Fwd: San Mateo County VIolence Prevention Network: Film Showing "The Interrupters"

[Stewart Hyland]

Hey Everyone,

 

Michelle was invited by Gail Ortega to help facilitate a MIH focus group back in 2009 and continues to work with Bob on the Stop the Violence movement. Michelle is currently executive director for the Peninsula Conflict Resolution Center. The film makes a powerful case for community involvement to reduce crime just like the Hardhats did to stop drug related violence and crime back in the 1990's. - Stewart

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Michelle Vilchez <mvil...@pcrcweb.org>
Date: Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 3:32 PM
Subject: San Mateo County VIolence Prevention Network: Film Showing "The Interrupters"
To: Michelle Vilchez <mvil...@pcrcweb.org>
Cc: Carlos Villarreal <cvill...@pcrcweb.org>

San Mateo County Violence Prevention Network is proud to present a Bay Area Film Showing of “The Interrupters”

 

Wednesday, April 25^th, 2012

9:00 – 1:00 PM

Sobrato Nonprofit Center

330-350 Twin Dolphin Drive, Redwood City, CA 94065

Shoreway Conference Room

 

This is a FREE Showing but charitable donations will be accepted

 

to support San Mateo County’s Violence Prevention Network

 

Space is limited: 

To attend, please RSVP with Carlos Villarreal (cvill...@pcrcweb.org) or call (650 513-0330

 

The stories in “The Interrupters,” a hard wallop of a documentary, may weigh heavily on your heart and head, but they will also probably infuriate you. When a frail-looking child with startled eyes breaks down crying, her tiny hands covering her tiny face as she talks about a neighborhood shooting, it’s hard not to want to gather her up in your arms. It’s also difficult not to feel outrage along with a sense of confused, familiar helplessness because this child lives in that war-torn part of the world called Chicago.

Directed and shot by Steve James, best known for “Hoop Dreams,” “The Interrupters” takes a look at a gutsy, activist component of the Chicago Project for Violence Prevention. The project was founded in 1995 by Dr. Gary Slutkin, an epidemiologist who traveled the world, including for the World Health Organization Global Program on AIDS. After returning home to Chicago and hearing stories about children murdering children, he created the project, operating from the reasonable premise that violence is, fundamentally, a public health issue. To judge from the documentary, which follows activists taking their message to Chicago’s mean streets over the course of a year (it winds down in spring, a not entirely persuasive nod to new beginnings), we are living in plague years.

“The Interrupters” gets its name from a specific set of organizers who perform conflict mediation as part ofCeaseFire, an initiative of the Chicago Project. The focus of CeaseFire is street violence, which organizers try to stem through outreach workers and so-called violence interrupters who literally put themselves in harm’s way. The interrupters were featured in a 2008 article in The New York Times Magazine by Alex Kotlowitz, who produced the movie with Mr. James. In the article Mr. Kotlowitz quotes Dr. Slutkin’s succinct epidemiological position on violence: “Violent activity predicts the next violent activity like H.I.V. predicts the next H.I.V. and TB predicts the next TB.” The interrupters try to block the transmission of that activity with words and an occasional hand on a shoulder.

There is a long tradition of what has been described as victim documentaries, nonfiction movies in which filmmakers train their cameras at people enduring crushing hardships. At their worst these documentaries exploit the suffering of others, turning their pain into consumable spectacles. “The Interrupters” evades that trap partly because it doesn’t try to sell a happy, easily digestible story and partly because it digs in. It took 14 or so months to shoot and clocks in at two absorbing hours (down from its original 162 minutes). Mostly, though, it rises above the usual do-gooder cant by giving the interrupters — and the people they work among and periodically come close to dying for — the time to share their stories about life in the trenches. Mr. James has put a face to a raging epidemic and an unforgivable American tragedy.

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Michelle R. Vilchez
Executive Director

Peninsula Conflict Resolution Center
1660 S. Amphlett Blvd. Suite 219
San Mateo, CA 94402

t: 650.513.0330
f:650.513.0335
Empowering people. Building relationships. Reducing violence.
******************************************************

--

Stewart Hyland
Making It Happen for Our Children

Serving East Palo Alto and Belle Haven families
East Palo Alto, CA 94303
stewart...@gmail.com

 

"Try not to become a man of success but a man of value" - Albert Einstein