SIMA Film Festival 2017

Presented by the Social Impact Media Awards (SIMA) and the Two Dollar Challenge
Enter Online Screening Room

Screening Schedule

April 3

16/6

Director: Nicolás Cuellar

Producers: Alejandro Pacheco & Jonathan Stack

2014 | 35 min

Haiti

Languages: French, Creole

Subtitles: English

The terrible earthquake in Haiti on January 12, 2010 resulted in the displacement of 1.5 million, a death toll of 300,000 human beings, and 10 billion m3 of debris from over 200,000 damaged buildings. What are the causes that enabled these catastrophic consequences? The 16/6 Project was created to support the rehabilitation with community participation of damaged and dangerous neighborhoods, and sought to improve living conditions by promoting the establishment of basic social services prioritized by the community.

April 4

GIRLS LIKE US

Director: C. Dallas Golden

Producer: Hailey Sprinkel

2016 | 9 min

Tanzania

Language: English

Subtitles: English

In Tanzania, women are expected to stay home, cook, clean, and take care of the children while their husbands are away at work. Like a typical teenager, Winnie needed an outlet for her curious mind and in 2013, she joined Apps & Girls, an organization that teaches young girls how to code their own websites.

April 5

A WAY FORWARD

Director: Isaac Seigel-Boettner

Producer: Jacob Seigel-Boettner

2016 | 6 min

Kenya

Languages: English

Many in the U.S. take the bicycle for granted. Not so for students like Diana and Angela in Kakamega, Kenya. These brave young women used to have to walk hours to and from school, dodging the predatory advances of motorcycle taxi drivers, and often arriving exhausted and terrified of the return journey. Now, thanks to the bicycles that they received from World Bicycle Relief, these hurdles have disappeared. A Way Forward tells Diana and Angela’s story through the voices of three generations of women working to empower the girls in Kakamega to pursue their dreams.

April 6

THE CONSCIOUS HOOD: BEING BLACK IS NO CRIME

Director: Katherine Jinyi Li

Producer: Katherine Jinyi Li

2016 | 7 min

Brazil

Language: Portuguese

Subtitles: English

“Being Black Is No Crime” is the fourth episode of the web-series “The Conscious Hood” documenting social issues crucial to the residents of São Paulo’s Heliópolis, the second largest urban slum in Latin America. Directed by videomaker Katherine Jinyi Li and filmed during her youth journalism workshops at the community organization UNAS-Heliópolis, The Conscious Hood features Li’s journalism students, their families, neighbors, and community leaders as protagonists of their social struggle.

“Being Black Is No Crime” brings the violent reality of police discrimination against young, black members of the Heliópolis favela to the screen with locals’ testimonies on camera, a short skit of a standard stop and frisk, a “funk” rap, and a quick lesson of any person’s legal rights when stopped by the police. Past episodes of “The Conscious Hood” discussed public waste management, homophobia, and women’s rights in the favela.

 

April 7

Clear As Day: The Free Tech That’s Saving The Sight & Lives of Guatemala’s Children

Director: Michael Rogers & Meghan Shea

Producer: Meghan Shea

2016 | 5 min

Guatemala

Languages: English
How do you tackle a global health problem that’s largely treatable, but the tools to diagnose it can’t reach its victims? Maybe an app is the answer. Meet Nitin Shrivastava, an M.D. Candidate at the University of Massachusetts Medical School who’s using a free app called CRADLE to diagnose Retinoblastoma in the rural areas of Guatemala. Children here with this pediatric cancer of the eye are too young to complain of their symptoms and the ophthalmoscope traditionally used to diagnose the disease is a scarce resource. Could this app change the way physicians around the world identify this life-threatening disease and save the lives of children throughout the developing world?