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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzKZpjvu8TU&ab_channel=OutspokenAgency

Dr. Cori Lathan Speaking Reel

Dream Chase Media worked with Rising Authors to produce a highlight reel for author and technologist Dr. Corrine Lathan.

One Voice Interactive Impact Report

The social justice advocacy organization One Voice hired Dream Chase to produce an interactive, multimedia storytelling project on its initiative, the Mississippi Black Leadership Institute (MBLI), and its impact on civic engagement and community activism across the state.

RISE Interactive Theory of Change

We developed this interactive theory of change for RISE, a youth justice organization in Oregon, to illustrate the barriers that young people face in their communities, as well as the values of the organization, and an impact model, articulating how their strategies and activities will change conditions for youth of color in their community.

Healing Together Resource Kit

This collaborative project with the Alliance for Boys and Men of Color (ABMoC) is the result of years of collecting the most relevant frameworks, curricula, and guides for addressing patriarchal violence through community-based and healing-centered interventions.

Food Insecurity Explained

Working with multiple organizations on the issue of food security, we created an interactive graphic outlining its root causes. This interactive tool aims to educate funders, policymakers, and activists on the systemic forces that force many individuals to go hungry or have limited access to nutritious foods needed to thrive every day.

NEW  MEXICO ASIAN
FAMILY CENTER

We facilitated a retreat to develop the content for the New Mexico Asian Family Center´s values/principles, root cause analysis, theory of change, and program overview. We then took that content and developed a set of interactive graphics to display them in an easily understandable yet engaging manner.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6vG2yhd12w

BEAVERTON VIRTUAL NIGHT MARKET

Dream Chase Media collaborated with the City of Beaverton to design a virtual night market experience that was engaging, vibrant, intercultural, and family-friendly. Based on our knowledge of the goals of the Beaverton Night Market in its 6th year and the challenges in hosting a similar event while respecting social distancing guidelines, we built off of their previous years’ success while integrating new approaches to uplifting under-represented artists and food vendors in the community as well. In partnership with Tualatin Valley Community Telivision, we broadcasted a two-night program in English and Spanish on local channels as well as live-streamed it on YouTube. Viewers on YouTube submitted comments and questions for live guests via the chat feature. You can watch the special on the City of Beaverton's YouTube page:
https://www.youtube.com
/channel/UCls7iqNcfkr-1jzAn7-1YkQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMlqwBNVpRk

The Elevate Initiative

The Elevate Initiative is an innovative social impact investment initiative funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and led by Frontline Solutions. Dream Chase Media partnered with Frontline Solutions to capture the stories of the grassroots community leaders who’ve received funding, coaching, and support through the Initiative.

LA PLAZITA INSTITUTE

The La Plazita Institute, based in Albuquerque, NM uses a comprehensive, holistic and cultural approach designed around the philosophy of “La Cultura Cura”, to engage with youth, elders and communities to draw from their own roots and histories that will express core traditional values of respect, honor, love, and family. Dream Chase Media spent a week with La Plazita to develop a community impact report capturing stories of their leaders and the community at large.

THE BLACK FATHERHOOD

PROJECT

A Dream Chase Media original! First-time filmmaker Jordan Thierry offers context and conversation in this honest exploration of fatherhood in Black America. Through a telling of his own story and interviews with historians, he traces the roots of the fatherless Black home and reveals a history much more complex and profound than is often told.

Putting that history into perspective the second half of the film is a dialogue among fathers discussing their experiences, inspirations, and insight on how communities can come together to ensure the power of a father’s love is not lost on America’s Black children.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UM4Q_l_u3o

Beaverton Night Market
Live Report

The City of Beaverton partnered with us to direct and produce a fun host experience-style video to highlight the 2021 Beaverton Night Market and its impact by showcasing local diversity and entrepreneurs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HKWaGY7Oxk

Collegiate Black Male Retreat

Through our work with the Delta Proud Youth Initiative, we joined students from Delta State University at the annual Collegiate Black Male Retreat hosted by the Sweatt Center for Black Males at the University of Texas to capture their experience at the event via video, photography, and an essay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifwPYJzAjV8&feature=youtu.be

Up With Riders Campaign

OPAL hired us to create a simple, straightforward scripted video involving community members to announce OPAL's campaign for transportation justice in Portland, Oregon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRmclmTziTo

LA Black Worker Center

We produced a budget-friendly short video announcing the transition in leadership at the Los Angeles Black Worker Center, shifting to a co-leadership model and celebrating the success to date.

