Park Deli’s owners, Valentine Leung and Michael Sclafani are young entrepreneurs and new parents who are holding it down by keeping their side jobs as a dress designer and window decorator.

Here are some photos from the “Youth Action” screening last night. It was put on by the Grassroots Media Conference crew and hosted by Youth Media Reporter at the Academy for Educational Development. Filmmakers that have made work through Educational Video Center, and Casa Atabex Ache were on hand to show and talk about their work. There were also some peeps from the Ghetto Film School who are going to Brasil to work on a narrative piece, damn I’m jealous.

the best part is that in the teacher’s follow-up reply he wrote that noam essentially has problems with authority figures. he corrects them when they’re wrong. or otherwise. i wonder where he gets that from???
———-
On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 11:29 AM, Marc wrote:

Mr. Rothberg,

I just wannted to touch base with you and see how you thought the meeting went yesterday while I was there and after I left. I saw the final IEP, without any changes, and just wanted to make sure that your feelings were expressed.

Additionally, Noam is complainiing of a sore throat and wanted me to ask you if someone could drop of lozengers for him.

—– Original Message —–
Sent: Friday, April 24, 2009 2:21:32 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Re: IEP

Hi Marc,

Unfortunately I just got this email, and school is coming to a close anyway, so I’ll bring him some lozenges when I pick him up. Thanks for letting me know though.

I thought the meeting went well. Noam seems to have improved greatly since last year. I think a lot of it just has to do with him getting more mature as he gets older.

Honestly, I’m not sure how much meeting with Ms. Rizzo is actually helping. He seems to seriously dislike her. I wonder whether or not it would be better to have a ‘happy’ kid who isn’t frustrated at school. Or have a frustrated kid, who might be helped by her tutoring even if he dislikes it.

However, he’s always taken it personally when he gets corrected. As you mentioned yesterday when I saw you, he’s been aggravated by your corrections. Which is interesting because, that’s what teachers do… and he’s never mentioned it to me before I brought it up with him after school.

On another subject, I was concerned to hear that you told the students that “illegal” immigrants do not pay taxes. That is unfortunately not true. Undocumented immigrants work often resort to using false social security numbers in order to work. This way they pay into the U.S. social welfare system yet reap none of its benefits. Further, more and more immigrants are being detained for no good reason. Our very unfair economic system depends on undocumented immigrants to do a lot of hard work for little money. You can find out more about all of this here: http://www.amnestyusa.org/immigrant-detention/page.do?id=1641031
and a .pdf fact sheet can be found here: http://archdiocese.la/ministry/justice/peace/pdf/Factsheet-JusticeforImmigrants.pdf

Also, all of this nation’s residents are illegal immigrants, unless you’re 100% native american.

If I understood the lesson incorrectly – because it was translated through Noam, then let me know. I’d be happy to be wrong about that.

Best,

Fivel

———

Mr. Rothberg,

I neglected to mention that we spoke of Migrant workers, not illegal immigrants. The story mentioned “aliens” and Noam was fixated on that. He also felt the term was not appropriate, which he stated in class. I brought up the definition to show him what it really means (he thinks it means little green men from space).

We do need to work on his understanding that since he is a student, it is not appropriate to correct adults, especially Administration, regardless if they are correct or not.

—–
Mr. Rothberg:

I think the issue with Noam’s information was the fact the that he neglected to tell you WHEN the story and facts took place. The story we were discussing took place in the 1880’s, not in recent years. The facts are presented to the teacher to share with the students by the company that creates the textbooks. I interpret them and share what I know. I also showed a video presented by a different company, however, again, this information is from the 1880’s.

Maybe that added insight helps explain the lesson.

++++

in terms of the subject matter, the interview with mr. goldstein was interesting because it was great to hear a government official talk directly about issues that don’t neccessarily get touched on. in particular, i was interested in hearing where the advertising money goes. the gps / credit card machines in nyc cabs now have the capability to display ads on their screens. it was not clear who directly benefits – the medallion owner, fleet owner, or machine vendor. it seems like it’s simply a means of reducing costs for the medallion owners as they pay less money in leasing fees on the machines if they agree to have ads on the screens.  Yet from a taxi driver’s perspective, they could care less because they still pay a 5 % service charge with every credit card swipe.  And the cabbies aren’t particularly happy about hearing the same ads cycle over all day.  One person I spoke to, Bill, joked about how “these are the same people who had recorded celebrity voices – including Elmo – telling passengers to ‘buckle up’ every time they got in the cab.  It drove cabbies nuts.”  Can you imagine hearing Elmo say “Buckle Up For Safety” over 30 times a day?  yikes.

just from a filmmaking perspective what i find amazing is that everytime you turn off the camera people say far more coherent and interesting things than when on-camera. on the one hand it tells you just how practiced some folks are at acting ‘natural’ when on-camera. on the other, there must be filmmakers out there who have some amazing techniques that get people to relax.

there’s also the fact that i didn’t notice the subject’s lav mic wire had come out from behind his tie and was dangling across his body. yikes. during the interview i was just concentrating on asking the questions, listening to his responses and going with the flow of the conversation. then, after looking at the footage – wham – there it is. it feels like such an amateur mistake. and who wants to make amateur mistakes? grrrr.

that being said, i’m going to go over the footage again tonight. b/c i know the wire wasn’t visible the entire time, so there must be useful segments in there.

UNITE HERE and CUPE joined forces on Wednesday, October 17, 2007 to march against poverty and draw attention to the twenty locked-out workers of Toronto’s Holiday Inn on King Street. This video contains photos from the rally and a short interview with one of the locked out hotel workers.

the hotel is quite nice, a fancy sheraton smack downtown.  after checking-in and dropping off my bag, i took a long walk, went to the waterfront and visited two gallery exhibitions.  one of which was a large display within the lobby of a corporate center.  it was the World Press Photo ‘07 exhibition – it went from intense photos of war, destruction, and cruel irony in one section to impressive nature stills on the other.

one photo was of an outdoor movie screening in West Africa by Cinema Numerique Ambulant.  they show popular films with health-related psa’s at the beginning in rural areas – i’m not sure if they’re limited to West Africa or not.  i really need to look into them as it’s the same idea as Street Movies! – which i ran at Scribe for 4+ years.  It would be great to have a narrative study of various outdoor film screening programs across the globe, including what their intentions are, how they succeed, fail, what challenges they face and their outcomes.

also, the imagineNative film fest is going on right now.  i’d like to see if i could make a screening or two there, but we’ll see.  i’m pretty sure i submitted ollin yoliztli calmecac’s film to them but didn’t here back. oh well.

Last night, Monday, October 15th, i attended the Leo Awards – a ceremony run by the Flaherty Seminar.  I was also there to shot photos for them.  Jon Alpert, longtime documentary filmmaker and director of Downtown Community Television (DCTV) won an award, as did Mable Haddock, formerly the director of the National Black Programming Consortium.  unfortunately she was not able to make it, but her college Jackie Jones, the current director of NBPC, spoke on her behalf. photos will be posted in a few days and linked to this  entry.