Original Voices Shorts Pitch 2023

NBCU Academy, in partnership with NBC News Studios, the NBC News documentary storytelling division, is collaborating with IF/Then Shorts to launch the Original Voices Shorts Pitch - a national open call for archival and journalistically driven short documentaries highlighting social issues and identities.

The purpose of the Original Voices Shorts Pitch is to open doors to the NBCU newsroom and archive to diverse documentary filmmakers eager to present a more vibrant, equitable, and accurate take on American history and society today. Reaffirming the values of integrity and inclusion in order to spur innovation, the Original Voices Shorts Pitch aims to break down barriers of authorship and authority between news media networks and consumers, support diverse documentary filmmakers with the resources of a legacy news organization, and strengthen public trust in fact-based reporting and film.

The pitch will take place in person in November 2023 at DOC NYC.

Program Details:

This call is open to US-based documentarians who identify as – or showcase stories highlighting social issues affecting – women, LGBTQ+ folx, communities of color, and people with disabilities. Projects should aim to include archival material (in particular, creatively utilizing the NBCU Archive) follow news standards, and be completing work with journalistic rigor at a level suitable for broadcast on an NBC affiliate platform.

Six teams will be invited to pitch their short documentary works-in-progress to a panel of journalists and executives from a host of legacy news organizations. Each pitch will last 7 minutes, followed by 10 minutes of constructive feedback, questions, and dialogue from a jury panel comprised of journalists, funders, news executives, and distributors.

Each selected team will receive a non-recoupable grant of $6,000 to support the development and production of their project as well as their travel to New York for participation. In advance of the pitch, each team will receive extensive pitch training and review of their proposed work sample from NBC News Studios and IF/Then Staff. Each of the finalists will also have an opportunity to meet 1:1 with NBC News Studios executives to get direct creative feedback and advice on how to advance their film.

The winning team will receive $100,000 in financing and a commission deal which includes access to the NBCU archive, executives, journalists, festival and distribution strategy, as well as an opportunity to screen the finished film at Comcast and NBCU broadcasters, streamers, events, and festivals. NBC News Studios will also have first right of refusal to develop the short into a feature film in-house with the director and producer attached.

SELECTED PROJECTS:

CASHING OUT

Director: Matt Nadel
Producer: Luke Hodges
Executive Producer: Julie Cohen

At the height of the AIDS crisis, many gay men—unable to work and with few months to live—sold their life insurance policies to investors for quick cash. CASHING OUT charts the rise and fall of the hundred-million-dollar industry that grew from their desperation, and spotlights one of its earliest investors: the filmmaker’s father. A gay man, director Matt Nadel connects with survivors who help him understand the “AIDS profiteering” that is his inheritance.

FREE JOAN LITTLE

Director: Yoruba Richen
Producer: Christalyn Hampton

Free Joan Little examines the 1975 groundbreaking case of Joan Little who was the first woman in U.S. history to be acquitted for using deadly force to resist sexual assault. Joan was a Black incarcerated woman in North Carolina who killed a white guard who was trying to rape her. Little’s murder trial became a cause célèbre bringing together feminists, black power and anti-death penalty activists while catalyzing a nationwide discussion on sexual assault.

GOODBYE, BABY

Director / Producer: Katya Berger
Producer: Maria Chiu

Paula Sims gained notoriety as a cold-blooded murderer after killing her two baby daughters. Her crimes left us grappling with the question—how could a mother do such a thing? After 30 years in prison, Paula finally shares her story. Was she a “liar” and “monster” or the victim of an illness that drove her to madness?

LOVE BIRDS

Co-Directors / Co-Producers: Angel Morris, Elliott Kennerson

The story of how a breakthrough discovery of “lesbian seagulls" in the 1970s altered the course of American science, politics, and the LGBTQ+ movement.

STINGRAYS

Director: LeRon Lee
Producer: Yvonne Michelle Shirley

With the mayor’s refusal to prioritize recreation, John L. Smith pulled the community together to revive the city’s dilapidated pool in an effort to create inclusion with a swim program that eventually became the first team of color to win a state championship in the US.

WOMEN WALK HOME

Director: Stephanie Andreou
PRoducer: Adrián Gutiérrez

In the 1970s & 80s women from all over the world marched alongside Cypriot women displaced by war to the Green Line dividing the island in an attempt to ‘walk home’. Women Walk Home unearths a 50-year old, intentionally hidden, women-led movement in Cyprus as women’s movements are reigniting around the world.

