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Marna’s project, as featured in my film, Fly on the Wall, is moving forward. In doing so we have met many people who are passionate about food justice. We’ve also connected with some of the great organizations in NYC that deal with food-related issues. One of them is the West Side Campaign Against Hunger.

Through a supermarket style food pantry, the WSCAH alleviates hunger and creates a culture that promotes self-reliance. Marna visited last month to find out more about the services they offer to the community.

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Trigger: West Side Campaign Against Hunger

It’s been a busy couple of weeks! Last Monday, Marna and I were given a tour of the West Side Campaign Against Hunger. Development Director Stewart Desmond showed us the supermarket-style food pantry and a chef training lesson in action. Their clients not only learn valuable professional tools, but also how to make tasty, healthy recipes using the food available through the pantry program.

Tuesday I spent the day at Harlem Children’s Zone. Media consultant and friend Rayme Samuels organized a screening of my film, plus a discussion on editing strategies with her talented group of media students. They are currently putting together a program of pre-recorded pieces tied into a live show. I can’t wait to return and see their work.

The best part was hearing what the high school students thought about the issues raised in Fly on the Wall. What is the food situation like in their own neighborhoods? Are their lives personally effected by hunger, obesity, diabetes? Why do they think problems related to food access exist? What do they think can be done to affect change?

I captured on camera lively discussions at both the WSCAH and HCZ- more to come…

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Trigger: Fly on the Wall

From the New York Times:

[…] According to a survey released in January by the Food Research and Action Center, an antihunger group, nearly 37 percent of residents in the 16th Congressional District, which encompasses the South Bronx, said they lacked money to buy food at some point in the past 12 months. That is more than any other Congressional district in the country and twice the national average, 18.5 percent, in the fourth quarter of 2009.

Such studies present a different way to look at hunger: not starving, but “food insecure,” as the researchers call it (the Department of Agriculture in 2006 stopped using the word “hunger” in its reports). This might mean simply being unable to afford the basics, unable to get to the grocery or unable to find fresh produce among the pizza shops, doughnut stores and fried-everything restaurants of East Fordham Road.

[…] Full-service, reasonably priced supermarkets are rare in impoverished neighborhoods, and the ones that are there tend to carry more processed foods than seasonal fruits and vegetables. A 2008 study by the city government showed that 9 of the Bronx’s 12 community districts had too few supermarkets, forcing huge swaths of the borough to rely largely on unhealthful, but cheap, food.

“When you’re just trying to get your calorie intake, you’re going to get what fills your belly,” said Mr. Berg, the author of “All You Can Eat: How Hungry Is America?” “And that may make you heavier even as you’re really struggling to secure enough food.”

For the center’s survey, Gallup asked more than 530,000 people across the nation a single question: “Have there been times in the past 12 months when you did not have enough money to buy food that you or your family needed?”

The unusually large sample size allowed researchers to zero in on trouble spots like the South Bronx.

New York’s 10th Congressional District, which zigzags across Brooklyn and includes neighborhoods like East New York and Bedford-Stuyvesant, ranked sixth in the survey, and Newark ranked ninth, both with about 31 percent of residents showing food hardship. (At the state level, the South is the hungriest: Mississippi tops the list at 26 percent, followed by Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Louisiana, the Carolinas and Oklahoma. New York ranks 27th, with 17.4 percent; New Jersey is 41st, with 15.5 percent; and Connecticut is 47th, with 14.6 percent.)

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Trigger: The Obesity-Hunger Paradox by Sam Dolnick

Fly on the Wall
A film by Jenny Montasir

Fly on the Wall follows artist Marna Chester as she speaks with shop owners in Brooklyn neighborhoods where there is less access to healthy food. Her mission: to hang a poster she designed that promotes healthy eating. Marna’s local, grassroots effort sparks conversations that expose deeply-rooted problems within the larger food system.

Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me leave to do my utmost.
– Isak Dineson

On Wednesday night, Marna Chester was one of 200 artists and arts organizations to receive a grant from the Brooklyn Arts Council. The funds will be used to build upon her Eat Better Now! project (as featured in my film, Fly on the Wall) and to extend outreach at the community level.

It was a fun evening at the historic Brooklyn Borough Hall. Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz warmed up the crowd; award recipient La Troupe Makandal brought the music, while the LAVA dancers provided an acrobatic grand finale.

The best part was seeing the diverse projects awarded over $345,000 in grants, and meeting the passionate people behind them. To read more about the BAC 2010 grant recipients, click on the link below.

