmed so far) about Amnesty International's recent trip to Juarez and Chihuahua to revisit the femicide situation there and assess if progress is being made. Sounds like they have, and that the new governor is actually visibly better than the old one. Amazing.

More About All the Films About Juarez

I blogged a couple weeks ago about all the movies being produced about Juarez. The El Paso Times has more about that, reactions from people in Juarez and El Paso, and information about a few other films by independant filmmakers from the area. The didn't mention any that were documentaries.

In related news, over the last 4 days I got a lot done on my Juarez film, and finally shortened it to just barely under an hour, though it should be another 2 minutes or so shorter, really. I got a lot done because I was staying alone at a house of some friends that were out of town, so I had no distractions and could borrow space and equipment (monitor, mouse, table, TV, airon chair) to make a little temporary editing workstation. But now I've moved on and I need a new place to work.

Several Fictionalized Films about the Juarez Femicide

A San Antonio TV station published a story about how there are a few different films, dramas, being produced about the Juarez situation. It's really quite incredible when something you've been following, a story so underreported in the media, suddenly seems to have piqued the interest of Hollywood.

I suppose a bright side is that when there's more than one movie coming out into the public eye it will signal to viewers that the situation is real. The fact that there are all these movies about the same thing will make people think, "hmm, it can't be a coincidence, this must be a real problem."

The thing I always wonder, though, even with documentaries, and even those that get huge exposure, like Michael Moore's work, is how much they actually influence anyone to do anything? Of course the reason I do what I do, that I'm involved with videoactivism at all, is that I definitely do think exposing more people to facts about things going on like this DO make a difference. I'm just not sure exactly how much of a difference.

Wrapping Up

Well, I am really close to being done with the Juarez documentary, but I think it's just not going to possible, or even advisable, to finish it, or even call it finished, by the time I head back to Portland this Thursday. I think tommorrow is going to basically be the last day I can work on it, and then I have to relax a little, then prepare to travel back to Portland.

I still don't quite have all the spanish bits translated. Very close, though, actually only 3 clips that I really need help with. It's been so amazing and gratifying to receive all the help that I did, something like 8 people pitched in, and some of them completely out of the blue. It's a great example of the power of the internet for collaboration, as well as tools like Backpack (though Backpack isn't quite perfect for the job, but it did help, and it was easier than setting up my own wiki or something).

As I work on final touches, like the intro sequence, I've been wracking my brains for a better title, a final title. The working title for the last 4 months was "The Multi-layered Enemy: femicides in Juarez." Now I guess I've decided, for now at least, to go with "On the Edge: The femicide in Ciudad Juárez." I'm not super super excited about it, but I like it all right. What do you think about it? Got a better idea? Let me know in a comment. What I like about "On the Edge" is that the metaphor of "edge" works in a lot of ways, the border, the economics, the violence, but also the hope for improvement as we see more and more activism around this issue. So, it works, but I am definitely open to other suggestions.

My other problem is the film is still just a little too long. I would so love it to be 57 minutes, but it's 64. That's one reason I need to wait and really finish it back in Portland, because I need some other people to give me advice on what can be cut so I can get it down to that 58 or 57 minute mark. Why that lenght, you ask? Because I want to get it on television. I want this to be seen by as many people as possible, and fitting it into an hour broadcast television slot is one way to do that.

Juarez Doc Details

Well, the film is really coming along. Translations are slowly trickling in from various people helping out, thankfully, though there are still several clips left to do. Now I'm busy making subtitles from the translations I do have, and as I go, tightening up the editing. Hopefully I can still reduce the total length, but I've decided not to be so worried about that anymore. It's about 72 minutes, and I wanted it to be more like 57, but we'll just have to see. I thought it might be interesting to list here the different sections of the doc, not neccesarily in order:

Juarez docu proceeds, but still need more translators

Well, I am slowly but steadily progressing on my film about the femicides in Ciudad Juarez. Some days I feel like, yeah, sure, I can wrap it up in 2 weeks. Other days I think, omigod there's still so much to do.

Definitely though, the big thing that is holding me back is translation. I still have several bits of interviews that I can't accurately, fully translate myself into english, and hence, can't really even make a final decision about what to use or how to cut. A few people have responded to earlier requests, and 2 have actually followed through, and it's been great to get back those translations and feel like I can now fully take advantage of the corresponding footage.

But I need more help! So if you are good at spanish and english and would like to help, go to the Backpack page I've set up to manage the task, and follow the directions there. If you're fluent it should just take a few minutes to do one clip, more if you want to do more. If you have questions email me at steev AT detritus.netNOSPAM or leave a comment here.

gracias!

El Paso trying to stop teens from crossing into Juarez

Interesting new article in the El Paso paper about how teenagers keep going into Juarez even though they know it's dangerous. Two El Paso high school boys were offed in the last 10 days. Meanwhile as usual we got Juarez officials saying, nah, Juarez isn't violent, it's about as violent as, say Houston.

Uh, yeah, but in Houston the police probably actually investigate and solve some violent crimes.

Latest News from Juarez

A story in the Houston Chronicle tells of a bus driver in Juarez who was just released from prison because a judge found him not guilty after being tortured into confessing to the rape and murder of 8 women in 2001.

It's a mostly pretty good article overviewing the torture side of the Juarez situation. What I continue to find interesting is the way such a huge variety of numbers for the killings keeps being reported. Somebody says 300, somebody else says 360, somebody else says 400, the government says, oh, only 100 of them were sexually motivated so there's only 100.

