Caitlin Shamberg

A few videos for you to watch

2009-08-25T01:00:00.000-07:00

At a Town Hall in State College, PA, people expressed anger toward Obama's healthcare proposal. I asked them where they were getting their facts.

An interview with Jean Feggins, mother of Pfc. Albert Markee Nelson, who died of wounds received in an alleged friendly fire incident.

Happy pigs make healthy pork. We visited Veritas Farms in New York to see what it takes to run an ethical and organic farm.

Chip Kidd tours New York's Comic Con. The author, artist and comic book collector gave me his take on the colorful convention.

My resume

2009-08-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

CAITLIN SHAMBERG
caitlin [dot] shamberg [at] gmail.com

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Multimedia Editor: Salon.com, New York, NY (2007-2009)
Produced, wrote and edited videos and podcasts for the website. Worked with reporters to bring multimedia elements to their storytelling, including video, audio and slideshows. Produced stories in the field during the 2008 election year. Produced daily video coverage during the Democratic National Convention. Managed freelance video contributors and content partnerships.

Associate Producer: P.O.V., American Documentary, Inc., New York, NY (2005-2007)
Produced, wrote and edited P.O.V. podcasts, edited video content for the website (www.pov.org), evaluated program submissions for the series, assisted with production of filmmaker interviews and promotional materials, managed relationships with PBS station programmers.

Production Assistant: Frontline "The Soldier's Heart", New York, NY (2004)
Researched archival materials, managed databases, assisted with scheduling and production plans.

Program Coordinator: Russian American Journalism Institute, Rostov-On-Don, Russia (2004)
Produced, reported, edited and shot "Ten Days in Shakty", a short documentary following a Russian hunger strike. Helped design a journalism curriculum for American and Russian students, coordinated travel and living arrangements for participants.

Production Intern: ABC, Law And Justice Unit, New York, NY (2004)
Performed story research for the 2004 elections.

Production Assistant: NYU Media Production Department, New York, NY (2003-2004)
Researched and acquired archival materials for a feature-length documentary, assisted on shoots, logged and transcribed footage.

Programming Assistant: San Francisco International Film Festival, San Francisco, CA (2002)
Coordinated the film selection process, produced events and special programs including archival screenings, live music events, and awards ceremonies.

Programming Associate: Mill Valley Film Festival, Mill Valley, CA (2001-2002)
Researched and selected independent feature films for the festival. Wrote and edited program notes for the published guide, produced and assistant-edited tribute programs.

Short Film Program Coordinator: Sundance Film Festival, Los Angeles, CA (2001)
Oversaw the short film selection process, managed the video library and database. Wrote copy for the festival website.

Associate Producer: IFILM, San Francisco/Los Angeles, CA (1999-2000)
Selected films to appear on ifilm.com, produced the Digital Catapult Film Festival in conjunction with Levi's, managed sponsors and filmmakers, started the IFILM internship program.

English Teacher, Poitiers, France (1998-1999)
Developed and implemented a first-year English language curriculum in ten public elementary schools.

HONORS AND AWARDS
2006 Experimental Television Center, Technical Assistance Grant to attend the 2006 Flaherty Film Seminar, Vassar College
2004 U.S. State Department - University Partnership, Selected by NYU to implement American-style teaching methods in Russian journalism classrooms. Rostov-on-Don, Russia.
1998 Honors, Senior Thesis, "Ce Qu'elle Cherche: Exploring Translation's Transformative Space," Vassar College

QUALIFICATIONS
Languages: American Sign Language and French
Computer Programs: Final Cut Pro, Avid, ProTools
Cameras: Panasonic DVX-100, Sony PD-150, Sony TRV–950

EDUCATION
2003-2005 New York University, New York, NY - MA, Journalism
1994-1998 Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY – BA, English
1996-1997 University of Paris, IV and X, Paris, France

Havana, Cuba

2009-02-17T07:50:00.000-08:00

The pink cocktail umbrella garnishing my ice cream seems decadent in a country where toilet paper is scarce. The day is hot, but there’s shade on the sidewalk patio of the Inglaterra Hotel. A little over a century ago newspapermen sipped aged rum here and fabricated reasons for the US to enter the Spanish-American war. Today teenagers cruise by on homemade skateboards: planks of recycled wood with tacked on wheels that click on the concrete like a train.

Buicks and Cadillacs, some so cherry it’s hard to believe they are fifty years old, taxi around the city picking up passengers for a peso. Drivers smile proudly when I ask them to show off their engines, which boast perfect replicas of American parts sculpted from Russian scrap metal.

