• Arts
  • Creative Work Fund

Jewish Family & Community Services East Bay (JF&CSEB) operates the only program specifically serving lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex refugees seeking to resettle in the United States. Collaborating with JF&CSEB, the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life at the University of California, Berkeley, and other organizations, filmmaker Sam Ball will create What We Carry with Us, short documentary films and a suite of ancillary audio and video pieces that tell LGBTQI refugees’ stories. JF&CSEB will recruit project participants, who will choose several prized “memory objects” from among their belongings. Through interviews with the refugees that focus on these objects, Ball will produce between three and five short films. He will combine footage of the clients’ interviews and their objects with archival materials and, when possible, music that relates to the refugees’ stories. Ball, who produces and directs traditional documentaries as well as multimedia installations for museums and public spaces, co-founded the documentary company Citizen Film in 2002, and has won national acclaim and received prestigious grants for combining documentary storytelling with community engagement. Accordingly, the What We Carry with Us films will serve as centerpieces for a 12- to 18-month public engagement campaign that culminates with a presentation on June 20, 2020, World Refugee Day, and during San Francisco Pride Week.