"Reclaiming & Making: Art, Desire, Violence" Exhibition: Museum of Sex (2021)

EXHIBITION

“Reclaiming & Making: Art, Desire, Violence”.

The Museum of sex, New York, United States.

November 4th, 2021 - February 8th, 2022

“Man does not merely seek in the sexual act subjective and ephemeral pleasure. He wants to conquer, take, and possess.” – Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949)

Sex and violence share a complex and intertwined history. As an institution devoted to the full history, evolution, and cultural significance of human sexuality, the Museum of Sex aims to break the silence surrounding these issues. Reclaiming and Making: Art, Desire, Violence presents fourteen international artists who have faced and challenged sexually motivated violence through artworks that date from the 1970s, to the present day and a screening of the Sex Workers Project documentary Sex(ual) Healing(2021). These artworks ask us to bear witness both to the reality and history of sexual trauma, and to the resiliency, agency, and healing power that survivors of such trauma manifest. They are showcased in the hopes of developing a safer, healthier, and more liberated sexual culture.

Curated by Emily Shoyer, the exhibition presents ‘Flowers V’ (The Cut), an artwork which offers a subtle and gentle probe into the difficult subject matter of FGM/C. The viewer is confronted with a cascade of femininity within the powerful pink tones and layers. Beside the artwork is a barcode linking viewers to the educational extract of ‘One Thousand Voices’.

https://www.museumofsex.com/portfolio_page/reclaiming-making-art-desire-violence/

"Un.e Aire de Famille" Exhibition: Musée d'art et d'histoire Paul Eluard (2021)

EXHIBITION

Owanto presents “Flowers” and “One Thousand Voices” in the group exhibition Un.e Air.e de Famille as part of Africa2020 Season.

Musée d’art et d’histoire Paul Eluard, Saint Denis, France

25th June to 8th November, 2021

Presented in the context of the Africa2020 Season, from June 25th to November 8th, 2021, the exhibition Un.e Air.e de Famille prompts a reflection based on afro-diasporic art from the Paul Art and History Museum Eluard of Saint-Denis. The show reveals the anticolonial political engagement of the surrealists and other artists present in the museum’s collections (Gavarni, Daumier, Jourdain, Effel) whose works enter in dialogue with  the contemporary artistic practices of thirteen women artists from Africa and its diasporas. Accompanied by a rich multidisciplinary cultural program, it offers an insight on the contemporaneity of (post)colonial questions.

The exhibition attempts to create a dialogue between artworks extracted from the historical collections of the museum, enriched by numerous loans, and works by women artists from the African continent, revealing the common commitment of artists through the centuries. The interest of the surrealists for non-western art objects, and for “a primitivity both distanced and native” has tended to frame the Western gaze on what is called “African Art”. However, these artists explicitly situated themselves against the colonial exhibition of 1931, notably through leaflets (Ne visitez pas l’exposition coloniale et premier bilan de l’exposition coloniale) and a counter-exhibition, La Vérité sur les Colonies (The truth about colonies). Two decades later, it is through the struggle for the liberation of Henri Martin that Eluard’s political engagement is expressed again, on the side of Picasso, Léger and Sartre, against France’s colonial politics. Certain of these initiatives bring together artists from a diverse categories of the museum’s collections (such as Paul Eluard and Francis Jourdain) and found resonance among works from other periods (Gavarni, Honoré Daumier ou Jean Effel).

Numerous women artist joined around this project in order to make their voices heard, through a wide array of artistic mediums – paintings, drawing, video, installation, photography, sound…:  Laeïla Adjovi (Benin), Eliane Aisso (Benin), Malala Andrialavidrazana (Madagascar / France), Yto Barrada (Marocco / France / USA)
, les sœurs Chevalme (France),
Nadia Kaabi-Linke (Tunisia / Germany)
, Katia Kameli(Algeria / France)
, Kapwani Kiwanga (Canada / France / Tanzania) Tuli Mekondjo(Namibia / Angola)
, Otobong Nkanga (Nigeria / Belgium)
, Owanto (Gabon)
, Thania Petersen (South Africa)
, Euridice Zaituna Kala (Mozambique)

By creating a dialogue between historical and contemporary works, the exhibition explores the themes of relation to the Other, memory, cartography, migration, spiritualities and (post)colonial political engagement. It is in the light of a hybrid identity, made up of different contributions, that these works offer a different reading of modernity, going beyond the question of the origins in which they are so often restricted to.

For the Africa2020 Season, the museum is part of the Headquarters (HQ) and the exhibition will be highlighted by the Institut français under the “focus on women”.