The faded elegance of baroque buildings haunts the wide boulevards. Pastel structures crumble, defying complex scaffolding and disregarding the families who hang their laundry on the balconies. Bottom floors have been converted to paladares - family-run restaurants that serve huge portions of fresh tangy fish, spicy beans with rice, and cold beer. Peppery smoke trails from cigars into the bustling street where eighty-year-old maraca players shake their hips next to teenage bassists. They wear purple satin shirts and croon about Che and lost love. Hotel bands play the ubiquitous Buena Vista Social Club repertoire, but the local hangouts allow newer songs, and I dance. Everyone moves, swinging with perfect one-two-three rhythm, while tourists stumble and giggle as locals teach them to spin “como una cubana.”

Outside of Old Havana, murals adorn the pedestrian alleyway of the Callejon de Hamel. Salvador, the painter, chats earnestly with onlookers, explaining how he built a vibrant playground in this forgotten neighborhood. He shapes Afro Cuban gods from red and blue oils, paying homage to Santerian saints. He tells us that on Sunday there’s a rumba festival here; all are welcome to join the crowd that will pulse and sweat to the hypnotic drumming.

Around the corner a hundred people file into the Copellia, a park dedicated to ice cream. The sun burns and voices get louder in anticipation of a scoop of frozen sweetness: chocolate, spiced almond and coconut. I follow the walkway that swirls around the park and ends at a row of people sitting at a counter shaded by a structure reminiscent of Walt Disney’s Tomorrowland.

As evening falls I return to the Inglaterra for a strong Cuban coffee and watch as a pair of young black women approach two Italians. The tourists are tipsy from the salty sea air and syrupy mojitos. The girls are beautiful with white spangled scarves wrapped around their heads; one wears a miniskirt and smiles. She runs her fingers through the hair of the drunker boy, convincing him to buy her dinner. Later they will stroll along the Malecon where waves from Miami crash over the walls and flood the slippery sidewalk, splashing lovers and soaking kids who play in the spray to stay cool.

New York Comic Con with Chip Kidd

2009-02-17T07:47:00.000-08:00

Chip Kidd showed me around New York Comic Con this year. He was great - a total fan. Read more here.

And watch the video I produced:

Streit's Matzo Factory

2006-11-26T16:30:00.000-08:00

by Caitlin Shamberg

There are two television sets in the back office of the Aron Streit Matzo factory. One broadcasts horse races and the other is a closed circuit TV that provides rotating coverage of the four-story factory. The closed circuit television was installed so that rabbis based in New Jersey, can ensure that the factory’s products remain kosher. “We save money this way,” says Aron Gross, a fifth generation Streit who is in charge of sales. Aron has only been working at the company for four years, but aims to open a Matzo café, get the Streit products into the regular grocery aisles, (“the kosher section is dead”) and eventually become part owner of the family-run business.

At twenty-eight years old, Aron has more in common with the hipsters that roam today’s Lower East Side than the “little old ladies” who still come into Streit’s corner store to buy matzo products. He loves to travel, wears a Yankees cap and cites the untraditional “moon strip matzo,” which is flavored with salt, onion and poppy seed, as his favorite. He graduated from Georgetown with a degree in economics, and spent a year at a financial job before pursuing a career on the racetracks, where he worked as a groom. “I wanted him to be a racer,” Aron’s father, and Streit’s Vice President, Mel Gross says. “He would’ve been a great horse racer.” But the five day a week, 7-7 schedule was grueling and Aron left the tracks to move to New York. He moved to experience the City, but he needed a job.

Aron’s cousin, Aron Yagoda (“we’re all named Aron,” Yagoda says) is Mel’s co-vice President at Streit’s. He happily offered Aron, whom he calls his favorite relative, a chance at the factory. Yagoda stands by his belief that it’s important to have fun every day, and takes pride in the fact that there is low turnover amongst Streit’s staff of fifty, “we’re either paying them too much or things are good here.” He looks after all his workers as if they were family, “I’m not just responsible for the guy, I’m responsible for his wife and kids”. As for his cousin, “we’re grooming him to be head of sales. He grew up in Maryland, he has good values, he works hard, he’s young, all the girls like him. He’s like the best guy, he never says no.”

As kids, Aron Yagoda and Aron Gross weren’t particularly close. Aron Gross’ parents divorced when he was young and he grew up with his mother in the small town of Glenelg, Maryland, where he was one of four Jewish kids. “They were my friends because we all carpooled 45 minutes to Hebrew school in Colombia.” Aron is close with his mom, “I get everything from her, she raised me.”

Aron’s father wears jeans, loafers with out socks and a tucked in shirt. He sits comfortably behind a dark wooden desk. He has been married three times, once to a woman whom he last saw on Court TV. “She was running around with the Cherry hill rabbi,” Mel says, referring to Fred Neulander who is in jail because he had his wife killed in order to have an affair. “Aron won’t make the same mistakes I did,” Mel says. “He went to Georgetown, he played football for four years, he studied for half,” He jokes, and proudly adds, “he loves the business, he does a great job, everyone in the industry respects him. He’s everything I wanted to be.”

