DAVID GUILBAULT

A WORLD LEADER

A humble, bold, thoughtful world leader addresses the U.N. General Assembly.

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NO GAY KISSING

Today is the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in 1969, which gave birth to the Gay Rights Movement.  In 1994, I produced a report on the 25th anniversary for "The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour."  It would be the only time in my career when I would experience censorship.

Manhattan was filled with homosexuals remembering and celebrating an historic moment.  They put on a Gay Olympics, concerts and rallies around New York City and a celebration of love in Central Park.

I was working for Time Inc. New Media, which had a contract with the NewsHour to produce reports for the program.  The video report I submitted looked at all the events of the weekend and was a comprehensive story on the state of gay rights in America at that time. 

In one scene a winning athlete got a congratulatory kiss from his partner.  Another sequence showed gay couples in the park doing what loving couples do all around the world - hugging, holding hands, resting their heads on their loved one's shoulder, brushing back their hair and kissing.  It was a montage of expressions of affection.

The Executive Producer of the NewHour called me to his office across town to tell me to remove the kissing scenes, as they might offend the sensibilities of the older PBS news audience.  I explained that both scenes were "normal" and central to the narrative.  He disagreed.  So, I compromised and said I would remove the congratulatory kiss, as not being completely germane to the athletic event, but that I would leave in the tender kiss at the love rally, as being completely appropriate.  He agreed.

So, I re-cut and resubmitted the finished video report to the NewsHour.

But, when it aired, the NewsHour editors had, without my knowledge or consent, removed the kissing scene in the park.  That meant that they had to extend the video to cover the narration that was under that part of the report.  So, they slow-motioned all the park scenes to fill the gap in the video.  What the audience saw was slowed-down video of all the tender moments, which made them look unnatural and unseemly, like they slow-mo criminals in their orange prison suits for the "perp walk."

Needless to say, I was outraged.  I worked as a news producer for 20 years at ABC News and was one of the founding Senior Producers of Cable News Network.  No one at either of those news organizations ever asked me to edit my report to satisfy the sensibilities of their audience.  I found it disturbing that the so-called liberal powers-that-be at the NewsHour at the time would censor their own reports to satisfy the perceived prejudices of their audience.

To this day, it still bothers me.

Anyway, Frank Rich has a fine op-ed piece in today's New York Times remembering an event that most straight people never heard of to begin with.  It's long past time to embrace human rights for all, all over the world.  A kiss to everyone from me.  Let your freak flags fly.

 

TRUTH SESSIONS

"Truth Sessions: Insights on the Common Struggles of Life" (A journalistic jazz piece) from David Guilbault on Vimeo

We all have stories to tell. We all need and want to be heard. But many of us are invisible members of our own communities. Because we may be poor, downtrodden, struggling with mental conditions or fighting addictions, our opinions and observations are largely ignored.

But our experiences and insights are valuable. Like everyone, we’re coping the best we can with the challenges of life. This ongoing project is intended to give voice to those struggles.

"Truth Sessions" is a multimedia storytelling project by filmmaker David Guilbault, photographer Doug Vann, painter Keven Furiya and composer Andy Zadrozny.

The first session features ten people living in a low income apartment building in Seattle, across the street from the artist lofts where David, Doug, Keven & Andy live and work.

These ten interviews are the first in a series of sessions. Our intention is to hear from a range of our neighbors from disparate cultural, economic, ethnic, educational, racial and spiritual backgrounds. This is just the beginning of the conversation. The stories continue.

(To see the complete multimedia work, please visit www.truthsessions.tv)

WALK RIGHT IN

I invite you all to a fundraiser for a wonderful work-in-progress, "Walk Right In", on April 24th, at 7:00p at the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle.  Details on the film and a trailer are below:

"Walk Right In" captures the stories of a unique educational experiment at Yale University through interviews with its participants 40 years later.

Created as part of the war on poverty with a mandate to address issues of social and economic injustice, The Yale Summer High School brought underprivileged kids from across the nation to the Yale Divinity School during the 1960s. In 1968, as American cities were rife with protest, racial rioting and civil disorder, a small group of educators redefined the enterprise, creating a living laboratory in the problems and promise of the American democracy. Drawing on the 'Great Books' of Western literature, the school made these classics relevant to the times and lives of its students, bringing sensitive issues of race, tolerance and personal identity to the fore. From Sophocles' "Antigone" to Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn," they searched together for that which eluded the nation--a working definition of "community"--the shared values that ground people and bind them together.

Four decades after leaving Yale, Larry Paros--former Director of the Yale Summer High School--traveled the country to interview more than two dozen of his fellow teachers, tutors and students about how they each experienced the Summer High School in 1968.

A compelling and deeply personal narrative of education and individual transformation, "Walk Right In" recreates the summer of '68 through first hand accounts, following students from their moment of selection and their arrival on campus to the culmination of the program and where they are today, reminding us of the importance of inclusive and effective education and the impact it has across generations.

TRUTH SESSIONS REDUX

"Truth Sessions" is a multi-media storytelling project by filmmaker David Guilbault, photographer Doug Vann, painter Keven Furiya and composer Andy Zadrozny.

The first session features ten people living in a low-income apartment building in Seattle, across the street from the artist lofts where David, Doug, Keven & Andy live and work.  The project is a film, a website (www.truthsessions.tv), an art exhibit and a book (blurb.com).

