The Mask You Live In

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jensiebelnewsom/the-mask-you-live-in

From the director of Miss Representation - an exploration of American masculinity.

UPDATE: We surpassed our initial funding goal! Our new goal is 2,500 backers - spread the word!

Compared to girls, research shows that boys in the U.S. are more likely to be diagnosed with a behavior disorder, prescribed stimulant medications, fail out of school, binge drink, commit a violent crime, and/or take their own lives. 

Jennifer Siebel Newsom's new documentary film, The Mask You Live In, asks: As a society, how are we failing our boys? 

Why This Film Matters 

At a young age, boys learn that to express compassion or empathy is to show weakness. They hear confusing messages that force them to repress their emotions, establish hierarchies, and constantly prove their masculinity. They often feel compelled to abide by a rigid code of conduct that affects their relationships, narrows their definition of success and, in some cases, leads to acts of violence resulting in what many researchers call a “boy crisis.” Our society’s failure to recognize and care for the social and emotional well-being of our boys contributes to a nation of young men who navigate adversity and conflict with an incomplete emotional skill set. Whether boys and later men have chosen to resist or conform to this masculine norm, there is loneliness, anxiety, and pain. 

The Mask You Live In documentary will examine how gender stereotypes are interconnected with race, class, and circumstance, and how kids are further influenced by the education system, sports culture, and mass media- video games and pornography in particular. The film also highlights the importance of placing emphasis on the social and emotional needs of boys through healthy family communication, alternative teaching strategies, conscious media consumption, positive role modeling and innovative mentorship programs. 

Overall Goal 

To make a film that sparks a national conversation around masculinity and ultimately creates a more balanced, equitable society for all. 

The Mask You Live In film will target youth, families, caregivers, coaches, and mental health professionals. But we are confident the film will speak to the masses. 

Our previous film, Miss Representation, has proven that there is demand for this kind of storytelling. Further, we’ve seen the impact that documentary filmmaking, accompanied by social action campaigns, can have in shifting consciousness, changing behavior, and ultimately transforming culture. As a result, we are confident in our ability to do it again withThe Mask You Live In documentary.  But we need your help. 

Now that we've passed our original funding goal (in less than two weeks!), we want to seize the momentum and build a huge community of support around this film. We want 2,500 backers before the end of the campaign. Not only would additional funds improve the quality of our film, but it would mean 2,500 people dedicated to challenging limiting gender stereotypes. And 2,500 people committed to building a safe and more equal future for all of us.

We believe building this base of support would be an extraordinary step towards creating a truly national conversation around masculinity. Whether it results in $1 or $100, if each of us recruits just one more person we can make a huge difference! Spread the word.

What We Need to Make This Film

We are currently in production and will use your contributions to finish filming our vignettes and put together a rough cut edit of the film. From there, we will use remaining funds to design and incorporate motion picture graphics for the many statistics and illustrations you will see throughout the film. 

What Will the Film Look Like?

The 75 minute film will feature powerful interviews with popular thought leaders and celebrities as well as academics and experts in neuroscience, biology, psychology, anthropology, sociology, ethics, education, sports, media, and history. Shot in a style consistent with Miss Representation, these white backdrop interviews will anchor the film’s messaging while emotional vignettes showcase a wide range of life experiences and perspectives from boys and men who are struggling with different issues related to masculinity. 

Some American Feminists - A Documentary on the Women's Movement in the 70s

Filmed in New York in 1975 and 1976, this documentary on the Women's Liberation Movement includes a series of candid dialogues documented by historic footage featuring Ti-Grace Atkinson, Rita Mae Brown, Betty Friedan, Margo Jefferson, Lila Karp, and Kate Millett, focusing on the essence of the feminist movement, its meaning, its challenge, and its promise.

Documentary on Simone de Beauvoir

This presentation uses dramatization from fiction and readings from Simone de Beauvoir's memoirs to explore her views on the world and on the role of the intellectual.

