America's Most Unwanted
Feature length personal documentary project now in production.
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America's Most Unwanted has received it's first grant from MoonForce Media, The Tee Corinne Prize for Lesbian Media Arts. Read about it here.
SYNOPSIS:
SSP’s newest project, America’s Most Unwanted, is a feature-length professional video project that reveals tales of hope and survival from former foster and group home kids. The dismal statistics for foster youth are well known: less than sixty percent graduate from high school and even less make it to college, let alone through college. More than half of foster youth will end up homeless within two years of exiting their state care.
Lesser known are the thousands of other foster kids that have also made “it”, graduating from college, living healthy lives and enjoying happy families. This side of the wheel is rarely revealed and as a consequence few foster youth have positive role models or much inspiration.
America’s Most Unwanted will reveal the other side of growing up in state care: strength, courage and endurance. In addition to changing our view of foster and group home kids by hearing of their successes as adults, America’s Most Unwanted will also expose the additional challenges gay youth face to succeed under state care. Blending interviews with historic and recent footage of the interview subject’s lives, America’s Most Unwanted will show former foster and group home kids who are healthy and reveal their methodology for survival.
There is a ton of shame around being a foster or group home kid. This shame combined with negative statistics lead many to hold less than positive view of foster and group home kids. Foster and youth home kids are assumed to be adult failures. When foster youth make it through college we are the unique and special ones: America’s Most Unwanted will disprove the myth that foster and group home kids don’t have a chance at being active members of our society. While unwanted as youth, most create spaces where our work as adults is both wanted and needed by society at large. With interviews with fellow foster youth like award-winning author and meditation teacher, Queenie (Valerie) Mason-John, and filmmaker, Dominique De Guzman, as well as interviews with politicians working to improve conditions like Assemblyman Mark Leno, the film’s director, Heckman, has already captured tools and ideas to build this story of hope and survival.
By collaborating with the interview subjects to develop their questions, America’s Most Unwanted ensures involvement with the film’s production and development by those involved. Formal screenings with all characters in the film are anticipated either together or via remote visual technology. Moreover the film director’s background as a former foster kid herself will lend an authentic voice to the project.
While it is true there are thousands of youth who fall threw the cracks every day and end up on the street, there are thousands more who choose college and professional work. Education is a running theme for survival in our stories and our message is universal, as we all know how sometimes those who’ve had it the easiest run the hardest. Most former foster youth that the film’s director has met have also been over-achievers for survival. By aiming to be the best to survive, foster and group home kids, beat the odds and our existence will ideally give hope to other foster youth currently institutionalized, informing them that there are options in life even at the bottom.