George Stoney, a renowned pioneer of documentary film, once said that he wanted to be remembered as "a very happy collaborator." Stoney sees film as a chance to share people's stories in order to bring about good for everyone. Among other accomplishments, he co-founded a group that trained citizens how to produce videos for what was then a new medium, public access television.

Sunday night showed that Stoney's tradition is alive and thriving in Madison, thanks to the hard work of many, and the particularly tireless efforts of Stoney's former student and now award-winning documentary filmmaker Judith Helfand. Her most recent film called "Cooked," still a work-in-progress, aired Sunday evening in front of an engaged crowd at MMoCA as a part of the Tales of Planet Earth film festival.

The film tells the story of the 1995 Chicago heat wave that killed 739 people in one week. Helfand's film shows that their deaths are not from a random environmental disaster, but instead from a "human disaster." The heat wave hit the hardest in Chicago's poorest communities, already blighted with high rates of joblessness, poor health, and lack of access to services, including grocery stores or a place to buy healthy food.

A focus on answers

Even as the movie highlights the city's failures to adequately respond to the needs of its people, the film is really about how to build more resilient communities. Both research and common sense agree: healthy, socially-connected people live better. Enter Orrin Williams, the case manager for Growing Home, Inc., an urban garden and job-readiness program for hard-to-employ women and men, most of whom have been homeless and/or incarcerated.

Built on a lot that lay vacant for some 20 years in Chicago's Englewood community, the urban garden program teaches participants urban agriculture, horticulture and nutrition, as well as art therapy, conflict resolution, teamwork and communication skills training. Not only that, but the vibrant Swiss chard, collard greens, tomatoes and other veggies that emerge from this small plot tucked amongst houses in one of Chicago's poorer neighborhoods goes to many people in the neighborhood who didn't otherwise have a way to access fresh food.

"Being grass roots doesn't mean you're not sophisticated," said Williams, who would like to see a "grocery academy" that teaches every aspect, from growing the food to marketing and distributing it. And, he said, he wants to find those engineers, architects, accountants and designers who can build this project right in the community.

"I think the piece speaks loudly about how we can do what needs to be done, and use talent within the community," says Clover Johnson, an audience member who praised Williams for his success in working to strengthen a community from the inside. Johnson recently moved to Madison from Chicago; she used to work in social services, and still does work in what she describes as racial healing, or bringing communities together by teaching conflict resolution and cultural communication.

In our own community

Many community members in Madison aren't waiting for a heat wave to start building connections that improve health, happiness and the community's resilience. For months before the movie was even screened, the students behind the Tales festival were working to raise awareness about these community organizations already tackling some of these environmental and social justice issues.

One such group is Porchlight, a non-profit that provides emergency shelter and counseling to homeless people, and has trained and now employs six formerly-homeless staff to make various food products from locally-grown produce, such as jam, sauerkraut, pickled beets, pasta sauce, and baked goods using ingredients from local farmers.

"We work with people who don't recognize their own value, and are usually seen as a group ('the homeless'), not as individual people," says food program manager Jennifer Hall. "They don't even see themselves as valuable oftentimes, but they're proving their attitudes about themselves wrong. "

Getting Porchilght products into local businesses is vital for them, says UW student Catherine Willis who partnered with Porchlight as a part of the community engagement through film class supporting the Tales festival.

Thanks to Willis and her collaborators, the UW Student Union, Great Dane Pub and Brewery, and two sororities will now serve Porchlight food products in their establishments. And, Marling Homeworks is helping to organize a fundraiser so the group can get a new convection oven. The boost of support doesn't only help Porchlight to provide more jobs, but it also means they can buy more fresh produce from local farmers such as their supplier Rufus Haucke of Keewaydin farms in southwestern Wisconsin.

Building communities

A key aspect of "Cooked," Growing Home and organizations like Porchlight is building resiliency, self-sufficiency, and connections within communities.

"The myth of disaster preparation is that natural disasters don't discriminate, but that really isn't true," said Jennifer Weitzel-Blahnik, a public health nurse in Madison. "Neighborhoods with higher rates of poverty do bear the burden."

Weitzel-Blahnik works with Allied Drive community members, as a part of a public health department program called Preparedness Through Linking All Neighbors (PLAN). The program works to build social capital amongst communities on the idea that strong communities are more resilient to any kind of disaster, be it a health epidemic or weather-related disaster like Hurricane Katrina.

"Social capital is the bonds between friends, family, neighbors that are rooted in cooperation, solidarity and civic engagement," said public health nurse Jenny Lujan, who also works with PLAN. And building connections among community members makes for healthier, happier communities.

"The reception (of the PLAN program) was really strong," said Weitzel-Blahnik. "There was a groundswell, the idea really resonated with people. Everybody is a part of the community and this gives them a role."

Porchlight and public health programs like PLAN shows that people in Madison aren't waiting for a disaster like a heat wave or Hurricane Katrina to take address issues of social justice and community health. And bringing these groups together was a big part of the Tales of Planet Earth film festival, which strives to use movies to spread awareness of why these community organizations are so vital.

The audience members who filled the MMoCA theatre Sunday evening didn't just watch the movie. After the lights came back on, the movie-goers had the chance to ask Orrin Williams about the Growing Home project, to talk with some of Madison's public health nurses, to hear more from one of the formerly-homeless Porchlight cooks, Lawrence McCurdy. And the conversations continued across the street at Espresso Royal that hosted a tasting of Porchlight foods.

Bringing people together to talk about addressing challenges in the their own communities is a key goal of the festival. Collaborative filmmaking, Helfand says, is "working with the people, rather than for them. "

Login to post your comment. If you don't have an account, you may register for one.