servicepro.html

The 3rd San Francisco
Sex Worker Film and Video Festival

May 23- 26th, 2003

Organizer Info: Organizing Forum for Local SF Service Providers on Friday May 2rd 12-4

This letter is a first draft to invite local service providers for the educational Friday afternoon show.
#1, To ask for sponsors (basically, progressive groups that support sex workers' rights. )
Dear Friends,

Please read this invitation to attend and co-sponsor an educational film show focusing on issues relating to the populations you serve. The forum will take place on Friday May 23rd from noon to 4 PM. The sponsors involved in the project to date are Center For Young Women's Development and Harm Reducation Coalition.

Write back and let me know if you would sponsor. You wouldn't have to do anything specific, but we would appreciate some advice and support.

The San Francisco Sex Worker Film and Video Festival would like to invite your organization to attend and/or co-sponsor an afternoon of films and discussion (on Friday May 23rd from noon to 4 PM at the Roxie Cinema on 16th Street near Valencia) addressing issues that affect the populations that your organization serves.

We have two emphases below, one specifically on the experience of youth in sex trade and/or drug culture and the other on violence against prostitutes (both locally and in other locales). Both themes intertwine in this work and our panelists will cover a range of subjects relating to these themes. This show will specifically address issues of class, age and racial discrimination and stereotyping. Our panelists will discuss these aspects of the videos: How do these videos reinforce, illuminate, and dispel stereotypes. We are inviting a range of individuals who have a great deal of experience with these issues, from a first person perspective or as experts in these fields.

We hope your organization will co-sponsor this event. We are asking a donation (to our non-profit sponsor, the Coalition on Prostitution) and we would invite your staff and clients to attend these movies and discussion at no cost. If you are unable to make a donation, we would like to discuss other options that would suit your needs and abilities.

A. Segment 1 -Focus in Youth in the Sex Trades

There has been a great deal of attention on issues of youth and prostitution with an increase in funding to address these issues. Although these efforts may be well intentioned, solutions have been problematic for many young people at risk. Many solutions have focused on the use of the criminal justice system as a vehicle to rescue youth. As a result, for example, young people are fingerprinted when they enter the system raising issues about privacy. Other current solutions have affected young people adversely, but there has been little opportunity to address these criticisms in the current climate punitive climate.

The San Francisco Sex Worker Film and Video Festival has always presented educational panels and works that address the issues of marginalized populations in San Francisco, focusing on those who are stigmatized as part of underground economies including substance use and sex trade. This year we will screen a number of videos by and about young people who have been part of these populations.

B. Segment 2- Focus on Violence Against Sex Workers

Videos in this segment address issues of violence and lack of recourse in these cases. Work includes video documentation of "NHI: No Humans Involved," about murders of prostitutes and panelists discussing recent brutality in San Francisco and lack of recourse for sex workers.

Videos:
(Please note: This schedule has not been finalized. If you are particularly interested, or not interested in any of these works, please let us know!)

Diary of Evelyn Lau by Sturla Gunnarsson (93 min)
Evelyn Lau is a major poet and writer in Canada. Early in 1986 Lau ran away from her unbearable existence, as a social outcast in school and a suppressed, unloved daughter at home in a traditional Chinese household. She started working in the sex trade in Vancouver and became addicted. Living mostly at social institutions and chronicling in a diary her psychologically battered life and her struggle as an emerging writer. The manuscript became a bestseller when it was published in 1989 under the title Runaway. Diary of a Street Kid. This movie is directly based on Ms. Lau's book.

Deconstructing crack ho (a memoir) by Ariel Lightningchild (7min )
One woman tells it like it is examining her experience as a survivalist sex worker and sexually exploited youth.

Swallow by Ariel Lightningchild (11min)
An exploration of issues often marginalized amongst the celebration of some of the sex workers movement such as race, class, and mental illness.

aka Kathe by Minda Martin (55 min)
The saga of Mexican-American family from Tucson confronting a violent loss, caught in the cycle of violence towards women. This disturbing video focuses on the story of one sister involved in prostitution, using drugs, who was eventually murdered in Tucson.

Hiding Out by Thomas Mournian & John Keitel (5 min)
San Francisco's underground railroad of Safe Houses keep kids off the street and out of the abusive psychiatric hospitals many have escaped from (as reported by Thomas Mournian in the Bay Guardian April 1998).

I was a Teenage Prostitute by Juliana Piccillo (18 minutes)
Juliana Piccillo has worked as a prostitute, journalist, filmmaker, and university instructor. Her film, I was a Teenage Prostitute, looks back at her seventeenth year in which she worked as an in-call prostitute at a suburban massage parlor.

