Ep 96: Collaboration, hope and social change - Suzan Beraza
Suzan was born and raised in the Caribbean. Broadcast includes - Independent Lens, PBS, World Channel, Lincoln Center. BAG IT - winner of the Britdoc Impact Award, televised in over thirty countries. URANIUM DRIVE-IN - Sundance Institute, Good Pitch and Hot Docs Pitch Forum. Documentary Excellence by the Alliance of Women Film Journalists. MASSACRE RIVER - ITVS funded, Latino Media Market, Points North Fellowship, and IFP Spotlight on Documentaries. Suzan became Festival Director for Mountainfilm festival in Telluride, Colorado in 2017. Suzan is a Hispana-Latina-American and was born and raised in the Caribbean. Her films have shown on Independent Lens, PBS, Pivot TV and on the Documentary Channel, at Lincoln Center, and at many festivals. Her first film, BAG IT, was a winner of the Britdoc Impact Award in Berlin and has been televised in over thirty countries. URANIUM DRIVE-IN was a recipient of Sundance Institute and Chicken and Egg funding and was featured at Good Pitch and at Hot Docs Pitch Forum. The film was awarded the Big Sky Award, was honored for documentary excellence by the Alliance of Women Film Journalists, and was part of the American Film Showcase, an international film program of the U.S. State Department. Her most recent film, MASSACRE RIVER aired on PBS in 2019 and is the recipient of ITVS funding and was selected for the Latino Media Market, Camden International Film Festival Points North Fellowship, and IFP Spotlight on Documentaries. Suzan became Festival Director for Mountainfilm festival in Telluride, Colorado in 2017.FILMS BY SUZAN BERAZAMASSACRE RIVER: The Woman Without a CountryPikilina is a Dominican-born woman of Haitian descent. Racial and political violence erupt when the country of her birth, the Dominican Republic, reverses its birthright citizenship law and she is left stateless, along with over 200,000 others.Uranium Drive-InBag ItTry going a day without plastic. In this touching and often flat-out-funny film, we follow "everyman" Jeb Berrier as he embarks on a global tour to unravel the complexities of our plastic world.New Day was initially formed because the women’s movement had arrived and a group of independent filmmakers couldn’t find distribution for their feminist films. New Day sustains the ideas that inspired its formation in 1971 - collaboration, hope and social change.“We met at the 1971 Flaherty Seminar, where some of our films were programmed,” recalled founding member Amalie Rothschild. “I was in production with It Happens to Us. I'd been trying to get distribution for Woo Who? May Wilson. I'd take it to non-theatrical distribution companies and they'd say 'It's wonderful, dear, we really like it. But there's no audience...’ ”Founding members Julia Reichert and Jim Klein had already started self-distributing their film, Growing Up Female. "The whole idea of distribution," explained Julia Reichert, "was to help the women's movement grow. Films could do that, they could get the ideas out. We could watch the women's movement spread across the country just by who was ordering our films. First it was Cambridge and Berkeley. I remember the first showing in the deep South."Soon, a fourth member joined the three: "When I first met them," Liane Brandon explains, "I'd been inundated with requests to show Anything You Want To Be. I'd been running back and forth to the Post Office, making myself crazy. Other distributors wanted my film, but the most they would offer was a two-year contract, as they were sure the women's movement wouldn't last any longer than that. Because I'd been active in women's groups since 1969, I knew there was a huge demand, but most distributors didn't, so they offered bad deals, or they wanted to ghettoize the films. When I first talked with Jim and Julia and Amalie, I thought 'Ah-hah! Someone else who's...