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Trigger: BAC 2010 Community Arts Regrant Program

Thanks so much to everyone who came out for the Hungry Filmmakers’ screening of Fly on the Wall. For their support of the film, I would especially like to thank Aaron Lubarsky, Suzanne Hillinger, and the amazing Brooklynites who invited Marna and my camera into their businesses.

After the screening, I chatted with two teachers who work in Brooklyn public schools. One told me that her students call baby carrots “teacher food”; they see their teachers bringing this healthy snack to work with them, but otherwise they are like a foreign object in the neighborhood where they live. The other spoke of a child so malnourished from only eating processed foods that his growth was severely stunted.

The problem of food access and imbalance in our communities, in New York City and beyond, is serious and urgently needs to be addressed.

My hope is that Marna’s project can be used as a tool to draw more attention to the issue and to elicit change…stay tuned.

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Trigger: Hungry Filmmakers

Today is International Women’s Day, a great moment to be talking about human trafficking. Check out the NYU Wagner Series Anti-Trafficking Week happening now in NYC:

There are currently 27 million people who are trafficked in the world. Men, women and children are victimized and exploited for labor and the commercial sex industry. Human trafficking is not a problem limited to other parts of the world. It happens in the United States. It happens here in New York City.

This week of events raises awareness of all aspects of human trafficking in all its forms including international, domestic, local, sex, child and labor. The goal is to expose this issue to the Wagner and NYU community, discuss implications of past and current policy decisions, and identify ways to fight modern day slavery.

Monday, Mar. 8, 2010, 6:00pm-8:00pm
Film Screening: Lilya 4-Ever
The Puck Building, Jersey Conference Room, 3rd Fl.

Tuesday, Mar. 9, 2010, 4:00pm-5:00pm
IPSA Reading & Discussion Group: Labor Trafficking
The Puck Building, Jersey Conference Room, 3rd Fl.

Tuesday, Mar. 9, 2010, 5:30pm-7:30pm
An Exhibition: Building Knowledge to Take Action
The Puck Building, The Rudin Family Forum for Civic Dialogue, 2nd Fl.
*Representatives from local and national anti-trafficking organizations speak at 6:30pm

Wednesday, Mar. 10, 2010, 12:30pm-2:00pm
Trafficking 101: Commercial Sexual Exploitation
The Puck Building, Jersey Conference Room, 3rd Fl.

Thursday, March 11, 2010, 11:30-12:30 pm
Children and Global Trafficking: a brownbag with UNICEF and SOS Kinderhof International
The Puck Building, Mulberry Conference Room, 3rd Fl.
Speakers: Susu Thatun, UNICEF Child Protection Specialist, Migration and Trafficking and Jenessa Bryan, SOS Kinderhof International

Please RSVP here: http://wagner.nyu.edu/events

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Trigger: NYU Public Events

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Back by popular demand, the food documentary film screening and discussion event, Hungry Filmmakers, will return to Anthology Film Archives on Tuesday, February 23, 2010.

The next Hungry Filmmakers will showcase excerpts from five food conscious films:

Fresh- Ana Sofia Joanes
Mad Cow Investigator- Nancy Good
What’s On Your Plate?- Catherine Gund
The End of the Line- Rupert Murray
Fly on the Wall- Jenny Montasir

Doors open at 6:30 PM
Screenings begin at 7:00 PM

A post-screening discussion will be moderated by Kerry Trueman- editor of EatingLiberally.org A reception will follow in the theatre lobby with complimentary snacks, Lagunitas beer and wine from T Edwards. BYOC (bring your own cup) strongly encouraged if you wish to have a drink.

Tickets are $15 at the door and in advance. Visit Brown Paper Tickets to purchase online.

Hungry Filmmakers is a not-for-profit event hosted by Shelley Rogers, Cathy Erway, Jimmy’s No. 43 and Tim Lynch. Proceeds will be donated to the nonprofit organization Just Food, which works to promote access of fresh, seasonal, sustainable grown food for all New York City residents.

Hope to see you there!
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Trigger: Hungry Filmmakers

A belated recap of my 2009 in photos. Here’s to a healthy 2010!

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The hallways of PS 25 in Brooklyn are decorated by the children. One art project is a page ripped from Olu’s Dream surrounded by colorful paper handprints. In them, the kids wrote their wishes with smeary, thick-tipped pencils. Olu’s Dream says “your imagination has no boundaries, you can be what you want to be.”

The eight year old girls want to be doctors or dancers. The boys, teachers or cops. Then, somewhere in the center, in crooked letters that slope down into a crowded pile: “my dream is to have a job.”

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Trigger: NYC Jobless Rate 10.3%