Artist's Statement

Overall, as artists it is important that we speak for those who are unspoken for, and in doing so speak for ourselves. Approaching the Foster Care System in this manner not only connected my own experience to the people I hoped to lend my expression to, but resulted in a personal exploration that allowed me to connect other lives to mine. In many ways, the system is unspoken for, directly as less than well understood, and indirectly as the focus of many unjust assumptions. With this project, my partner and I hoped to raise a small bit of awareness about the challenges faced by her as she ages out of care. It also allowed us both to reflect on our paths up to this point, and where those paths lead into the future.

This process, a creative process, allowed us to lend our voice to those in and involved with the system. In the words of the interviewees, this process allows the system to be it's own "best advocate."

This project's research is based on a series of 4 interviews conducted as a team: Myself, Ann (my partner, just about to leave the system and head to college, and Megan Bruzan of Kids Matter, Inc.).

Filmmaking is a collaborative process when at its best- pulling resources from life itself and distilling them into a specific and directed consciousness. Doing this allows us to explore complex topics in a concentrated form. This kind of collaboration in combination with community involvement is exactly the purpose of creating a project like this.

The research for this project was conducted almost entirely by personal investigation with and "Ann", a 17-year old young woman who was preparing to age out of the system. With Ann and Megan, I conducted 2 hours of conversational interviews and met with Ann and Megan on an almost weekly basis to discuss how we might create a film covering issues related to Ann situation.

In the end, this project is not quite what I had envisioned, and I believe it is not quite what Lisa or Megan may have either. However, Ann definitely received an experience in real world independent film making, and did approach the telling of her own story, which is at the heart of all good film making, at least in my opinion, and I think in the opinion of the Film Department of UW-Milwaukee. I repeated a lot of the best of my experience that I gained traveling and making films abroad, and was able to at least partially apply that in this research.

This project definitely altered my views of Foster Care, as well as making me aware of the need for volunteerism, especially in the current economic times. The current crisis can only increase the need for responsible people to pay attention to what they can do for Foster Care. After all, we need to realize as a society that Foster Children are our children. It is possible that we can and should be better parents.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Bumps and encouragement

Ann and I have been scheduled for three interviews on the 16th and 17th of April. Thanks to Kids Matter. They arranged some very pointed interviews. Ann and I have developed some questions from our frequent meetings, and the plan is to shoot and edit these interviews together.

That's the good news.

On the bad news side, Ann received a rejection letter from her first choice for college. She enlisted me in her appeal process, asking if we could shoot an appeal video.

It turned out to be a good lesson in planning a shoot. Of course, it is always possible to have a lucky shoot, where things work right and everything looks good and your idea executes on video just the way you envisioned it. Luck was not with us though, and the video did not meet the deadline, because neither of us had a real plan. We hadn't had the time.

It did turn out to be a good opportunity to talk about different strategies for making it to your school of choice, and for me to relate other success stories I knew that had similarities. I was surprised to find that Ann didn't know that there we alternatives, and that this first rejection and late appeal was not the end for her. As I said in the first post, it's as simple as saying no one ever thought to help her in this way. Along with that, Ann has a good deal of independence and is hesitant to ask for help as a foster child.
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