Click here to view the embedded video.

Do you want to do something about this problem? Send a letter to the Namibian Health Minister to demand an end to forced sterilization of HIV positive women.

Here are the two other films we did for the campaign:

Vlad is suffering from incurable brain cancer. Despite his chronic pain, doctors in Ukraine are only allowed to prescribe 50 mg of pain medicine. In another country, doctors would typically prescribe more than 2,000 mg for a patient like Vlad.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In many countries, governments forcibly detain people as a form of “treatment” for medical conditions such as drug addiction, mental disability, or tuberculosis. This is a story about Venta, a former drug abuser in Cambodia.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s the line up:

The story in print from the NYTimes
The story in multimedia, also from the NYTimes
The story on the radio from National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition

and finally, the same story on local Buffalo TV News.

Click here to view the embedded video.

However, murmuration, the word that describes this phenomenon, is very cool.

(Here’s another video on the same phenom.)

(thanks to Sandeep Junnarker for spotting this story.)

Yesterday, I found a small item in the Wall Street Journal about how modern movies reference Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone.

And there was the name of the movie!

“Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” a 1962 short directed by Robert Enrico based on an Ambrose Bierce short story.

I found the film online and watched it today. It’s as incredible now as the first time I saw it, and I still remember the shock I had at the ending.

Maybe this is where I learned that the job of the storyteller is to show the people the world in a different and surprising way.

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(And the Journal snapshot suggests that M. Night Shyamalan’s Sixth Sense was based on the film and another site also suggested that this film was the only episode of the Twilight Zone that was not written and produced by Rod Serling.

Recently, Seth Gitner, an assistant professor at Syracuse University S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, talked with Scott Anger and myself about the three films we created as part of the Soros Foundation’s Stop Torture in Healthcare initiative. We worked in the Ukraine, Cambodia and Namibia.

Here’s a pdf of the story, reproduced with th permission of Seth and of the gracious folks at the National Press Photographer’s Association News Photographer Magazine.

Matt really nailed it so I asked him how he found the characters for his story:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Matt Slaby spent the entire first day looking for the right characters……..photo by Matt Slaby/LUCEO.

Matt Slaby: “There wasn’t any action happening in the time that I was there so I knew I needed to find someone with a story that was interesting enough for a Seinfeld episode, that is, an interesting narrative that could work without too much corresponding action.”

“I started on the first day by interviewing anyone who would let me talk with them, beginning with an addiction counselor. He helped find subjects who would speak to me. I went from one person to the next. With some I spent 10 minutes chatting, with others I talked with them for 2-3 hours. I chatted seriously with about 15 people.”

“I met Lenny (one of the two subjects of the final piece) near the end of this process. I found that he was a character who was straight-forward, not evasive and had the ability to be self-reflective. Lenny is a recovering heroin addict who was at a place in his recovery that made his story compelling.” (BTW, Matt is working on a long term project about heroin addicts.)

Lenny Costa had a story with a narrative arc. .......photo by Matt Slaby/LUCEO.

Matt continued, “I spent a long time chatting with Lenny before I recorded anything. I wanted Lenny to know that I wasn’t going to push him around and key-hole him as an addict.  I was just going to listen to him as a human being. By doing this before the tape was rolling I could also share parts of myself that showed that I was willing to be vulnerable too.”

Jack Downing spoke about the issues in a personal and compelling way that had universal appeal........photo by Matt Slaby/LUCEO.

When I asked Matt where he learned to interview so well, he told me he had spent 6 years working on an ambulance, a job  that helped him learn how to quickly read people.  ” In that setting, you learn how to communicate with people in a way that allows them to feel comfortable sharing critical information with you under less-than-ideal circumstances.  Good, active listening skills help you be effective at painting a picture for caregivers further down the line.  It’s a skill that certainly translates to journalism.”

That certainly puts it in perspective.

You can see the final story on the AARP Bulletin website. 

It was produced for AARP by Michael Wichita and Miranda Harple
Camera and Sound by Matt Slaby | LUCEO
Edited by Bob Sacha
Music by Tyler Strickland