Exhibition produced with the support of the Departmental Council of Seine-Saint-Denis, Drac Île-de-France and Saif and with the support of the Africa2020 Season Patrons Committee.

Curated by: Anne Yanover, Director of the Art and history Museum Paul Eluard of Saint Denis
Farah , Clémentine Dramani Issifou, exhibition curator, film programmer, and independent researcher.
With the participation of the Chevalme sisters, artists.

musee-saint-denis.com / https://contemporaryand.com/exhibition/un-e-air-e-de-famille-group-show/

Virtual #EndFGM Global Conference

A conversation with Katya Berger, producer of ‘One Thousand Voices’, and Tobi Olanipekun, founder of Future Shakers Initiative Nigeria, addressing the need for global partnerships towards ending FGM by 2030, as part of the Virtual EndFGM Global Conference (June 10th-13th, 2020). The theme of this year’s conference is “FGM & COVID-19: How the new normal will affect the global aim to end FGM by 2030." It is estimated that two million girls who would otherwise be safe from the practice are at risk over the next decade as a result of COVID-19. 

WOW London | "One Thousand Voices"

‘One Thousand Voices' was presented on March 8th at the Women of the World Festival in London, with a 14 minute educational extract featuring FGM/C survivor and activist testimonies from around the world. This took place in partnership with the Orchid Project, a British charity which works to end to female genital cutting, AMREF UK, an NGO with a mission to ensure that every African can enjoy the right to good health, and FORWARD UK, an African women-led organisation working to end violence against women and girls. The sound piece was showcased at the Women of the World (WOW) Marketplace. 

"Flowers" Exhibition: Sakhile&Me, International Women's Day (2020)

Sakhile&Me is pleased to present the first solo exhibition of Gabonese artist and human rights activist Owanto in Germany. Titled "Flowers," the exhibition will open on 8 March 2020, coinciding with International Women's Day, and will run until 2 May 2020.

Flowers showcases a series of enlarged archival pictures of a Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) ceremony. The analogue photographs are digitalized, enlarged and printed on aluminium before Owanto veils the violation in the image by removing the sections deemed most private and covering the void with delicate hand-crafted cold porcelain flowers. The flower is a symbolic cover-up that masks the identity of the young girls in the photographs — an identity that was taken away from them — and hides this very loss.

Through the series, Owanto brings to light the complex and contested issues surrounding FGM/C. Often done in discreet initiation ceremonies around the world, it is an age-old ritual that has been used to signify the important transition from childhood to womanhood by curbing sexual desire. More than 200 million girls and women alive today have been cut in 30 countries where FGM/C is concentrated, of which 44 million are under 15 years old. Currently, more than three million girls are at risk for FGM/C annually.

"I understood that these photographs carried a symbolic and ambivalent meaning. They depicted a ceremony, a celebration, yet, they also revealed pain. I wanted to bring the past into the present to open an important dialogue. I wanted to transform these old analogue photographs using digital technology, and to keep a record of human behaviour. I understood that these images taken by a Westerner during the colonial era could be perceived as voyeuristic, but I wanted to use them and elevate them to the rank of art and activism to fight FGM/C."

The show is an extension of the artist's 2019 solo exhibition One Thousand Voices which was held at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art in Cape Town, consisting of photographs and audio recordings of testimonies from FGM/C survivors. It also features "Pardonne-Moi," a selection of embroidery works from the exhibition Material Insanitywhich was shown at the Musée d'Art Contemporain Africain Al Maaden in Marrakech, each work comprising a single word or short phrase relating to the experience of survivors sewn onto a sheet of cloth by reformed cutters, as their way of atoning.

Owanto is a multi-cultural Gabonese artist whose multidisciplinary practice emerges from a 30-year career engaging with consciousness through the notion of memory, both personal and collective, and exploring cross-cultural and trans-historical dialogues to interrogate the meaning of existence, as well as of her personal and shared history. Her current projects focus on the female condition, emancipation and the breaking of silence. Her work on this matter reflects upon the psychological concept of resilience by exploring the notion of healing, repair and transformation. In 2009, Owanto represented the Republic of Gabon at the 53rd Venice Biennale.

Panel discussion with the artist featuring:

Katya Berger: Panel Moderator, Filmmaker and Co-Producer of ‘One Thousand Voices’ sound installation with artist Owanto.

Julia Albrecht: Cultural Education Facilitator at the Weltkulturen Museum in Frankfurt.

