TALKING EYES MEDIA INC

Production Services In 2023, Talking Eyes Media celebrated its 20th anniversary and launched a new website featuring the scope of work and the breadth of topics addressed. An easily accessible archive stores older films, while a new blog shares insights into the issues TEM documents and behind the scenes accounts of TEM process.Talking Eyes Medias project Newest Americans continued production and deployed the Newark Story Bus to several events in the city of Newark. This multi-year digital media project examines immigration and American identity. Developed in partnership with Rutgers University-Newark and VII Photo, Newest Americans produces short films, radio pieces, written essays, exhibitions and public events that explore the lives and communities, trials and aspirations of Americas diverse immigrant population. The project was awarded Best Online Storytelling Project in 2021 by Pictures of the Year International.Through Newest Americans, TEM developed partnerships with Audible, Newark Museum of Art, Newark Public Library, NJPAC and Newark Symphony Hall to share our media and engage in conversations with local thought leaders. The goal has been to activate and collaborate with the anchor cultural institutions in the city to provide compelling content to a broad audience.With support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Newest Americans created the Newark Story Bus. This retrofitted former school bus serves as a mobile media lab to collect stories throughout the city at community events, schools and businesses. It is also used to educate students on basic media skills. The bus contains a portrait studio and audio recording booth. TEM commissioned mural artists Gera & Werc to paint the exterior, and the bus officially launched in 2021. In 2023 we brought the bus to NJPACs Sounds of the City and the Halsey Street Festival, two of the largest public events in Newark. TEM also launched a collaboration with Audible to conduct a series of bus activations over the next year. TEM's first Audible event recorded the stories of Newark senior citizens recounting the citys history.From the media we gathered on the Bus, TEM curated and edited stories to share through social media and our website. TEM featured special releases of stories about LatinX youth and Newark residents who have firsthand experience of the Great Migration.We received support from the New Jersey Council on the Humanities to build an archive of our stories and photographs so the materials are readily available to interested researchers. TEM's goal is to create an exhibition of these materials as a large scale public art project, and to that end we have started conversations with Invest Newark, the Project for Empty Spaces and the Newark Alliance.Through Newest Americans, TEM screened three of our films at the Newark Museum in support of refugee youth. The films were Refugee Scholar, Syrias Lost Generation and Malta Through Refugee Eyes. The screening was followed by a panel discussion with Nancy Cantor, Chancellor of Rutgers University-Newark and Co-Chair of the Presidents Alliance on Immigration and Higher Education; Tim Raphael, Director of the Center for Migration and the Global City; Julie Winokur, Executive Director of Talking Eyes Media; Hourie Tafech, Founder of Spark 15; Diya Abdo, Founding Director of Every Campus a Refuge; and Erik Cruz Morales, Policy & Advocacy Manager at the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice.The TEM film, Bring It to The Table, continues to be licensed by universities across the country. This film addresses political partisanship and each citizens responsibility in bridging the divide. As a result of this work, our Executive Director, Julie Winokur was invited to give a TEDx Talk in 2023.TEMs film, The Sacrifice Zone, had over a dozen screenings in 2023, all followed by engaging discussions around environmental justice, structural racism, and waste removal. The film follows a group of activists in Newarks Ironbound neighborhood as they fight for clean air. TEM invites environmental justice activists who appear in the film to engage in post-screening discussions. The screenings have been hosted by conversation commissions, grassroots organizers, concerned citizens and educators. This work builds on our over 40 screenings in the prior year, as well as touring the film festival circuit. The film has been acquired for the permanent collections of a dozen higher education libraries.TEM produced six videos for the James Irvine Leadership Awards featuring nonprofits in California that address juvenile justice, teacher shortages, access to higher education, AAPI rights, LGBTQ services, and immigrant health and welfare.In partnership with La Isla Foundation, we produced a film about heat safety protections for sugar cane workers in Nicaragua. The film highlights the innovative solutions being implemented at Ingenio San Antonio, a sugar plantation whose earlier, poor practices had been the focus of a previous film, TEM released called Under Cane.TEM film, The Sandwich Generation, released 15 years ago, was featured in the virtual Legacy Film Festival on Aging in 2023.TEM film about Global Volunteers efforts to reduce stunting in Tanzania premiered in 2023 to an audience of 200 people. This event was followed by hyper-local screenings across the country, as well as a 40th anniversary celebration for the organization.In 2023, TEM helped launch 1 in 6, a collaborative project that brings together photographers from around the world to put a human face on aging. By 2030, 1 in 6 people on the planet will be over 60 years old. This project will create a visual archive of this watershed moment.