Mel shares an office with his cousin Aron Yagoda. Their desks are next to each other. Behind them is wall lined with portraits of the Streit family members. Aron Streit emigrated from Austria and founded his factory at 150 Rivington Street in 1925. He was married to Nettie, who “was the meanest,” says Aron Yagoda, reaching into his desk drawer. “Look what I found,” he opens a small wooden box, “grandpa’s teeth, ten bucks, and Nettie’s passport or visa or something.” The folded piece of paper is dated 1925, stapled to the page is a picture of Nettie and a description: “Mouth- proportionate, Chin-double, hair-black, complexion-dark, face-round.”

Nettie and Aron had two sons, Jack and Irving. Jack had three daughters, including Aron Yagoda’s mother. Irving also had daughters: Renee, Muriel, Mel’s mother. Aron Gross describes his great aunt and grandmother as “the Hilton girls of their time,” Mel calls them “sheltered and old fashioned.” Mel and Aron Yagoda joke about Jack Streit, whom they both refer to as “grandpa.” They recall his refusal to modernize, and his “rough, but good hearted” demeanor. “Life was fun with grandpa,” says Aron Yagoda, “It was different, there were mom and pop distributors. Now there are billion dollar corporations, he would have never been able to survive.” Jack died in 1998.

Mel and Aron Yagoda have been working at the factory for 23 years and easily exchange stories. “Like when there was a shootout upstairs,” Yagoda laughs, recalling the time he gave two ex-cons a chance to work at the factory. Mel remembers the time someone died (of natural causes) and “grandpa didn’t want to close the factory, ‘just push him to the side and keep baking.’” He imitates his grandfather’s gruff voice. Aron Yagoda giggles while he tells the story of the woman in the building across the street “who would shower every night at nine. All my guys would stop and go to the window to watch her get out of the shower and walk around naked. I was going to change break time to nine O’clock. So one day I waited for her to come out of her building, and I said, ‘look, I have the place across the street, I’m really sorry about this, but my guys watch you walk around your apartment.’ I offered to buy her blinds, whatever. She says ‘I don’t mind, I’m an exhibitionist.’ I said, “well you’re ruining my production.” Aron sighs and adds, “Thank god she moved.”

Workers meticulously clean the giant mixers between batches; square sheets of crispy matzo come out the end of the oven where workers snap them into individual crackers, 11 per box. Rabbinical law dictates that this process take under 18 minutes, otherwise the bread is considered leavened. The smell of sweet and sometimes burning dough wafts throughout the building and out onto the street. Next to the factory is the small corner store, empty except for the woman behind the counter (she’s been a Streit employee for 25 years). Its shelves are lined with the Streit products: farfel, macaroons, and soup mixes, all boasting the Streit motto, “the taste of a memory.” “We used to have lines around the block at Passover time, now we’re lucky if we get five customers,” says Aron Gross.

An old black and white photograph of Streit’s store depicts a crowd of men waiting at the counter; twine dangles down from rolls, which hang from the ceiling. “It was different then,” says Aron Gross, “you’d go to the 2nd Avenue Deli for chopped liver, and to Zabars for a shank bone.” The Lower East Side neighborhood has changed, but Streit’s hasn’t. “We are part of the neighborhood, but how we fit in is changing. To modernize, Aron wants to turn the corner store into a café and bar. Aron Yagoda notes this might not work out since the rabbi would never allow it to be open on the Sabbath, but Aron is not deterred. “We could serve matzo with drinks at night, we could serve matzo with spreads and coffee in the morning. If we could just turn the matzo into the bagel, we’d be set.”

A Shashlik Story

2006-11-26T14:26:00.000-08:00

A personal, politi-culinary video essay about Southern Russia.
3:00

Nina's Tragedies - A Film Review

2006-11-26T12:37:00.000-08:00

by Caitlin Shamberg

Film-Forward

Nadav (Aviv Elkabets), an awkward 14 year old, is deeply in love with Nina (Ayelet July Zurer), his mother's younger and beautiful sister. Following her around and peeping through her windows to get a closer look into her private life, Nadav knows exactly what she's up to at all times and records her dramas, and his emotional reactions, in his diary. The film's narration stems from this journal, which gives director Savi Gabizon the ability to play with storytelling and perspective.

Only recently married, Nina's husband is killed in a terrorist attack. Following the funeral, Nadav is asked by his mom to move in with Nina to look after her while she mourns. For Nadav, this is a dream come true. But as Nina slowly recovers, she begins to fall for another man, and Nadav feels betrayed and vows never to speak to her again and moves in with his recently divorced father.

Although beautifully shot and well acted, the real merit of the film lies in the script. It is a story that isn't afraid to take chances and surprise the audience at every turn. Even the most unexpected events ring true. One afternoon, Nadav's father picks his son up after school in a van plastered with religious stickers and packed with fellow Hasids. Stopping in front of a busy café in the center of Tel Aviv, the van begins to play music and the Hasids all at once jump out into the street and begin an impromptu dance with the onlookers. But the upbeat celebration suddenly turns sour for Nadav when Nina's lover coincidentally appears.