RefuTees

RefuTees, an apparel brand created to support refugees and displaced peoples hired us to shoot their Spring & Summer line of new T-shirts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iaET4A0KuU

GRANDMA’S ROSES

A Dream Chase Media original! Winner of the Best Documentary Award at the Hollywood International Diversity Film Festival of 2022, GRANDMA’S ROSES is a film exploring the labor and love women invest in their families and communities. Told through the lens of Director Jordan Thierry’s own grandmother and supplemented with the stories of other dynamic, wise and courageous grandmothers who’ve lived boldly in the face of sexism and racism, GRANDMA’S ROSES expands upon the familiar notions of grandmothers as centerpieces and culture-keepers of domestic life by also detailing their contributions outside the home as thought leaders, workers, and community activists.Screening requests can be sent to pr@dreamchasemedia.com.

Director’s Statement:
My grandmother recently passed on to that big jazz fest in the sky, as I like to think of it. In the words of poet Louise Gluck, she had survived her life. The life she was given she took command of, head astute, pupils locked on the next destination drifting in the horizon. I imagine magnets found comfort in her unwavering focus on getting through, and arriving, and pulling still. To call her a survivor would be accurate, but akin to calling Shakespeare a mere writer. She was not just a survivor, she was so much more. A -“to hell with this”- rebel, a – “my way or the highway”- trailblazer, a vinegar-and-salt kind of innovator, a -“slap the piss outta you”- fighter, the omnipotent, grandmother of all grandmothers.

How this Black woman without a high school education, from the Englewood section of Chicago, raised by a single mother and a loving village of elders, accomplished what she did is astonishing, and you had to have known her to fully understand. But odds are, your grandmother was probably just as badass as mine. And why is that? Who bestowed these women with powers of the crimson gem? To thrive despite the hardships our society places upon them? For our grandmas, what are the motivations and forces behind their seemingly superhuman abilities?

My grandma certainly seemed superhuman to me, at least. This was a woman who, through her wit and charm, convinced a white banker to give his first home loan to a black family when all the other banks in town wouldn’t. She protested and marched for civil rights in a town that was so small such acts put one’s livelihood at risk. She had an open house, with dozens of children and relatives seeking refuge in her home for months, at one time or another over the years. Hiding from police? Come on in. House burned down? Come on in. Wife kicked you out? Come on in. Nowhere else to go? Wipe your feet, and come on in. Just plain hungry? I hope you like ham and beans, baby! This lasted up until the year before she passed, having taken in her sister and sister in law, both suffering from dementia, caring for them, cooking, cleaning, serving their meds, sifting through their mail, making sure their bills were still getting paid.

She was director of the local community center. She was beloved as a sales clerk at Sears, selling appliances, electronics, and tools to amateur decorators, mechanics, teens and do-it-yourselfers from all over town. She sold lady’ shoes at a department store with a coke and a smile. She assembled lawn mower parts in a factory for over a decade. She prepared delectable dinners, planted a beautiful garden, manhandled slot machines, managed the family finances, hemmed suit pants, and always, always succeeded in getting her money back at the return desk, no matter how unforgiving the refund policy, or how outlandish the request. And she did it all with such style and grace.

As special as my grandmother is to me, I know her story is not unique. Her life is analogous to the lives of millions of women across the continent, who we call our mothers, aunties, grandmothers, wives, partners and more. But did my grandmother, and the women like her, make such sacrifices out of choice, or due to a lack of choice? To meet the expectations set for them by society, to be a strong, eat-last-type-of matriarch? Were they the result of wonderful character traits, or the oppressive demands of a patriarchal white supremacist society, or both?

As a grandson, I am giving tribute to my grandmother and exploring these questions further through a documentary film entitled GRANDMA’S ROSES. Throughout the filmmaking process I learned more about the experiences of women elders of color, and now hope to spark conversations with audiences that can deepen appreciation for the leadership of women and challenge the root expectations we have for women in our lives.