Virginia Wangare-Greiner: Advocate, Founder of Maisha e.V. and Spokesperson for Integra.

Owanto: Contemporary Artist and Human Rights Activist.

#DontCutHerShort: International Day of Zero Tolerance for FGM/C (2020)

On 6th February 2020, at the Everyman Cinema in London, UK, ANOTHER WAY NOW hosted an event to mark the International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C). This was an evening of film, art and debate hosted in association with Orchid Project and Youth for Change, to launch the ‘#DontCutHerShort’ campaign. The campaign aims to end FGM/C in the next ten years, in line with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

Panel discussion featuring: 

Julia Lalla Maharajh OBE : Panel Moderator - Founder and ambassador of Orchid Project

Hoda Ali : Originally trained as a nurse, Hoda has been an anti-FGM/C campaigner for 15 years. She is currently working as a community outreach project manager in London.

Katya Berger : Film-maker and art producer, co-creator of ‘One Thousand Voices’ sound installation with artist Owanto, composed of audio testimonies from FGM/C survivors from around the world. 

Amos Leuka : Amos co-founded SAFE Maa (Sponsored Arts for Education), who deliver traditional Maasai performances to deliver the motivation and education needed to transition away from FGM/C to an Alternative Rite Of Passage (ARP) which is not harmful, and fulfils the need within the community for a rite of passage

Christine Ghati : Founder of the Safe Engage Foundation, Christine is a Kenyan activist working to end FGM/C in her community and advocate for girls’ education

Harry Phinda: Co-Founder, Youth For Change, Harry campaigns for an end to FGM/C and forced marriage, for which he has received the Queen’s Young Leader Award. 

"One Thousand Voices" Exhibition: Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden (2019)

EXHIBITION

Owanto: One Thousand Voices

The Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden (MACAAL), Marrakech, Morocco
23 Feb 2019 - 22 Sep 2019

One Thousand Voices will be included in The Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden (MACAAL) group exhibition, Material Insanity, from the February 23rd to September 22nd, 2019.

Curated by Meriem Berrada and Janine Gaëlle Dieudji, the exhibition invites the critical analysis of the past and present societies by accentuating the practice of contemporary artists as well as exploring the act of re-materialization as an art of combat, in response to widespread cultural devaluation in a digital era. Raging from tactile objects, tapestries and installation composed of industrial materials, the works in the exhibition Material Insanity create an equilibrium between form and meaning, advancing the resonance of material as content.

One Thousand Voices will be exhibited with the series Pardonne-Moi, produced in collaboration with reformed-cutters from the Kolda region in South Senegal. These women, who have abandoned the knife to adopt the needle, are changing their destiny as they weave the words of liberation voiced by the heroines in One Thousand Voices. In this exceptional act of solidarity (which takes place over the course of 3 months, ex-cutters have embraced a new skill, gained a new source of income) these women are united. There is the notion of healing on the one hand and the notion of pardon/atonement on the other. In this immersive sound installation, Pardonne-Moi finds its place, as the use of a new medium (material and embroidery/needle instead of knife) is explored, as well as the relationship between the spoken and the written word.

The neon piece entitled What happened, happened, happened, happened hangs within the space, bringing to light the voice of an FGM survivor. The enlightened words offer a way out from the shade/darkness, a departure from the patriarchal regime perpetuated by matriarchal societies.

One Thousand Voices is a collection of audio testimonies from Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting survivors (FMG/C). Using various languages, some speaking anonymously, most testifying openly, this installation projects sounds and stories of survival and strength derived from cutting. The voices weave together to create one collective story.This ensemble brings to light the complex issues surrounding FGM/C. The mélange of voices, accents, and languages emerge from 27 countries in Africa, parts of the Middle East, Asia, and the ever-growing diaspora, and tackle the very taboos that often leave others silent. The piece is composed like a symphony —voices are recorded on a smartphone and sent via WhatsApp– with several movements, elements and choruses. The monotonous crackling undertone of a broken record alludes to the coming of a new age – as said in the french idiom “change de disque!” which translates to “change the record”. The weaving of analogue and digital creates a bridge between the past and present, linking the visual images from the past (Flowers Series) with the sound images from the present (One Thousand Voices).

For the artist it is vital to weave the past with the present, the analogue with the digital, the artistic with the journalistic. While the flower poetically plays a healing role and attempts to metaphorically change the narrative in Flowers Series —from victims to heroines— the collective voice of women and girls united to say “no more” in One Thousand Voices breaks the silence and literally changes the narrative.