Along with its quirky characters, the film creates a world that is emotionally complex, bringing absurdist humor into the tender moments and depth into the absurdity. Because Nadav's 14-year-old impulses are honestly depicted without judgment, we trust his coming of age, as well as his difficult reconciliation with his imperfect parents.

Click here to read more of my film reviews...

Lake Titicaca, Peru

2006-11-26T12:09:00.000-08:00

At 12,529 feet, Lake Titicaca is one of the highest navigable lakes in the world. It perfectly mirrors the concentrated blue of the sky, and in the distance, water and atmosphere are indistinguishable.

From Puno, it takes three hours by boat to reach Taquile, one of the lake’s Peru-side islands. You dock at the base of a 500-step staircase carved into the side of a hill. The thin, high-altitude air makes the steep climb challenging, but the island’s bizarre and beautiful charm is worth the effort.

After the ascent, an earthen path leads you to a small square. Views of the lake fill the space between a whitewashed church, a restaurant, and a communal tourist market that sells knitted caps and samples of brightly woven material. An island chief greets you and asks if you want to stay the night. There are no hotels here, only a hand-written roster of families who provide a bed and blankets for two dollars, and meals for a bit more. The list rotates daily, creating a communal system that keeps the island refreshingly free from the urban hustle found elsewhere.

Trimmed by sapphire water, the pastoral landscape is a dazzling weave of red, mineral-rich soil, and healthy crops. Cows graze freely, chickens coo and cluck, and an occasional rabbit hops by. Men walk the island whispering to each other in their native Quechua; it is unnecessary to raise your voice in a place this peaceful. As they stroll, they knit on tiny needles, expertly crafting the customary, red and white caps that all the men wear. If the pointy tail of the hat flops to the side, he’s single; if it hangs to the back, he’s married. Women, too, wear the traditional dress: delicately embroidered white blouses, black skirts, and multicolored belts that tie around the waist.

You meet your hosts for dinner in their rustic stone home. A tureen of vegetable soup and a plate of salted sweet fish and rice steam on the table. After the meal you are offered the ubiquitous maté (coco-leaf tea), which speeds the flow of oxygen through your veins and warms you against the cold mountain air.

Night falls and the island is yours to explore. Through glowing windows, candles cast soft light on the serpentine pathways, lined by ancient walls. You follow the trails and pass under stone archways, adorned with Incan carvings of moons, birds and rabbits. On the highest point of the island lay the ruins of an Incan shrine. Here it all comes together- the mystery of ancient rituals, the reverence for Pachamama (mother earth), and the simplicity of a life without electricity. Here, in the quiet middle of some of the highest mountains in the world, a crescent moon and a trillion stars throw speckled light on a crystalline lake, and you decide to stay another night.

Lessons From War and Life

2006-11-26T11:58:00.000-08:00

by Caitlin Shamberg

Newtopia Magazine

Errol Morris examines Robert McNamara in "The Fog of War".

Errol Morris's stylish documentary, The Fog of War, explores the life and character of Robert S. McNamara, often shown wielding a pen as if he is rewriting history. Opening with the Cuban missile crisis, the film follows McNamara as he meanders through modern history from WWI to the Vietnam War, when he served as Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. Following McNamara's lead, Morris relies primarily on the former Secretary's rattling voice to narrate this valuable, yet dangerously subjective history lesson, while at the same time, crafting entertaining and beautiful cinema.

Subtitled Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara, the documentary seeks to school us in how to fight a good war, by analyzing our recent history and examining both good and bad decisions. From lesson six: "Get the Data," to the disturbing lesson nine: "In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil," the maxims vary in their profundity. Although superficial, this structure adds a necessary pacing to the film and builds suspense as we traverse the tensions and tragedies of our recent history.

Most tense is the recounting of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the infamous thirteen days during which the United States came dangerously close to a nuclear confrontation with Cuba, where Castro had 162 Russian warheads pointed our way. Through subtle negotiations, Kennedy and Khrushchev managed to quell the crisis- in exchange for not being blown up, Kennedy agreed to remove American missiles in Turkey, which were targeted at the USSR. "The cold war," says McNamara, "Hell it was a hot war."

It is during this section that we are first made aware of Morris' presence as we hear him telling his subject, "we attempted to invade Cuba, to assassinate Castro," to which McNamara gives the unfortunate response "I didn't know." Instead of taking McNamara's word as absolute truth, Morris interjects comments and questions throughout the film. The director keeps McNamara in check, giving the viewer a helpful second source of information.

We also gain perspective through Morris's use of perfectly chosen and exquisitely edited archival footage that illuminates the intensity of the time, making us truly thankful that we didn't blow up the nearby island. However, as lucky as we may have been (McNamara claims that in the end, we simply "got lucky"), history goes on to prove that we still failed to learn what the documentary bills as lesson number one: "empathize with your enemy."

