A father and daughter team debuted their documentary, Untold” during Columbia College Chicago’s two-day Doc Your World festival in May.

Leah Zeiger, 20, a dance major at the college, was in an abusive relationship as a teenager. She told that story with her father, David Zeiger, 66, a professional film director and producer from California. When Doc Your World students were called upon to produce a documentary on a pivotal moment in their lives, the Zeigers felt obligated to share their story to heal themselves and other survivors.

“Making this film about what Leah and our family went through was necessary for all of us,” said David Zeiger. “It’s part of our DNA; that’s how we deal with it.”

Her father used his talents in film and photography to express his emotions after the death of his 9-year-old son in 1987.

Doc Your World is an interdisciplinary course. In addition to making short films, the students organized this two-day event.

A panel including the Zeigers and other sexual assault survivors, Jean Cozier, 61, and Cassandra Kaczor, 23, shared their experiences. Cozier, founder and executive director of Awakenings Foundation Center and Gallery, encompassed all of the panelist’s goals in combining their pain with their art.

“I’m a survivor who uses my art to heal myself and other people as well,” Cozier said. “I believe in it more strongly than I believe in almost anything in my life. The power of taking control of what happened to you is the most empowering thing that anybody can ever experience.”

Cozier, who was sexually assaulted as a child, exemplified this mindset with her foundation. The center provides coaching and a platform for survivors to open up about sexual violence in their lives in the form of artwork, writing, and graphic design.

Kaczor, a Roosevelt University graduate student in music composition, was sexually assaulted at 16, when a music producer she worked with forced her to perform sexual acts on him. She was then raped her junior year of college. Since then, she made it her mission to create and perform pieces that help herself and other survivors recover from their trauma.

With the same goal of healing through artistic expression, Leah Zeiger created the Sunflower Project. The multimedia organization uses dance, film and writing to educate young adults from middle school to high school about sexual assault, domestic violence and dating abuse.

Through education of young adults about healthy relationships, she hoped that they would be able to spot the early signs of abuse before escalation. One indicator she stressed was jealousy or paranoia, two signs that were prevalent in the beginning of her relationship.

The relationship was abusive mentally, physically and verbally, she recalled. After prom night, the abuse became sexual. She internalized the abuse, became depressed and attempted suicide. With her parents’ and professional help, she ended the relationship and filed a restraining order.

Sitting on a couch with her father in her documentary, she told of her ex-boyfriend’s terrifying retaliation. Police found him and a friend outside her house with a backpack filled with rope, chloroform, a bat, bullets, and condoms. Their intent was to break in the Zeiger home, take out her father, tie up her mother and siblings and rape her, police later said.

He was arrested and charged with eight felonies. After a plea deal, he was sentenced to two years in prison.

She recalled the first time she revealed her story to the public, in a dance called “Unnamed.” She spoke of the emotions that lead to it and the insights and power she gained by creating it.

“I was a dancer before I was a survivor,” she said. “Dance became a way to communicate what was going on and what happened–also a way to heal. I started dancing with a different purpose–I can dance to heal others.”

Reeling 2014: The 32nd Chicago LGBT International Film Festival is now accepting film and video entries for this year’s festival, which will take place September 18-25, 2014.

Entries are eligible for audience awards and juried cash awards in the categories of Best Narrative Feature, Best Documentary Feature, Best Narrative Short, Best Documentary Short, and Best Animated or Experimental Film.

 DEADLINES (Note there are entry fees — see the Reeling Site for details.)

Early Deadline — April 7, 2014
Regular Deadline — April 28, 2014
Late Deadline — May 12, 201
Without A Box Exclusive Extended Deadline — May 19, 2014

You can click to download a PDF of our ENTRY FORM and GENERAL FESTIVAL RULES FOR SUBMISSION

Mallory Sohmer, a 2006 film studies graduate, screened her documentary “The Living Documents” at the Ferguson Memorial Theatre, 600 S. Michigan Ave., to an audience of approximately 40 people.

“The Living Documents” chronicles a Nicaraguan attorney, Maria Acosta, and the death of her husband, Frank. Acosta is involved in the privatization of land for Nicaraguan natives, thus trying to stop the selling of this land over the Internet. This controversial work is exactly what led to the death of her husband.

After the screening, hosted by the Student Alumni Association, Sohmer discussed the documentary and her reasoning behind it, while also speaking about her post-Columbia career.

According to Sohmer, she got the idea for this documentary while still a student at Columbia. This documentary started out as a project for one of Sohmer’s film classes called Indigenous Film Making.

“We had to come up with stories to write a treatment on,” said Sohmer. “I found an article on Frank’s murder. I graduated and the story stuck with me. This is the kind of work I wanted to do.”

According to Sohmer, “The Living Documents” was three years in the making. During the filming, Sohmer spent a month in Nicaragua conducting interviews and gathering footage.

“It was a great learning experience,” Sohmer said.

Sohmer’s documentary was screened at the Chicago Latino Film Festival and all throughout Nicaragua. It has also been shown numerous times on the Documentary Channel.

During the discussion, students were encouraged to ask Sohmer questions about her film career, and she had much advice to offer.

The number-one advice she shared was to meet with others in your career and to gather a team.

“Build a network of people,” Sohmer said. “Find people who want to do the same projects you want to do.”

Sohmer also said that she wished she had been better rounded in other studies, such as journalism, to help her in film making.

Sohmer has been working freelance for the past year while also building her own client-base. As of now, she has no plans to make another documentary.

FURI runs from July 7-18th at Chicago Filmmakers.

The teens will gain skills necessary to create political remix videos that quote copyrighted material as fair use practice in the process of reclaiming free speech.

Appropriating “media texts” from websites, television and election year ads, in order to analyze, re-purpose and re-frame the messages that are broadcast and narrowcast to the public, these young people will make some media from the perspective of urban youth for the FURI website.

Check out our 2007 YOUTHLAB blog (Listening Across Borders) here.

In addition to training in advanced digital editing and media tools designed and taught by two professional working artists/educators, youth will receive two full days of instruction in on copyright law, ethics of appropriation and best practices for fair use from Gordon Quinn of Kartemquin Films, a leader in the Fair Use for Documentary Film movement and Pat Aufderheide, Professor and Director of the Center for Social Media at American University in Washington D.C. They will provide the youth with “hot-off-the-presses” Code of Best Practices for Online Video, written in collaboration with a blue ribbon committee from the Washington College of Law.

We invite teachers, schools and non-profits to use these materials to instruct youth in media literacy, remix as a communication tool and copyright law. Open Youth Networks is available to lead workshops in remix for students and educators alike. In addition, youth members of FURI are also available to present their work and explain how it constitutes examples of best practices in Fair Use.

The Fair Use Remix Institute is made possible by the generous support of the McCormick Foundation.

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• Educator Guidelines: Fair Use in Media Literacy (debaird.net)