Artist Statement

“It all started with found photographs of a female circumcision ceremony hidden in a forgotten drawer. One of these photographs, La Jeune Fille à La Fleur from Flower Series, now hangs on the wall of the second floor of the Zeitz MOCAA and is part of the permanent collection. It stands as a symbol for change. The second series One Thousand Voices, an immersive sound installation where survivors share their stories irrespective of geography, age, colour, religion, or culture, will be heard at The Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town, and The Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden (MACAAL), Marrakech in February 2019. While the photographs are a point of departure for the exhibition at Zeitz MOCAA, MACAAL will be presenting the work in collaboration with reformed cutters who have abandoned the knife and who are now using the needle in a third series, Pardonne-Moi, to materialize the voices of survivors and to make amends.” – Owanto

About Owanto

Owanto had the honour of representing the Republic of Gabon at the 53rd International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale in 2009, with a solo show in the first-ever Pavillon du Gabon, curated by Fernando Francés, Director of CAC Malaga, Spain. She was the first artist from sub-Saharan Africa to have solo exhibition in a National Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

http://macaal.org/en/

"One Thousand Voices" Exhibition: Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (2019)

EXHIBITION

Owanto : One Thousand Voices

Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town, South Africa
06 Feb 2019 - 30 May 2019

One Thousand Voices, an immersive sound installation by the multi-cultural Gabonese artist Owanto, will be exhibited at The Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA), February 6th 2019, for the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation.

One Thousand Voices is a collection of audio testimonies from Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting survivors (FMG/C). Using various languages, some speaking anonymously, most testifying openly, this installation projects sounds and stories of survival and strength derived from cutting. The voices weave together to create one collective story. This ensemble brings to light the complex issues surrounding FGM/C. The mélange of voices, accents, and languages emerge from 27 countries in Africa, parts of the Middle East, Asia, and the ever-growing diaspora, and tackle the very taboos that often leave others silent.

The piece is composed like a symphony —voices are recorded on a smartphone and sent via WhatsApp– with several movements, elements and choruses. The monotonous crackling undertone of a broken record alludes to the coming of a new age – as said in the french idiom “change de disque!” which translates to “change the record!”.

In this exhibition Owanto creates a bridge between visual images (photographs) from the 1940s and sound images (audio testimonies) describing contemporary societies, because for the artist it is vital to weave the past with the present, the analogue with the digital, the artistic with the journalistic. While the flower poetically plays a healing role and attempts to metaphorically change the narrative in Flowers Series –from victims to heroines— the collective voice of women and girls united to say “no more” in One Thousand Voices breaks the silence and literally changes the narrative.

“It all started with found photographs of a female circumcision ceremony hidden in a forgotten drawer. One of these photographs, La Jeune Fille à La Fleur from Flower Series, now hangs on the wall of the second floor of the Zeitz MOCAA and is part of the permanent collection. It stands as a symbol for change. The second series One Thousand Voices, an immersive sound installation where survivors share their stories irrespective of geography, age, colour, religion, or culture, will be heard at The Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town.” - Owanto

Curated by Gcotyelwa Mashiqa and Sakhi Gcina, the exhibition highlights gender inequality and the politics surrounding a woman’s body. The collective voice of Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) survivors reports on the magnitude of the practice, which emerges from patriarchal regimes, perpetuated by matriarcal societies, and questions where women and girls are heading globally in terms of their rights over their own bodies. It calls upon practicing communities to adopt an alternate celebration, an alternative rite of passage devoid of cutting.

The exhibition opens on International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, and will include a discussion about the relevance of art activism and the responsibility placed on global art institutions to consider different ways we can engage with initiation rites, customers and traditions in contemporary society.

Panel discussion featuring:

Owanto: Artist and Human Rights Activist

Katya Berger: Filmmaker and Art Producer

Elisabeth Katamboi: Alternative Rite of Passage Graduate, Activist and Medical Student

Azu Nwagbogu: Zeitz MOCAA’s acting Chief Curator

zeitzmocaa.museum

"One Thousand Voices" Exhibition: Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina (2019)

EXHIBITION

OWANTO : ONE THOUSAND VOICES

Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina (MADRE), Naples, Italy

06 Feb 2019 - 18 Feb 2019

On the occasion of the International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation, Museo MADRE offers "Women's Stories", a thematic visit to ongoing exhibitions and collections, which will focus on the works of Owanto. One Thousand Voices and Flowers III (2018) will be installed on the second floor (Venta Facciata) and will remain open until 18 February 2019.