Before pursuing his career as a documentary filmmaker, Errol Morris was a private investigator. His skillful probing got David Harris extremely close to admitting to murdering a cop in the1988 documentary, The Thin Blue Line; the film effectively gained freedom for Randall Adams who was wrongfully jailed for the crime. Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (1997) gave us the stories of four men with different obsessions: topiary, mole rats, lion taming, and robots. More recently, Morris has crafted documentary portraits of electric chair inventor and Holocaust denier, Fred A. Leuchter; and genius, Stephen Hawking. His unique style of documentary-portraitism interweaves surreal imagery and compelling interviews, which provide us with a well-rounded and cinematic experience.

The Fog of War is Errol Morris' seventh documentary. It's his third to incorporate a score by Philip Glass, who has composed music for many films including The Hours, Godfrey Reggio's Qatsi trilogy, and written modern accompaniments for such classics as Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast, and Dracula (1931). For The Fog of War, Glass has crafted a piece that is true to his style: moody, modern and frenetic. His score plays perfectly off of elegant montages from footage culled from the archives, including dream-like images of weapons plants, and planes dropping bombs, as well as Morris' own creations including the motif of dominoes falling on a map of South East Asia.

The filmmaker spent twenty-three hours interviewing McNamara using his "interrotron." This invention projects the director's visage on the camera's lens, giving the illusion that the subject is talking directly to him, while he is really looking the camera (and thus, the viewer) dead-on. This makes for a tense relationship between us and the eighty-five year old McNamara, who sits stiffly in a suit and lacks facial expressions.

Recently, McNamara has made an effort to recast himself in American history. In 1995, he published In Retrospect: the Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, which contains much of the same insight as The Fog of War. It was this book that got Morris thinking about the film. According to a Dec. 21 Washington Post article, Morris felt that the book had been wrongly classified as an apologia, which was too simple when considering the complexity of Vietnam. "Review after review talked about McNamara's apology, confessions, this mea culpa. And I felt the book was none of those things. It was rather an attempt to go back into history and try to understand it-the history of which he was so much a part. It was not an attempt to ask for forgiveness, it was more interesting than that."

Indeed, Morris' film brings an interesting perspective to McNamara's story. Prior to his 1961 appointment as Secretary of Defense under President Kennedy, McNamara had been working at the Ford motor company, where he embraced the notion of market research and worked to develop the Ford Falcon. This was a smaller cheaper car for a nation ready to move away from tailfins and bright colors. McNamara speaks proudly of his data analysis that led to the installation of seatbelts in Fords, thereby saving countless lives.

Later in the film, he acknowledges the death of 58,000 Americans and over three million Vietnamese during the Vietnam War. The filmmaker welcomes this sort of irony. We learn at the onset that McNamara's earliest memory is of "a city exploding with joy, I was two years old. I remember the tops of the street cars being crowded with human beings cheering and kissing and screaming." It was the end of WWI, Armistice Day, November 11, 1918. The US had won the "war to end all wars."

McNamara got his military training while serving under General Curtis Le May, a true war monger, who valued nuclear weapons and massive bombing campaigns. McNamara provides a disturbing account of his participation in the WWII firebombing of 67 Japanese cities, which destroying huge areas, and killed 100,000 civilians in Tokyo alone. ("I was part of the mechanism," he says). This was prior to the 1945 atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. "If we'd lost the war, we'd be prosecuted as war criminals," says McNamara, [LeMay], and I'd say, I, were acting as war criminals." Perhaps to avoid the possibility of lingering on this scary thought, he concludes his revelation with a question, "what makes it immoral if you lose and not if you win?"

On an intellectual level, McNamara grapples with questions of morality throughout the film (he talks fondly of the philosophy classes he took while studying at UC Berkeley). However, he evades all questions of responsibility. Quite simply, there is little sense that he feels badly (or feels at all) about his involvement in WWII or his role during Vietnam. "Some people think I'm a son of a bitch," he says flatly. Although McNamara admits mistakes: "We were looking at it as part of the cold war, but it wasn't." The former Secretary lacks emotion, and it is only while describing the plot of land where Kennedy is buried, that he begins to cry.

Most chilling is McNamara's telling of the story of Norman Morrison, who set himself on fire in front of the Pentagon to protest the war. McNamara recounts this tale and then says he has things in common with Norman. This comparison is a bit confusing and difficult to accept; it only serves to further underline the severe disconnect between McNamara and the vast segment of America that viewed Vietnam as a mistake.