"NHI - No Humans Involved" by Deborah Small, Elizabeth Sisco, Carla Kirkwood, Scott Kessler and Louis Hock (excerpts 15 min)
"NHI - No Humans Involved" was a public art project, which took place in San Diego in 1992. These artists produced this work to address the unsolved, and in many cases uninvestigated, sexual assaults and murders of forty-five San Diego women between 1985-1992. The project takes its name from a term used by police for what they describe as "...'misdemeanor murders' of biker women and hookers... Sometimes we'd call them "NHI's - no humans involved." By using the phrase "NHI" as the title of their project, the artists shaped the language and focus around which the story of the unsolved murders and police investigations would be publicly discussed, widely debated and contested. This is just one of the techniques the artists used in this 5 part project. Our presentation will feature videos documenting this project and excerpts from the installation.

Panelists
Note: We are still formulating panels and would be interested in any suggestions you can make. We hope to include young people affected by these issues as well as advocates and activists.

Panelists will include Amy Donovan, Ph.D., (founder Labor Memoir Project)
David Sterry (author Chicken), Juliana Piccillo (I was a teenage prostitute) and others. We will also include speakers who can provide information about current developments in homeless/street youth policy in San Francisco.

Additional presenter/filmmakers:
Ariel Lightningchild is from the Cree and Ojibwa first nations, she is also Jewish and Roma (gypsy). Through her art Ariel gives voice to her stories of childhood abuse and neglect, life on the streets and sexual exploitation. Ariel's work exposes and analyzes various forms of oppression and how they have affected her ancestors, her family, her friends, herself, and have contributed to different kinds of abuse she has experienced.

Duran Ruiz will speak on current incidents of violence against prostitutes in the mission district including an attack she recently suffered, again, with no assistance from the police. A veteran heroin user and sex worker, Duran has presented on many panels including along with members of the Coalition on Homelessness, Center for Juvenile Justice, COYOTE, Mission Agenda, and the Santa Cruz Conference on Safety and Health Intervention.

Leslie Bull is a writer, poet, novelist, and photographer. Among other things, she writes about her experiences as an eighth grade drop out teen welfare mom, street hooker, white girl, junkie, prisoner family, queer, middle-aged, mixed class college student, and survivor. She will screen her first video (co-created with Ariel Lightningchild) titled, "on being a junkie ho in sex worker world," addressing and complicating issues of class, race, sexuality, family, and gender.

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To invite people, not ask for sponsors:
#2

Dear Friends,

We hope you would send your staff and/or clients to this event to participate in the discussions and we could offer free entry for a small donation to our non-profit or a group rate.

A. Segment 1 -Focus in Youth in the Sex Trades

B. Segment 2- Focus on Violence Against Sex Workers

Videos:
(Please note: This schedule has not been finalized. If you are particularly interested, or not interested in any of these works, please let us know! I am leaning towards not showing the first movie to leave room for discussion, but I would like feedback. I could also extend the screening)

Diary of Evelyn Lau by Sturla Gunnarsson (93 minutes)
Evelyn Lau is a major poet and writer in Canada. Early in 1986 Lau ran away from her unbearable existence, as a social outcast in school and a suppressed, unloved daughter at home in a traditional Chinese household. She started working in the sex trade in Vancouver and became addicted. Living mostly at social institutions and chronicling in a diary her psychologically battered life and her struggle as an emerging writer. The manuscript became a bestseller when it was published in 1989 under the title Runaway. Diary of a Street Kid. This movie is directly based on Ms. Lau's book.

Deconstructing crack ho (a memoir) by Ariel Lightningchild (7min )
One woman tells it like it is examining her experience as a survivalist sex worker, and sexually exploited youth.

Swallow by Ariel Lightningchild (11min)
An exploration of issues often marginalized amongst the celebration of some of the sex workers movement such as race, class, and mental illness.

aka Kathie by Minda Martin (55 min)
The saga of Mexican-American family from Tucson confronting a violent loss, caught in the cycle of violence towards women. This disturbing video focuses on the story of one sister involved in prostitution, using drugs and surviving in Tucson.

Hiding Out by Thomas Mournian & John Keitel -5 min
San Francisco's underground railroad of Safe Houses keep kids off the street and out of the abusive psychiatric hospitals many have escaped from (as reported by Thomas Mournian in the Bay Guardian April 1998).

I was a Teenage Prostitute by Juliana Piccillo 18 minutes
Juliana Piccillo has worked as a prostitute, journalist, filmmaker, and university instructor. Her film, I was a Teenage Prostitute, looks back at her seventeenth year in which she worked as an in-call prostitute at a suburban massage parlor.

Panelists
Note: We are still formulating panels and would be interested in any suggestions you can make. We hope to include young people affected by these issues as well as advocates and activists.

Leslie Bull is a writer, poet, novelist, and photographer. Among other things, she writes about her experiences as an eighth grade drop out teen welfare mom, street hooker, white girl, junkie, prisoner family, queer, middle-aged, mixed class college student, and survivor. She will screen her first video (co-created with Ariel Lightningchild) titled, "on being a junkie ho in sex worker world,” addressing and complicating issues of class, race, sexuality, family, and gender.