 

Femen Documentary: Topless Warriors

We are Femen, the naked shock troops of feminism

Femen is at war with a patriarchy that sees women as sex objects. What weapons do we have? Our bare breasts

Femen activists stage a march in Paris where they have opened a headquarters in a move to recruit members in their fight against the discrimination of women. Photograph: Francois Mori/AP

You can hear us shouting "Fuck off, dictator!", "I'm not your sex toy!", or "Religion is slavery!" You can see our half-naked bodies facing Berlusconi, Putin or the Pope. You can feel how deep our anger is by looking in our eyes. We are feminism's shock troops, a spearhead unit of militants, a modern incarnation of the word fearless.

We are Femen. Our nakedness attacks the raw nerve of the historic conflict between women and "the system". We are nothing less than its most visual and fitting embodiment. Our activists' bodies represent undisguised hatred for the patriarchal order, and display the new aesthetics of a rejuvenated woman's revolution.

Russian president Vladimir Putin, left, is accosted by a Femen activist in Hanover as the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, looks on. Photograph: Sasha Mordovets/Getty Images

Femen is our attempt at rethinking the history of feminism in its entirety. We believe that if women are left with little more than satisfying sexual desires as a life purpose, then our sexuality must become politicised. We are not denying our potential to be treated as sex objects. On the contrary, we are taking our sexuality into our own hands, turning it against our enemy. We are transforming female sexual subordination into aggression, and thereby starting the real war.

Make no mistake about it: we are at war. This is an ideological war, a war of traditionalism against modernity, oppression against freedom, dictatorship against the right to free expression. We are targeting the three principle manifestations of patriarchy: religion, the sex industry, and dictatorship.

"I didn't have time to see if they looked good or not, whether they were blondes or not" – such were the words of Putin after our most recent act of diversion, when Femen activists confronted him in Hanover, shouting to his face, "Fuck you, dictator!" Putin was quick to smile, but a Kremlin official was already demanding that Germany punish our activists. Within half an hour, four criminal cases had been opened against the dictator's assailants.

This is our reality. Femen activists are arrested, beaten up or even kidnapped, as happened to us in Belarus after our protest ridiculing president Alexander Lukashenko in Minsk.

Machismo can be defeated only through feminine rebellion. No authoritarian leader is interested in popular opinion, which would personally hurt him. Femen's tactics aim to do just that: hurt and humiliate them personally. Tossing shoes at Bush is nothing compared to our attack against Putin. Never before had he found his holy body, under the protection of dozens of professional security guards, so imperilled.

We were amateurs when we demonstrated against Putin in 2011, in Kiev, dozens of kilometres away from our target. But we improved our skills when we besieged the polling station in Moscow in 2012, just 20 minutes after our Putin had left the place. One year later, we faced him and bared our breasts in defiance.

Putin is a homophobe and an oligarch embodying the merger of church and state, putting his personal interests before those of 150 million people in the process. Only recently has he announced that Russia is not a country for gay people, just as our George H W Bush, in his time, said the US was not a country for atheists. Putin is not stopping at that, so we are going to stop him.

How, you ask? Yes, dear readers, with our bare breasts alone! We are responding by knocking down the great oligarch and his security-service clowns, and with them, the image he has been so carefully cultivating.

Femen is a huge experiment. Every day we find new ways to destroy the patriarchy, new words with which to answer our opponents. We are calling for a global sexual revolt against the system. We cannot tell you of our upcoming plans, or what the final result of our struggle will be, but we're working on them around the clock. The only thing I can say for sure to all those against whom we are fighting is that we are not about to let you enshrine such shit as yourselves in a cult.

- Inna Shevchenko

Living the Dream - Sonia Johnson

Lecture delivered at Humboldt State University April 1991 encouraging listeners to live life by the ideas they truly believe. Feminist Sonia Johnson chronicles the evolution of her belief that consistently envisioning the world as one wants it to be is more powerful than providing resistance to the system, and articulates her dream of the world and herself.

