Strollerderby : documentary

Contest Seeking Super-Short Birth Documentaries

Miriam Axel-Lute — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 20:33:00 GMT

Got something to say about "evidence-based maternity and delivery care," and a good feel for the attention span of the YouTube generation? (That's about four to seven minutes apparently.) Get your camcorder (or cell phone) and start shooting.

And then send your finished product to Birth Matters Virginia, an organization that works "to improve the culture of birth in Virginia by promoting an evidence-based model of maternity care and supporting care providers who practice mother- and baby-friendly care," for their documentary film contest.

Deadline: Mother's Day. Prizes: $1000, $500, and $100. Judges: Ricki Lake and Abby Epstein, filmmakers behind the acclaimed documentary The Business of Being Born and Sarah Buckley, M.D., international birth expert and author of Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering. More details: here.

The brilliance behind this, as I think someone else figured out before me though I can't find the reference right now, is that given enough entries, it provides the opportunity to flood YouTube with educational videos about birth and maternity care, possibly helping to counteract the influence of the Dr. Phils of the world. On the other hand, if you search for birth on YouTube right now, you already get "twin VBAC home birth" among the top hits. Then again, cool as that is, that's probably a little more specific (and a little more full of religious overtones) than the Birth Matters folks are looking for.

Photo by mil8.

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"Pregnant Man" Beattie Loves the Limelight

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 13:50:00 GMT

I am becoming increasingly convinced that Thomas Beattie (better known as the “pregnant man”) is a bit of a publicity whore. This isn’t necessarily a problem, so long as the publicity he seeks does more good than harm for the transgender community—and for his daughter, born on June 29.

In the latest Beattie media frenzy, September Films, a London firm, has beat out four other production companies in winning the rights to make a documentary telling Beattie’s story. The hourlong film will air on Channel 4, with rights to the film licensed globally. The Discovery Channel is currently seeking exclusive U.S. rights.

With his Oprah appearance, his memoir-in-progress (including tales of participating in beauty pageants in his youth), and now this film, Beattie seems keen on maintaining a large spot in the limelight. This is certainly not unusual in these days of reality TV and "It Happened to Me" bestsellers, but it becomes a bit more complicated when there is a child involved. I just hope the widespread publicity of Beattie’s unusual situation helps establish more tolerance for transgender folks and their children, not more hatred.

Photo: livenews.com

Growing Up Online

Madeline Holler — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 21:09:00 GMT

I tend to play down the effect of computers on kids, probably because my oldest is only 6. But she likes to do stuff on the computer -- take care of her Webkinz, check out PBS websites. I'm fooling myself if I think that's where it all begins and ends. Sooner than I know it, she'll be all over IMing, and Facebook and whatever else will no doubt come along to grab her attention, ask for her personal details, dumb down her education, etc.

Tonight, a PBS Frontline airs the documentary Growing Up Online, which looks at all the different angles of kids and the Internet and their parents who are often in the background feeling (as I do) fully in control but actually are not.

They tell the story of Jessica Hunter, a shy 14-year-old who reinvented herself online as "Autumn Edows": ... an alternative goth artist and model who posted provocative photos of herself on the Web, and fast developed a cult following. “I just became this whole different person,” Jessica tells FRONTLINE. “I didn’t feel like myself, but I liked the fact that I didn’t feel like myself. I felt like someone completely different. I felt like I was famous.”

The program also covers what parents fear most online: sexual predators. Also cyberbullying, and online communities that might not be in the best interest of your vulnerable child -- tips for staying thin from anorexics or ways to commit suicide for depressed teens. They film also hits more banal seeming stuff (incomparison to all the nakedness and injury and covert seduction), like how much easier it is to cheat on homework, how computer use might interrupt real learning, that kind of thing.

These are the kinds of things I'd much rather bury my head in the sand over, since the options for dealing with it seems so few: get rid of the computer, raise kid on remote island. Here's how a law expert sees it.

“You have a generation faced with a society with fundamentally different properties thanks to the Internet,” says Danah Boyd, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. “We can turn our backs and say, ‘This is bad,’ or, ‘We don’t want a world like this.’ It’s not going away. So instead of saying that this is terrible, instead of saying, ‘Stop MySpace; stop Facebook; stop the Internet,’ it’s a question for us of how we teach ourselves and our children to live in a society where these properties are fundamentally a way of life. This is public life today.”

I think I'll watch the program. On PBS tonight, check local listings. And remember, many Frontline episodes can be watched online at the PBS website.

William & Harry Make Public Plea To British TV: "Don't Show Tunnel Pics of Diana"

Alisyn — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 20:09:00 GMT

On the 10th anniversary of Princess Diana's fatal car accident, British Channel 4 is planning to air a documentary entitled Diana: The Witnesses in the Tunnel, complete with graphic images of the tragic scene.

Diana's sons, Princes William and Harry, who have organized a concert to honor their mother's legacy on the anniversary of her death, have made a last-ditch, public plea to the station not to air the photos, through the royal family's website and their private secretary, who said they "reluctantly feel that they have been left no choice but to make it clear publicly that they believe the broadcast of these photographs to be wholly inappropriate, deeply distressing to them and to the relatives of the others who died that night, and a gross disrespect to their mother's memory."

The boys ask a vaild, and heartbreaking, question: "If it were your mother dying in that tunnel, would you want the scene broadcast to the nation? Indeed, would the nation want it?"

In response to the sad pleas of Diana's sons, Channel 4 insists it will move ahead with what it calls "a responsible documentary." The head of the station said in a statement issued this morning "We have weighed the princes' concerns against the legitimate public interest we believe there is in the subject of this documentary and in the still photography it includes." She insists that there are no images that depict Diana or Dodi Fayed after the crash.

Personally? I think that when the still-grieving children of the world's most beloved royal politely, and sadly, ask the national TV station to have a heart, it should listen. We've all seen the photographs, we all know what the grisly scene looked like on that shocking night. Why put those boys through that again? C'mon, Channel 4. Do the right thing - if you really want to honor the late Princess, you'll listen to her children, and put their best interests first.