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“We have an opportunity to look behind the violence, and learn from the best social science, so that we’re not incarcerating so many boys,” O’Neil said in a phone interview this week. “The movie showed that we need to give them the skills to navigate conflict in new and different ways.
“It’s complicated. It’s a long view. It’s a view we see as necessary.”
Toward that end, the Lebanon-based social service nonprofit will screen Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s 2015 documentary, which depicts men and teen boys struggling to adapt to evolving definitions of masculinity and to stop abusing the women in their lives, on Thursday night at 7 at the Norwich church of the Unitarian Universalist Congregations of the Upper Valley.
“Prevention is a critical piece of the puzzle,” O’Neil said. “We know that boys are more likely to experience violence and to perpetrate violence. I remember the sheer emotion I felt for many of the young boys in the film, how much they struggled to share their feelings, their vulnerabilities, what it did to them that they weren’t able to do that.”
WISE, which began in 1971 as a career resource center for women, evolved by 1981 into an agency that helped survivors of domestic and sexual violence, starting with a 24-hour crisis line that by the end of the 1980s was fielding more than 1,000 calls a year.
By 2001, WISE was providing an apartment as a confidential emergency shelter, and in 2013, the agency bought a safe home to provide not only shelter but a space to help them become self-sufficient.
As those services expanded, WISE also hired a Youth Violence Prevention and Community Outreach Coordinator. Since 2006, that outreach has included training more than 5,000 first responders to support trauma victims and helping more than 18,000 teens to learn healthy relationship skills.
“With all the experience we’ve had with survivors, we know more about some of the dynamics of where the abuse comes from,” O’Neil said. “We feel an obligation and a responsibility to share what we know. We know that masculinity and femininity are social constructs. We decide as a society what they mean, what’s good and bad and neutral. If we can construct it, we can deconstruct it.”
The Mask You Live In, O’Neil added, does a particularly good job of depicting how the new worlds of social media and access to mass-media are reinforcing stereotypes of male and female behavior.
“The feedback that we get from students in our prevention education is that what we’re sharing with them resonates with them,” O’Neil said. “What’s different about this generation is exposure to a lot of these images. Social media are much more accessible to this population, and we’re all still learning how to deal with it.”
In an interview with The Huffington Post in 2016, Siebel Newsom, wife of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, described how the idea of The Mask You Live In grew out of her experience shooting an earlier documentary exploring the impact of media on the self-image of women and girls.
“As I traveled the world talking about Miss Representation … people consistently asked me, what is going on with our boys?” Siebel Newsom told the online magazine.
O’Neil said that the recent presidential campaign, during which GOP nominee Donald Trump’s aggressive attitudes toward women dominated the headlines for weeks, lends further urgency to WISE’s determination to share and discuss these issues with Upper Valley residents.
“Our offering of this film is an invitation for people in the community,” O’Neil said. “Come and watch with us, look at this issue through another lens. We can learn together, make it easier and more fulfilling for young people to grow up. … We want to open it up for a look at the ways we deal with the violence: ‘Is this really working?’”
As a benefit for its services to survivors of domestic violence, WISE agency will screen
The web-TV series Parmalee, set in a fictional Vermont town and shot at several venues around the Upper Valley, went online Thursday.
Actor-writers Faith Catlin and John Griesemer of Lyme collaborated on creation of the series with Newbury, Vt.-based actors Richard Waterhouse and Dan Butler and with cinematographer Matt Bucy of White River Junction. It explores the ripple effects in Parmalee after kids stumble upon “a horrific video” and post it on the Internet.
In addition to Butler, the radio sports-talk host in the 1990s sitcom Frasier whose acting credits also include The Silence of the Lambs, portraying the besieged principal of Parmalee School, NYPD Blue co-star and Norwich resident Gordon Clapp plays police chief Karl Parmalee. Meanwhile, Catlin portrays “citizen-at-large” Aggie Pennington, Waterhouse depicts the director of the local Parmalee Players theater troupe and Hanover playwright Marisa Smith plays the superintendent of schools.
The season one pilot, 49 minutes long, is viewable at parmaleethewebseries.com/episodes.
Freedom & Unity: The Vermont Movie is inviting aspiring filmmakers to submit Vermont-themed and Vermont-made movies to its contest or the Work-in-Progress Filmmaking Award.
Feb. 15 is the deadline to apply for the award, which brings a prize of $3,500. The contest is open to filmmakers not currently enrolled in an educational institution. (It is separate from the organization’s Youth Film Contest, which is geared toward students.) The application form, which is downloadable at thevermontmovie.com, requires contact information, a description of the project, the timetable for completion, a short biography, how the money will be used and a sample of the filmmaker’s work.
In the next installment of the Woodstock Vermont Film Series on Saturday afternoon, the Billings Farm and Museum screens Diplomancy, the acclaimed 2014 film reimaging how Swedish Consul General Raoul Nordling negotiated with the German military governor of occupied Paris to prevent the retreating German Army from destroying the French capital in the waning days of World War II. To reserve tickets ($6 for museum members, $11 for others) for shows at 3 and 5, call 802-457-2355.
On Nov. 19, the festival will show Life Animated, the documentary about a Massachusetts boy brought out of his autistic shell through the animated movies of the Disney studio. For more information about the series, visit billingsfarm.org/filmfest.
The nonprofit Windsor Community Show will premiere its first feature film, The Secret of Wonderland, next Friday night at 6 in Windsor High School’s Lois F. White Theatre. The organizers of the community show, usually held on stage in March, moved outdoors this year to a variety of venues around Windsor, including the Path of Life Garden. The movie follows the adventures of a girl who, the summer after the death of her father, finds a secret garden full of fairytale characters while staying with an aunt in Windsor.
Admission at the door is $3 to $6, proceeds from which benefit Windsor’s Elementary Parents, Teachers and Friends. To learn more, visit the Annual Windsor Community Show page on Facebook. A trailer of the movie is viewable at youtu.be/pa90w1sMwWY. DVDs of the movie can be pre-ordered at the premiere.
The Chandler Film Society screens Big Night, Stanley Tucci’s poignant 1997 comedy about two Italian-American brothers in the late 1950s struggling to save their restaurant and their relationship, on Nov. 20 the Upper Gallery of the Chandler Center for the Arts in Randolph. Film historian Rick Winston will introduce the film at 6:30 p.m., and will lead a discussion after the lights go back up. Admission is $9.
Next up in the society’s film series is a Dec. 18 screening of Babette’s Feast , the winner of the 1987 Academy Award for best foreign film. To learn more about the series, visit chandler-arts.org.
David Corriveau can be reached at dcorriveau@vnews.com and at 603-727-3304.