We all have stories to tell.  We all need and want to be heard.  But many of us are invisible members of our own communities.  Because we may be poor, downtrodden, struggling with mental conditions or fighting addictions, our opinions and observations are largely ignored.  But our experiences and insights are valuable.  Like everyone, we’re coping the best we can with the challenges of life.  This ongoing project is intended to give voice to those struggles.

These ten interviews are the first in a series of sessions.  Our intention is to hear from a range of our neighbors from disparate cultural, economic, ethnic, educational, racial and spiritual backgrounds.

This is just the beginning of the conversation.  The stories continue.

After a successful two-month run in Corridor Gallery in Pioneer Square, the exhibit has moved to the Woodinville City Hall for the month of March 2009.

“Truth Sessions” began in the summer of 2007.  David had long wanted to ask people direct questions about their trials and triumphs, looking for the common experiences of life, in the hopes of putting together a short documentary film giving voice to the unheard.

So he set about crafting the simple questions that would be at the heart of his interviews: What are your struggles?  What do you care about?  What makes you happy, sad?  What worries you?  What brings you joy?  What makes you proud?  What do you regret?  What would you like people to know?

Next he picked a building in which to find the interview subjects – The Frye Apartments in Seattle, owned by the Low Income Housing Institute and managed by the Archdiocesan Housing Authority.  The idea was to start with a cohort of ten people there and then continue with a series of video interviews with people of different socio-economic means in other buildings in the neighborhood.

Knowing Doug Vann’s history and ease with photographing people naturally, David asked Doug to accompany him to the interviews.  There, Doug did a portrait shot of each participant on the interview set and another environmental study in their apartments upstairs.

Shortly after the video interviews were completed, Keven Furiya moved from painting cityscapes in the Pioneer Square neighborhood where the artists all live, to doing portraiture.  So, David asked Keven if he would have the interviewees sit for formal portraits, providing further characterizations of their personas.

To complete the project, Andy Zadrozny, the fourth of the artists living in the Tashiro Kaplan Artist Lofts, across the street from the Frye Apartments, was asked to compose music to accompany the edited version of the interviews.  Andy’s composition brought another interpretation of our subjects.

So, now, the original idea has grown into a collaborative multimedia project – a revealing film, photographic character studies, intimate paintings, interpretive music, a traveling exhibit, an interactive website and a commemorative book.

Next is to find another group of ten to reveal themselves by way of film, photo, paint and sound and show us all “insights on the common struggles of life.”

PHOTO:  Doug Vann

EYES ON THE FUTURE

Photo:  Doug Mills/The New York Times

TRUTH SESSIONS

We all have stories to tell.  We all need and want to be heard.  But many of us are invisible members of our own communities.  Because we may be poor, downtrodden, struggling with mental conditions or fighting addictions, our opinions and observations are largely ignored.

But our experiences and insights are valuable.  Like everyone, we're coping the best we can with the challenges of life.  This ongoing project is intended to give voice to those struggles.

'Truth Sessions' is a multimedia storytelling project by filmmaker David Guilbault, photographer Doug Vann, painter Keven Furiya and composer Andy Zadrozny.  The first session features ten people living in a low income apartment building across the street from the artist lofts where David, Doug, Keven and Andy live and work.

These ten interviews are the first in a series of sessions.  Our intention is to hear from a range of our neighbors from disparate cultural, economic, ethnic, ediucaltional, racial and spiritual backgrounds.  This is just the beginning of the conversation.  The stories continue.

HOPES AND DREAMS

On this date, August 28th, in 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his conscience-raising 'I Have a Dream ' speech in Washington, D.C.  Tonight, on the anniversary of Dr. King's call for justice, Barack Obama will deliver another momentous address on hopes and dreams.

In 1963, Dr. King said, 'Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children. It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment.'

Tonight, Sen. Obama has an opportunity to emblazon another moment, speaking as the first African-American nominee of a major party for President of the United States.  It is a long overdue triumph that should be shared by all Americans, regardless of political leanings.

As Barack Obama said in his thoughtful oration on race in Philadelphia earlier this year, 'In the end, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand - that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother's keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.'

Before we watch Obama's speech tonight, it would do us well to watch again the righteous words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., from 45 years ago.

THE OTHER

Missive Four
To My Darling Children:

TRIBE |trīb| noun. A social division in a traditional society consisting of families or communities linked by social, economic, religious, or blood ties, with a common culture and dialect, typically having a recognized leader.

We are all tribal. We largely define ourselves by our membership in differing groups. We separate ourselves from each other by our identifications of race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, gender, social station, wealth (or lack thereof), interests, agendas and so-called values.

I am this. You are that. You are 'The Other'. I am not you.

Why does this matter? Because we use those differences against each other. They cause conflict, bigotry, oppression and war. They breed misunderstanding and lead to fear, mistrust and hatred.

This goes against the idea that we are all equal. We are, of course, not. We are smart and stupid. Good and bad. Talented and not. On and on.

There are many who have labored long and hard in the fight for 'equality'. I believe that is the wrong battle. We should recognize our inherent differences and, instead, fight for acceptance, tolerance and justice. My generation marched for equal rights - women's rights, civil rights, gay rights. They were the right fights for their time. Change came, albeit slowly, but nonetheless.

And yet, in your generation, I see a persistence of racism and misogyny. Prejudice continues to be passed down from father to son, mother to daughter. Mistrust and misunderstanding are learned behaviors. Sadly, it seems every generation has to start anew in overcoming wrong thinking for themselves.

So, know that ignorance will always be your true enemy. Approach 'The Other' with a brave and fearless willingness to understand. You will not find all to be acceptable. But, you will find peace in embracing acceptance.