Perhaps this disconnect grew out of the fog of war - the notion that rational judgment is lost in wartime. To show us just how irrational and confused America's politicians were during Vietnam, Errol Morris makes us privy to recently released recordings of conversations that McNamara had with both the presidents he served. We can only deduce that our leaders, Kennedy included, had no idea what was really going on. These are the moments when Morris's anti-war perspective (he protested the war while a student at the University of Wisconsin) and McNamara's ability to bring light to our foreign policy mesh completely, bringing an understanding of history that hopefully will keep our government from making the same mistakes in the future.

Between 1995-1998, in order to try to figure out for himself what went wrong, McNamara met with North Vietnamese leaders to hold conversations about the conflict. He recounts bluntly asking if the Vietnamese knew that the United States was trying to liberate them. He is rebuffed by a sharp "didn't you study history?" This history includes Ho Chi Minh's 1945 declaration of independence from France and the fervent desire to maintain this freedom. That the US wanted to liberate the country was irrelevant and only made things worse; as the numbers of Vietnamese killed by Americans increased, the harder the Vietnamese fought. "We saw Vietnam as an element of the Cold War, not what they saw it as, a civil war," McNamara learned during the meetings. And so we are taught in lesson eight, "be prepared to re-examine your reasoning."

Although this lesson falls a little flat after the fact, it resonates powerfully when we examine current events. It is nearly impossible to watch the film without thinking about Iraq. For this reason alone the film should be required viewing as it leaves the viewer wondering if we have learned anything at all from our recent history, especially when we hear McNamara's statement, "we should never apply our power unilaterally." And if applied to weapons of mass destruction, "believing and seeing are both often wrong." In the end, our country might benefit from taking some advice from the self-proclaimed war criminal, particularly when he states "the human race needs to think more about killing, about conflict; is this what we want in the 21st Century?"

Newtopia Magazine

Asana's African Hairbraiding Salon

2006-11-26T11:54:00.000-08:00

Harlem's 125th Street is home to more than fifty braiding salons. Asana's is one of the largest.

Your Shoes - an essay

2006-11-26T10:44:00.000-08:00

When Nike bought Converse even the Mayans suffered.
3:00

Ten Days in Shakty

2006-11-26T10:34:00.000-08:00

In a corner of Southern Russia, 29 workers lead a long hunger strike. These former miners struggle for local attention and unpaid wages from a company that no longer exists.

The Beginning

2006-11-24T12:48:00.000-08:00

This is the first part of hopefully a longer story...

The wail began, rising like floodwater through the building, louder and shriller, until it was time for Miss Estrella’s sixth grade class to evacuate. Annabelle turned down the corner on the page and closed the book. She took a big breath, just in case and pushed back her chair and stood quietly. Miss Estrella rolled her eyes, “It’s just a drill,” she said. “Calmly now, line up outside the room. Leave your bags and backpacks inside. Don’t bring your bags, just your bodies.”

There had been a warning in New York three weeks ago and even though they lived in LA, everyone was still on edge. That’s why Annabelle had printed out the maps, security precautions and police codes that filled her backpack. She would show all of this to Macenzie at lunch in the narrow outdoor passageway by the side of the building where Sarton once pulled down his pants.

Last week there had been 23 fire drills. Each time her class had lined up single file and pretended to evacuate. Twenty-three times they returned to their desks, which had been pushed out of their proper rows into a misshapen clump of metal legs and wooden table tops. There had also been an earthquake drill. Obediently, Annabelle knelt under her small desk, cupping her hands over her neck while granules of dirt lodged themselves into her bare knees, leaving small red dimples that itched when she stood up.

Annabelle joined the single file line forming in the corridor. The classroom door swung open as Eddie shuffled out and took his place at the back. Miss Estrella walked out behind him, checking the room once more before she pulled the door shut, causing a current of air that ruffled the map of the world, which was pimpled with pushpins marking recent summer vacation spots: Tuscany, Shanghai, Wyoming.

The Artist's Signature: A Profile

2006-09-26T12:20:00.000-07:00

By Caitlin Shamberg

KoreAm Journal

NEW YORK — Four bright paintings of ghost-like creatures hang in Christine Kim’s studio on the ninth floor of the School of Visual Arts (SVA). The small, rectangular room comes equipped with a shelf and a table, where Christine keeps a stack of colored paper and a basket of yarn. She works with wood, vivid colors and textured materials. But tonight she has put away her supplies and is having a party.

Her guests are in their early 20s; they bring bags of chips and bottles of red wine. She introduces those who don’t know each other by signing names, forming letters with one hand. Like Christine, most of them are deaf.

The room fills with the quiet swooshing sound of hands brushing together, at times punctuated by bursts of laughter. If it were possible to map the sound in studio 916, it would look like an electrocardiogram — a straight, flat line spiking suddenly when something funny is said.

A group of SVA students gathers in the corridor next to the studio. These are Christine’s classmates, and they can hear. “Your paintings are rad!” a student writes in turquoise ink on a white notebook page. Christine giggles in response.

