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CONTRIBUTE BLOGS
04/02/2009 18:22
by Marcia Stepanek
When in Britain last week at
the Skoll World Forum, I was
referred to a recent article
in The Observer written by
Joss Garman, the 24-year-...
03/02/2009 22:35
by Marcia Stepanek
As the recent copyright woes
of Obama poster artist Shepard
Fairey show, there's a war
raging over what some now are
calling a new art form in ...
02/16/2009 07:24
by Marcia Stepanek
I just finished reading an
advance copy of "The Blue
Sweater: Bridging the Gap
Between Rich and Poor in an
Interconnected World,&qu...
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60 Seconds With...
Philanthropist Sheila Johnson
Philanthropist Sheila Johnson is the first black American billionaire and the first African-American woman to own three professional sports franchises—the Washington Capitals hockey team, the Washington Wizards basketball team, and the Washington Mystics women’s professional basketball team. Johnson and her former husband, Robert, made their fortunes by founding the entertainment network BET (Black Entertainment Television) and then selling it to Viacom in 1997. Johnson, a member of the Board of Directors of the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership at the University of Virginia and chair of the Board of Governors at Parsons The New School for Design, is also a staunch advocate for women’s empowerment. CONTRIBUTE Editor-in-Chief Marcia Stepanek recently caught up with Johnson, who told her that when it comes to her philanthropy, “I’m at that stage in my life where I’m tired of dabbling and spinning wheels that don’t go anywhere.” Johnson has now turned to documentary film to raise awareness for her pet causes, and her first film, A Powerful Noise, is making the rounds of this year’s festivals. Here’s an edited version of Stepanek’s conversation with her.
In A Powerful Noise, you focused on efforts by three women from three corners of the world who are trying to improve life in their communities. Why this film, why these women, and why now?
These women had lessons to share—mostly, that although they were each in different countries, they were each fighting to improve their communities in really desperate situations. I wanted to bring it home that we could all learn lessons from these women. All of us in our own lives can become champions for change--whether it’s within the radius of three city blocks or throughout a whole country.
You chose to spotlight women. Why?
Women and children are the most exploited people in the world. Much research shows that if we can improve the lives of women, then they will improve the lives of their children, their communities, and their families. The reason I’m focusing on women is because they’ve been neglected for centuries. We’ve got to persuade men to start respecting and valuing women more and also let the world know that the most vulnerable and poverty-stricken people are women: more than 72% of them are living on less $2 dollars a day. I’m not neglecting the men; I’m simply trying to raise awareness in this movie that women—though they often get the short end of the stick—can also do more than men in some situations to make a difference for their communities.
You focus on a Vietnamese AIDS activist, a girl’s advocate from Mali, and a woman in Bosnia-Herzegovina who is trying to reach across old ethnic divides to heal post-war tensions in order to create jobs for women in her community.
What we don’t realize is that after a war, there is a lot of aftermath that we tend to ignore. You fight a war and then you walk away. In Bosnia, the genocide of the war there left a huge population of women who were not used to single-handedly taking care of themselves and their children. They were forced to take charge of their own lives in order to survive. In Mali—the fourth poorest country in the world—it’s a different situation. There you have human trafficking, sex slavery, exploitation of employees, and a refusal by society there to let women go to school. In Vietnam, AIDS and the stigma surrounding it is keeping people ignorant about how to prevent it. So we have three really interesting and very different situations that I wanted to bring to the forefront. We, here in this country, can learn lessons from all of this.
Conversely, what lessons can the world learn from us in this country? You’ve put up funds to make a movie to raise awareness. Documentary film is such a powerful medium right now. Why did you choose this type of philanthropy to highlight this cause?
People tend to ignore something unless they see that it’s going on with their own eyes. Movies have a credibility that other forms of advocacy do not. I really believe documentaries are going to be the new wave of the future because I think we’re in a transition phase in terms of technology. Well-told stories are powerful because they bring action. It’s different than watching television or a full-length feature. Sure, a TV show tells a story but those stories are more about entertainment. Here, it’s different. People tend to watch documentaries differently because they know they’re going to learn something. We found that through documentary, we are able to get the problems out there quickly. Documentary film allows you to tell a story about what is and what is possible in a way you simply cannot in another medium.
You’ve been a leading-edge philanthropist for a while. How does film activism play to your evolution as a philanthropist? What was your thinking when you first wanted to make a difference, and how has that evolved?
For so many years, I’ve been involved with organizations—and sometimes it feels like I’m beating my head against the wall: you can try to do things and yet it can feel like you’re getting nowhere. You’re giving your money away and the organization isn’t visionary enough to make it work. For me, the light bulb went off when I first got involved with Kicking It (a 2008 film about the international league of homeless soccer players), which brought attention to homelessness globally. It’s a story about homeless men, kicking it—not only in soccer but kicking drug habits, alcoholism, addiction. They were refocusing their efforts to become winners in some respect and be team players.
I remember going to Sundance during the premiere of this film earlier this year and I stood up in the back of the auditorium and just watched the people in the audience and their reaction to the film. It was powerful. I hoped I could evoke the same reaction to A Powerful Noise. I traveled all over the world with CARE and have worked in the villages. I knew first-hand what the desperation was for women in some of these areas, and I decided that we needed to tell their stories. The hardest part about doing Noise was when the director, Scott Thigpen, brought the idea to me. He’d had all this footage, and the hardest part of doing this was to choose which of these stories to develop for the final film. It was a true labor of love.
Now, I’m so excited about the documentary business that I’m involved in a new one called She Wants to Be a Matador about the women matadors in the world—a small sorority of women and their struggle for legitimacy. In many ways, their plight is similar to what I’m witnessing with the WNBA, trying to get women acknowledged as athletes. I also have ideas for future documentaries. I think the screen is the place to achieve awareness and trigger action. In the past, I spent a lot of time going up to Capitol Hill, trying to convince congressmen and senators to pass legislation to alleviate global poverty. I have no doubt that if we simply went up there and showed them this film on global poverty, their reaction would be, “Okay. This is a no-brainer. Let’s pass the bill.”
What do you make of this new movement by nonprofit causes to get into the documentary film business? Is there a new opportunity for causes now that news budgets are under assault at journalism outlets around the country?
I think so, but I think you have to be careful because even as I was doing this movie, I wasn’t thinking about CARE, I was thinking about getting the story out there about women in poverty. Many film festivals don’t like to take NGO work, so there’s a fine line there. I didn’t want to do an infomercial for anyone. In the middle of making the movie, I realized that people had CARE hats on, and that World Vision was there and at first, I thought should we edit that out. But then I thought no, we’re not going to do that. Still, though, I did not do this movie for CARE. I did it to raise awareness for women’s empowerment efforts that needed support. You’ve really got to walk those fine lines because you never want to put the organization in a position of commercialism, marketing their product.
What’s next for you beyond your film on female matadors?
I’m always going to be involved with tons of other things but I’m at that stage in my life where I’m tired of dabbling and spinning wheels that don’t go anywhere. I think the documentary business is the place for me—a place to make my pitch, to state my case, and to really bring awareness into the communities at large.
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