Foster Care Film & Community Engagement Project (FCFCEP)

TYPE: Documentary
GENRE: Documentary
STATUS: Production

LOGLINE

Foster Care Film & Community Engagement Project tells the true-to-life stories of foster youth to create greater understanding of the child welfare system.

SYNOPSIS

The Foster Care Film & Community Engagement Project (FCFCEP) is an 8-part documentary short film series which tells the true-to-life stories of foster youth in order to create a greater understanding of the child welfare system. The film series will culminate in a feature length film.

ARTISTIC STATEMENT

For several years, I volunteered as a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) to help children in New York City find permanent homes. That experience exposed me firsthand to the varied and sometimes traumatic interactions that foster children and their families have with social services and the court system. Portrayals of foster care in popular culture often conceive of it as broken, but through my volunteer work, I learned that often it is a lack of information and misunderstanding that fuels that image. Driven to act on these shortcomings using my film and advocacy skills, I created the Foster Care Film & Community Engagement Project (FCFCEP) with the help of my colleagues. We are now working on an 8-part series of films which represent foster youth voices. Our films are not traditional documentaries, but visually artistic representations, symbolic, and metaphorical glimpses into foster youth’s past and present. They are embodiments of crucial moments in foster youth’s lives, and a representation of populations that are largely unheard and forgotten. The film’s messages are kept honest through foster youth’s participation in all aspects of the project – from filming, to production, to community outreach. Foster youth work behind the scenes as camera operators, producers, and more. They share their stories through interviews, poetry, writing, art and music. Upon a film’s completion foster youth have the opportunity to participate on panels and speak directly to our audiences at film festivals, community events and conferences. Each film in our 8-part series will have it’s own unique artistic style that emulates the story and personality of the foster youth being featured. Incorporating water color, mixed media collages, and graphic novel-style imagery with live-action footage are just some of the varied approaches we’ve taken thus far. However, the unique use of art and animation, first person foster youth perspective, and behind-the-scenes foster youth participation, are unifying factors that allow the films to come together as a cohesive series. Upon completing of the documentary short film series we plan to move into post-production on a documentary feature film. This film will be a culmination of voices from the foster care system. Similar to the short films it will use art and animation to fill in the blank slate from these foster youth’s past, and will be created with the help of current and former foster youth. For me, art and animation have always been tools for social change. In the past I’ve used them to visually represent deaf culture and to advocate on behalf of non-profits such as the Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Malaria No More, and the World Health Organization. Now, I am able to apply those experiences to my current project, the Foster Care Film & Community Engagement Project (FCFCEP). FCFCEP represents the next ambitious step in my development of this particular approach to art as social change.

KEY CREW

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