peer educators

Showing 2 posts tagged peer educators

ppauteens:

2019 Opening Day!

It’s a wonderful winter here and a perfect start to this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The festival received over 1,400 submissions and only 112 of them are features that were selected to be shown. For this year, 10 teens from all three of Planned Parenthood’s Teen Council’s are participating in the festival. These teens will be watching films, conducting interviews, participating in panel discussions, and blogging about it all! This year the following films will be blogged about:

The Infiltrators

SHARE

Gaza

This Is Personal

Maiden

Toni Morrison: The Pieces I am

Ask Dr. Ruth

Pahokee

Words From A Bear

Midnight Traveler Knock Down the House

Birth of The Cool

Some teens bloggers will also the chance to participate in the Vr cinematic experience that is featured in this year’s festival. These 10 teens come from a wide array of high schools within the Valley and Park City. To learn more about this year’s phenomenal group of teens, via the “Meet the Team” page on the website. Another way to keep up with bloggers is to follow the tumblr page or look for links on any PPAU website!

Utah Teens Talk Film bloggers are members of Planned Parenthood Association of Utah’s Teen Council. They work as peer sex educators in their schools and communities. As members of the blogging team, teens participate in the Damn These Heels Film Festival and the Sundance Film Festival, watch independent films, and interview filmmakers, advocates, and writers from all over the world. They strive to understand how film can promote just and humane sexual attitudes and policies, challenge current perspectives, and spark new ideas—and you can follow along with their journey here. Check out their reviews from this year’s festivals!

Sundance 2017 - Lucia: Unlikable and Unapologetic

ppauteens:

image

by Sarah Fosburg

Who is Lucia? We don’t really know. We know she works at a summer camp, we know she can do a pretty good fake Southern accent, and we know she had a long drive to get where she’s going. We know she wants an abortion, but we don’t know why. We see her touch arms briefly with the woman next to her in the waiting room. We see—and feel—her exasperation as she’s told she must wait twenty-four hours and undergo an ultrasound before her procedure.

We see her go to a bar and drink a beer, and our first reaction is horror—before we remember that it doesn’t matter. We see her race out without paying, and we grow frustrated with her.

Speaking with filmmaker Anu Valia, I quickly realized that this frustration with Lucia was deliberate. We are not supposed to like her. The film does not apologize for its content, or for its character or its portrayal of her. Its content is completely medically accurate and aligned with actual patient experiences, because the script was meticulously checked by Planned Parenthood’s arts and entertainment department. It illustrates a blunt truth: no matter who you are, no matter what you’ve done, no matter how much people like or dislike you, you still deserve control over your body.

image

I had a chance to meet the amazing filmmaker, Anu Valia, along with Summit and Wasatch County Teen Council member Teia Swan (right). Congratulations to Lucia: Before and After for winning the Short Film Jury Award: U.S Fiction!

image