Interview with Simone de Beauvoir 1975 "Why I am A Feminist"

Remembering Simone de Beauvoir

Betty Friedan talks about meeting Simone de Beauvoir and The Second Sex. Kate Millet then speaks to us about de Beauvoir's autobiographies: Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, The Prime of Life, Forces of Circumstance, and All Said and Done.

Going Farther Out of Our Minds - Sonia Johnson

Sonia explores how women can leave patriarchy behind and begin living in a new world right now. "Fairness" and "practicality" reasons for their passive resistance have been used for 5000 years and found lacking, so different methods should now be tried.

PART 1


PART 2

Daughters of de Beauvoir Documentary

It has been over forty years since Simone de Beauvoir published the Second Sex which heralded the start of the women's movement. In this film we talk to the women who took the baton from de Beauvoir to race ahead with the cause: Kate Millet, Marge Piercy, Eva Figes and Ann Oakley.

Through the eyes of the women she influenced, a portrait of Simone de Beauvoir's unique personality and unconventional lifestyle emerges. Here is an in-depth look at one of the leading figures in the international women's movement.

PART 1


PART 2

Andrea Dworkin

This is a great documentary about Andrea's stance on pornography.  The documentary also includes interviews from those women who were exploited in porn and their experiences with it.  Very powerful.  If you want to listen to someone who has a very powerful and empathetic voice, look no further.

WAR ZONE

I think I'm about to lose my MIND.

This documentary, War Zone, was directed/made by a woman from Louisiana.

She bought a camera, and soon found herself in the streets with her tiny camera filming men saying highly sexist things.

 It's 33 minutes long. I'm only half done. SAVE ME!!

http://www.mediaed.org/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=213&template=PDGCommTemplates%2FHTN%2FItem_Preview.html

Just an extra note: 90% of murderers are men.

Teen Sex

"Teenagers used to go to the movies to see adults having sex.  Now adults go to the movies to see teenagers having sex."  -Roger Ebert

A contradiction in America is that teens are divided from adults.  The name of the game is Parents vs. Kids. One generation against their parent generation.

The human race has decided to 

declare a war between Adults and children.

We need to understand our 

imagery, and  we need 

to explore and question 

that imagery, for how will we 

ever know oneself without understanding 

the rest of ourselves.  

SEE?

This is a very dominant thought in our media (i.e. our thinking).  We need to SEE how het male supremacist understand the world, and the media is definitely giving it all.

Watch the Documentary WHAT A GIRL WANTS where this quote was found.

Beware: Mind-Altering - Dreamworlds 3

The dreamworld of music videos.

The Business of Being Born & Pregnant in America

Here are two wonderful, eye opening, and yet tragic documentaries which criticize the American health care system with an emphasis on drugs, costly interventions, and its view of childbirth as a medical emergency rather than a natural occurrence.  This is relevant to the feminist movement as women's bodies are commodified for profit which isn't necessarily done for their well-being, their child's, or for the society as a whole.

Here is the first part of The Business of Being Born:

Media Education Foundation

Here you can find many GREAT documentaries for FREE (other than a slightly annoying watermark on the films...).  The full length videos are offered as previews for purchase considerations of colleges.  While the semitransparent watermark "For Preview Only" is embedded over the films, I highly suggest checking them out. 

Media Education Foundation is committed to exploring how the media (particularly advertising such as TV commercials, Magazine ads, and the like) affect our culture.  There are several categories of films to chose from including gender, politics, race, health, and commercialism.

I highly suggest Killing Us Softly 4, Micheal Kimmel on Gender, and Codes of Gender found under the the category of gender.  I also recommend Red Moon under the category of health.  All of these are great for some interesting conversation about gender issues.  

Here is Micheal Kimmel on Gender from youtube without the watermark:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-rpbihTvlY&feature=PlayList&p=14C11A9B6693D5C6&playnext_from=PL&index=11

Here's Killing Us Softly 3 on youtube, although I highly recommend Killing Us Softly 4 too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svpMan9cWyo&feature=PlayList&p=14C11A9B6693D5C6&playnext_from=PL&index=9