Christine, 25, moves confidently between the two groups, pen in hand, notebook ready. She wears a black mini-skirt and silver shoes; her straight black hair is tucked behind her ears. Long, glittery earrings make her look like a movie star. She grabs one of her classmates, a guy with a nose ring, and pulls him by the wrist into the center of the room, which, for tonight, is a gallery where she can share her recent work with her friends.

The back wall of the studio is painted black and decorated with letters cut out of black Velcro. It reads: “Garden Eels live in colonies. 1 colony can hold up to 1000 eels. They live in the sand and burrow down when spooked. They are as long as pencils with big eyes. They rely on sight for food and signs of danger.”

Beneath the lettering are two paintings of garden eels. Christine created the worm-like creatures from cardboard and painted them blue. There is also black yarn stitched onto pieces of wood, through holes that took two days to drill. The yarn is silky smooth.

Christine says that she wants to make her art as interactive as possible. “So that the audience can be more involved with my art by touching it, rather than just looking at it.”

***

I met Christine through my brother, who is also deaf, and even though I grew up signing, it’s difficult to interview her. She doesn’t sign in linear English order that I can put in my notebook. She speaks in American Sign Language, a system of words, facial expressions and body language. One sign can express an entire phrase.

I ask Christine about growing up deaf, and she begins by signing “mom.” Her five fingers spread apart and her thumb taps her chin. As she does this, the expression on her face changes to mimic the face of her mother — a wrinkled forehead and concerned eyes. And then Christine switches roles, becoming the pastor at her church, who looms above a young Christine and covers her ears with his hands.

“The pastor would put his hands over our ears, and everyone would pray,” she says, describing her early memories of church. Christine’s sister, Jayne, is also deaf, but both their parents are hearing. When the prayers didn’t work, the two girls had acupuncture. “And then I think we had shock therapy,” Christine says half joking as she describes a small metal pen with a battery inside that was held to her head, supposedly to stimulate her nerves.

Christine’s parents realized Christine was deaf when she was 6 months old. “When Christine was asleep in the house, we played loud music and drums. My wife tried to make a lot of noise,” says Christine’s father. “After that, I didn’t know how I could live. I didn’t see any friends; I would stay in the house, drink beer, watch TV. I was going to die. I didn’t speak good English, I understood nothing.” Attending church with his wife and daughters brought him peace of mind.

“I’m not worried about her,” he says about Christine. “My wife did a very good job [with our daughters].”

Christine, who was born in Anaheim, Calif., says that she was raised “in a house of broken English, wrong English,” where her parents spoke a mixture of Korean and English to each other. This complicated Christine’s ability to communicate both at home and outside. “I had a lot of issues with my mom. Her notes to school had mistakes, but I always thought they were right. I still make mistakes.”

***

Christine’s East Village apartment is tiny with tall ceilings. It doesn’t have a light to indicate when the doorbell rings, or a fire strobe, which is a smoke detector that uses a flashing light instead of sound to alert residents to the presence of smoke. “I asked the landlord,” Christine says, “but he said I wasn’t on the lease. But what if I burned down in a fire?” she says.

New York City human rights law requires that a landlord make reasonable accommodations for a disabled tenant. Although she is not on the lease, Christine is still legally considered a tenant. However, the law is vague enough so that the landlord is not required to buy the $150 fire strobe, or install a light-based doorbell, which can cost up to $100 before installation. However, he cannot object if Christine installs the devices herself.

Christine lives with a roommate who does hear. “At first, I tiptoed all the time, didn’t flush the toilet, tried not to make noise. In the morning, I asked my roommate if she had heard me, but she hadn’t woken up,” says Christine. “I walk loudly, but no one told me that until recently. Someone once told me that I make gagging noises when I brush my teeth.”

***

“I hear nothing,” Christine says. In her left ear she can register sound at 150 decibels; 95 decibels in her right ear. But even at those levels, it’s an almost imperceptible tone or vibration. She can’t hear the subway screeching around the corner at the Astor Place stop (101 decibels according to a NY Metro article). Nor can she hear the rustling of leaves and chirping birds in Central Park (54 decibels), music, dogs barking, people laughing or the driver’s announcement on the 23rd Street bus that “anytime is pick-pocket time, I’d like to make you aware, hope you take care, ‘cause they won’t even leave you the fare.”

I ask Christine if she thinks there’s a difference between her experience and that of a hearing person. “Not really,” then she pauses thoughtfully. “Maybe I like light more,” she signs, flicking her finger as if a light bulb is being turned on; adding that if she’s at a dark New York City restaurant, she will ask for extra candles to be put on her table.

***

Christine and I meet in Midtown in front of Christie’s. For homework, her class has to look at the artwork that is up for sale. Christine wears jeans, a red sweatshirt and Converse sneakers, and stands out in the stuffy auction house. A gray-haired couple passes us. “If you look at the Warhols, the prices she quoted us were very bad,” the man says to the woman. These words slip past us, undetected by Christine.

