Novela, Novela

Elizabeth Miller

Elizabeth Miller

Documentary
Short Film

More About Novela, Novela from Director Elizabeth Miller

I first met Virginia Lacayo and Amy Bank, Executive Producers of Sexto Sentido while I was living in Nicaragua in the early 90’s. Amy and Virginia were working for the nonprofit Puntos de Encuentro (Meeting Points) and producing a youth radio program and a wildly popular magazine called “La Boletina.” For over ten years, the organization has promoted women’s and young people’s rights to make decisions about their bodies, their seuxality and their lives. Rather than seeking to change individual behavior, the group attempted to influence public opinion and social norms through progressive media projects made by and for young people.

Sexto Sentido was inspired by Virginia and Co-Producer Amy Bank’s success in producing live television debates around the UN-sponsored World Women’s Conference in Beijing. When I first heard about the emerging project, I was eager to see how Virginia and Amy would manage to introduce controversial feminist ideas into the mass media and radically impact both their audience and the Nicaraguan television industry itself.

It took five years for the group to get together the funding to produce the first episodes of the soap opera and I visited Nicaragua two times during that gestation time. I produced and shot Novela, Novela during these two one-week visits with input from Amy, Virginia, and other staff members. After finishing a rough cut, I returned to Nicaragua with my laptop to select clips from the series and to create a final cut with input from the group. Frameline provided me with a finishing grant that permitted me to add subtitles, a sound mix, and to work with editor Yael Bitton . In addition to this 8-minute short, I also edited a thirty-minute documentary, which explores the history and context of Puntos de Encuentro and how homophobia is dealt with in the program.

The program Sexto Sentido, deals with many social issues that are part of young people’s daily lives, such as adolescent pregnancy, alcoholism, rape, abortion, and emergency contraception. In Novela, Novela I chose to focus on domestic violence because I was inspired by how Virginia and Amy connected this television character to the powerful women’s movement against violence. Puntos de Encuentro is a founding member and key player in the National Network of Women Against Violence, and has developed public awareness campaigns to promote better legislation and services for women. The young character of Elena was an enormously successful vehicle to inform women of all ages about legislation and services around domestic violence. Many Nicaraguans identify with her and have reaped lessons from her story to improve their lives.

Elena todo el tiempo me ha gustado, en la anterior temporada y en �sta tambi�n. Me gusta por su esp�ritu de lucha, de no dejarse vencer y de ir tras sus sue�os!

The character I have always liked the most is Elena, in the previous series and in this one. I love her spirit of resistance, she doesn’t give up and she follows her dreams!

I also chose the theme of homophobia not only because the topic is so controversial in Nicaragua, but also because it communicates the powerful “feedback loop” which is integral to the program. The producers have developed truly innovative ways of collecting audience feedback and then applying this information to the development of new characters and approaches to important social issues.

Well known writer Clemencia Rodriguez has written about the project in her article, From the Sandinista Revolution to Telenovelas: The Case of Puntos de Encuentro, Nicaragua In Tufte T. and Hemer O. (eds) Media, Communication and Social Change: Rethinking Communication for Development. Rowman and Littlefield.

Find more films on Domestic Violence from MediaRights.

FILMMAKER BIO

Elizabeth Miller, Director/Producer

As an independent documentary filmmaker and professor who has lived in Central and South America for many years, Elizabeth is committed to producing work that connects individuals across cultures. Over a decade of community media experience combined with a background in political economics, electronic art, and Latin American studies fuel her exploration of documentary and new media as catalysts for social change. She continues to collaborate with women’s organizations on participatory media projects throughout Latin America, Africa, and India. Her next film, Marvelous Resources, is a feature length documentary about the conflicts born of water scarcity and the struggle between citizens and corporations vying to control this fundamental resource. http://www.redlizardmedia.com.