This has always been a problem with this issue. It's not a surprise that there would be different counts, given the many layers of incompetence and corruption, and attempts by the government to minimize the problem by creating different categories for the murders. However what annoys me is that the media seldom mentions this problem. It would only take one extra sentence. Instead of saying, "the total is X," it would be easy to say, "the total number of killings, according to the government, is X, but other sources put the amount at over Y." The number I'm probably going to go with in my film is "over 410", but I'm going to acknowledge that this is just one of many counts. The other disputable thing in this article is that they mention the count since 1994, but everyone else I've talked to always says this problem started in 1993. So that shaves a bunch of murders off right away (I think about 19 in that first year).

The Road Ahead Is Still So Long

I've been working for so long on this documentary about Juarez. I have a month left, exactly, till the deadline I set for myself to finish it, but it seems like there's still so much to do. The enormity of the task is just incredible. Working the new interviews that I shot into it is the big problem. There's a lot of excellent material and it's a huge task figuring out how to fit it into what I already have, what old material to chop out to make room for it and that sort of thing.

And the task is made harder by the fact that all the new material is in Spanish. I still have trouble with some people talking. In fact a few of the interviewees, even if I spend an hour playing 30 seconds of an interview over and over I still can just barely make out what the hell they're saying. Others, it's totally easy and clear, like as easy as listening to someone talk in English. Totally amazing how there can be that much variation. And it's not even regional accents. It could be 2 people both from Chihuahua, one talks nice and slow and clear, the other talks like insanely fast and all slurred together.

Luckily I think I might be getting some help. Jacob from San Diego IMC has sent out a great callout to his peeps there. Maybe you'd like to help, even, if you know spanish. I wish there was some sort of global Indymedia mechanism for translating stuff that is audio. The Translation Tool is great for written text. Maybe it could be tweaked by some tech people so you could upload an mp3 clip and people could work from there.

While working on this project I took a short detour last weekend and did a small video for Indymedia Newsreal about deportation, which I've just uploaded to Vimeo. Vimeo is a neat little site, sort of like Flickr for videos. Lots of college kids with camphones just throwing up random silly shit, but whatever. I guess if I wasn't so old and bitter and serious I wouldn't mind that, but para mi, ahora, el toda parece tan .... priveleged. Dude, while you're in Mallorca on spring break taking videos of wet t-shirt contests there are people starving to death right over the next hill... suspira...

Well, back to work...

Various Juarez Items

I've been working away on editing my Juarez doc, and when I take a break I've been reading one or the other of 2 books, both of which are related to Juarez: either the brand new book by Charles Bowden, "A Shadow in the City: Confessions of an Undercover Drug Warrior", or "Cosecha de Mujeres," by Diana Washington Valdez.

The first is a difficult yet tantalizing read. a sort of impressionistic biography of a real DEA agent, all names and places changed to protect the innocent/guilty, describing his long career in the depths of the underworld of narcotrafficking. Bowden's prose has inspired and enthralled me before, and this is no exception, yet I'm not sure what to make of this book - it's written perhaps like if Faulkner wrote crime thrillers, extremely nonlinear, but gritty and noir-ish, dreamy or nightmarish, vague and disturbing, and yet we are told that it is all true. I find myself wishing for the interludes filled with raw statistics that alternated with the real life stories in his earlier book, "Down by the River."

The second book, which I blogged about before when I first found out about it, is a detailed and disturbing account of the Juarez femicides. It's written in Spanish and published in Mexico just a month ago. I bought it in Mexico City and have been gradually working my way through it. I've found it easier to read than, for example, most articles in La Jornada, but harder than, say, the emails I've been getting lately from Peruvian and Bolivian and Mexican activist companer@s. The grammar is fairly straightforward, but I still find myself needing to look up unknown words quite often. There are still so many words to learn... suspira... However, many times I'm only looking something up to confirm my guess that I've made based on context, and I've realized that I'm expanding my Spanish vocabulary in the same way that I accumulated, starting from a very young age, such a prodigious (in all modesty) English vocabulary - by reading, and picking a lot up from context.

Anyway, in addition to being good spanish practice the book is a really good work, and a great source of statistics and reference data about the murders. It's also frequently the source of really disturbing, even horrifying, information. For instance (Warning: the rest of this paragraph is not for the squeamish!): At one point in the book Washington describes how several of the women murdered in 2003 were found with their necks broken, all in the same particular way. Unless I'm getting the translation wrong, forensic experts told her the theory that the killer or killers were purposely breaking the victims' necks in that certain way because it causes convulsions in the victim that increases the sexual pleasure of the killer, who is raping the victim at the moment of death. How sickening. I find it hard to imagine how anyone could be that evil and sick.

Also of interest, I've just seen in the El Paso Times that:

The Mexican government recently requested that the U.S. government conduct an inquiry into "Cosecha de Mujeres" because it contains information that is considered confidential by both governments.

The request came from the office of Carlos Borunda Zaragoza, Mexico's liaison to the U.S. government in Washington, D.C. The office also has lobbied Congress against resolutions that call for a binational commission to investigate the border murders.

In other somewhat related news, I just read that the Mexican government claims they've caught the leader of the Juarez drug cartel, Vincente Carillo. Carillo is the brother of Amado Carillo, who was discussed extensively in Bowden's "Down by the River" that I mention above. Amado supposedly died during plastic surgery, but there are rumors, according to Bowden, that he actually faked his death so he could retire and that he's actually living safely in Chile now with his family.
This is fascinating stuff. Is it any wonder that there's a whole subgenre of music, the narcocorrido, about the drug lords?

New Novel About Juarez Murders