She walks briskly through the galleries containing post-World War II and contemporary art. She stops in front of Andy Warhol’s “Mustard Race Riot 1963,” a wall-sized, mustard-yellow canvas imprinted with photographs of police dogs, men in riot gear and protestors. She brushes the palms of her hands down the sides of her face, signifying “sad.” Another bit of conversation floats by: “It’s just too important a picture.”

We pass a picture of Matthew Barney as a goat from the “Cremaster Cycle.” “Do you think any artists would be recognized on the street today?” Christine asks.

We head downstairs, where a life-sized elephant stands, draped in a white sheet, like some kind of hybrid of the GOP and the KKK.

***

A photograph of this elephant is being projected onto the wall in the ninth floor lounge of SVA, where Christine has class. Jerry Saltz is an art critic for the Village Voice. He’s balding and wears a plaid shirt and gold-framed glasses. He’s casually professorial.

“What’s it about?” he asks. “What’s a white elephant?” he continues, pronouncing each word as if it’s precious.

Underneath where the slides are being projected sits Mia, Christine’s interpreter. She is 27 and grew up in New York. Her grandmother was deaf, so Mia grew up signing other people’s words and “voicing” her grandmother’s signs. “I try to match signs of the person, the language of the person. The gift of gab helps,” Mia says, describing how she takes the time to chat with her clients before she has to interpret. “I’m chatting and picking up their language.”

“It’s a wild goose chase,” says a male classmate, who’s easily able to identify the artist behind every slide.

“It’s a house that’s too big so you can’t sell it,” says one girl who spends the entire class twiddling her dark brown hair between her fingers.

A student next to me is recording the class; his tape recorder makes clicking sounds. Behind us, there’s a bang in the elevator.

Christine sits hunched, resting her chin on her fists and watching Mia intently. She likes this class and pays attention.

“This is the Impressionism auction,” Jerry says, but stops after pronouncing “Impressionism” and turns to Mia. “It’s a long word,” he says. Mia finger-spells it. The 13-letter word takes longer to spell than it does to pronounce.

One student describes the art as dusty and mishung, as if it were dead.

“I didn’t think the art seems dead, it’s just at a different stage,” counters another student.

There’s a 9-second delay between the first part of the sentence and Mia’s signs.

***

“I was really angry last night,” Christine says, explaining that something got mixed up and there wasn’t an interpreter for an artist who was giving a lecture at SVA. She asks Mia to call the Office of Campus Life to rectify this. Mia asks what kind of mood she should speak in, but Christine doesn’t have time to answer before someone picks up the phone.

“I don’t want to miss any more lectures,” Mia says pleadingly, but with a hint of anger into the phone. Christine looks worried.

The school is required by law to ensure that courses and course materials are accessible to Christine. These services are paid for out of the college’s operating budget. The cost varies each month, depending on the number and length of classes and evening lectures. The interpreter is $60 per hour and must “understand the content,” says Ellen Clinesmith, the school’s disability coordinator and director of campus life, adding that the interpreter must “interpret art in some sense.” Christine is the only physically disabled student currently in the master’s of fine arts program.

After class, a friendly Goth girl with dyed black hair gives Christine notes from the class. She’s paid by SVA to do this. Christine asks her if she went to the previous night’s lecture, but she hadn’t.

***

It’s dusk and the windows of the buildings glow yellow as the sky begins to darken. Christine is taking me to the Elga Wimmer Gallery in Chelsea to see an exhibit that incorporates sign language. It is an homage to the artist’s mother who lost her hearing, forcing the family to learn sign language in order to communicate.

In front of a long wall, a video projector rests on wheels that roll down two elevated tracks. It throws the image of a typewriter onto the white wall facing it. The projected image types words, accompanied by the clicking sounds of typing.

“I am moving quickly to the end of what is called me. 12 Words.” It types as it rolls down the track. “I am moving quickly to the end of what is called. 11 words. I am moving quickly to the end of what is. 10 words.” And so on.

Plaster hands forming sign language letters are attached to the wall in a row. “A E I S U” stick out from the wall above a hand signing the letter “Y.” Christine explains that it was too difficult for the artist to create a plaster cast of an O, so he settled for S, formed by making a fist.

Christine finds the whole exhibit a bit cheesy. “I don’t want to be a ‘deaf’ artist,” she says, referring to art created by deaf artists that incorporates sign language. Instead, she says she wants to be an “artist that does everything: installation, performance art, public art, crafts and paintings.”

***

Christine says she wants to transform her own studio space into a different world. She wants to cover the ceiling, the floor and all four walls with fabrics and bright colors. Her teacher suggests that she leave the ceiling the way it is, but the freedom makes Christine giddy.

“I can do whatever I want,” she tells me, “I can even remove the dry-wall.”

Photographs by Alice Park

Global Voices Video

2000-06-01T09:53:00.000-07:00