Starved for Attention aims to rewrite the story of malnutrition through a series of multimedia documentaries that seamlessly blend photography and video from some of the most accomplished and award-winning photojournalists working today. These two documentaries captures frontline stories of malnutrition from Djibouti and Burkina Faso.

Frustration, a film by photojournalist Marcus Bleasdale, was shot at the MSF's clinic in the Balabala district of Dijbouti. In this multimedia piece, we hear clinic workers speak about the successes and frustrations of their work. Last year, the clinic treated nearly 1,720 malnourished children under the age of five. In Dijbouti, the prevalence of global acute malnutrition at the national level is estimated at 27.5 percent, including 7.1 percent for severe acute malnutrition, some of the highest rates of endemic malnutrition in the world.

In A Mother's Devotion, filmmaker Jessica Dimmock traveled to Burkina Faso to capture the heartbreaking emotional strains experienced by a young, hardworking mother, Natasha, simply trying to feed her children. Alone at 24, she scavenges firewood to sell in the market. Her meager earnings force an impossible choice: buying food or medicine for her three children.

Marcus Bleasdale: Marcus Bleasdale spent ten years covering the brutal conflict within the borders of the Democratic Republic of Congo. This work was published in his book, One Hundred Years of Darkness, which was recognized as one of the best photojournalism books of the year by Photo District News in the USA. His new book, The Rape of a Nation, was published by Mets and Schilt in 2009.

Bleasdale is widely published in the UK, Europe, and the USA in publications such as The Sunday Times Magazine, The Telegraph Magazine, Geo, Stern, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, and National Geographic Magazine. He was awarded the Anthropographia Award for Human Rights and Photography in 2010, the Hansel Meith Prize for journalism, and his new book received the best book prize by POYi in 2010.

Jessica Dimmock: A New York City native, Dimmock received a Master´s in Education from Long Island University while working as a public school teacher in Brooklyn. After three years with the Board of Education, Dimmock left her teaching to pursue her passion for photography. Her work most often focuses on social isolation, inequality, labor and the human condition.

Dimmock has won numerous international awards, including the F Award for Concerned Photography and Magnum´s Igne Morath Award for Female Photojournalism. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including Aperture, The New York Times Magazine, Fortune, Newsweek, Time, New York Magazine, The British Journal of Photography and Photoicon.

Ottawa
October 13-31, 2010
Multimedia Exhibit-Ottawa
Starved for Attention: The crisis of childhood malnutrition
Saint Paul University
The Atrium, Guigues Hall
223 Main Street, Ottawa
K1S 1C4

October 12, 2010
Panel Discussion: 2-4pm
The Brookings Institution
Falk Auditorium
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036

October 14, 2010
Panel Discussion and screening, 4:30-6pm with reception following.
George Washington University
Jack Morton Auditorium, Media and Public Affairs Building
805 21st Street, NW
Washington, DC 20052

November 18, 2010
Panel Discussion and screening, 6-8pm
Boston Public Library
Rabb Lecture Hall
700 Boylston Street, Copley Square
Boston, MA 02116

HELP REWRITE THE STORY OF MALNUTRITION.

- Sign the petition to support Doctors Without Border/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)'s efforts to demand that humanitarian food aid meets nutritional standards for infants and young children.

-Order a free action kit and organize a Starved for Attention event.

- Print out petitions and give them to your friends, family, co-workers and neighbors.

- Post our messages on Facebook and Twitter to help spread the word and create awareness.

Follow this link to learn more about the campaign: http://www.starvedforattention.org/take-action.php

TRAILERS:

• Starved for Attention website
  http://www.starvedforattention.org/
• Doctors Without Borders website
  http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/
• VII Photo Agency website
  http://www.viiphoto.com

Learn more about malnutrition here.

Interview with Marcus Bleasdale

t21: What inspired you to make this film for the Starved for Attention campaign?
MB: I was asked by MSF to do it after we pitched ideas to them. But when we settled on this campaign it was easy to work out that it was a hugely worthwhile project.

t21: How did you decide the specific stories and profiles to present in the film?
MB: They were decided by MSF in collaboration with VII. We wanted to represent malnutrition in a very different way than previous work. In that vein we worked all the way through the food chain and asked questions of people in the process of care that would not otherwise have a voice.

t21: What was it like spending time and taking photos in the MSF clinic?
MB: It was very moving, very uplifting, very sad. The people working there were amazing trying to keep these kids alive as best they could.

t21: Were there any major challenges in the making of the film?
MB: It was a pretty smooth process but the editing down of 8000 images to the few hundred we use in the film took quite some time.

t21: Favorite or most unexpected response to the film?
MB: My mum liked it.

t21: What do you want viewers to take away from it?
MB: I want them to take away from this presentation (not just the Djibouti film but all of them) that this is a complex problem and one which requires an urgent solution. We in the West are as complicit in this problem as those who start wars. We need to look hard at the way we address this global problem and rethink our approach.

t21: Can you share a bit about the choices you made between black & white and color photography for the film?
MB: It was very simple. The only color we used was the supermarket shelves in the city. It was simply easier to read the photographs in color.

t21: How do you think documentary films and multimedia contribute to issue-based campaigns and the work of nonprofits?
MB: Awareness is a huge part of the NGO machine. If people are not aware of a problem they will not help. We need to keep people aware of the urgent issues, not only to secure future funding but also to show past donors that their contributions were well spent and that more is needed.

t21: Do you think this campaign has been successful?
MB: Hugely.

t21: Do you have a personal mottos that inspired your work?
MB: Love and Light.

Interview with Jason Cone, Communications Director, Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF)

t21: Can you tell us about the initial idea behind the Starved for Attention campaign?
JC: Malnutrition is medical priority for MSF. We treat hundreds of thousands of children every year. Over the past few decades, the image of emaciated, fly-ridden children on the brink of death from famines and other catastrophes has come to define the visual representation of childhood malnutrition. And in this media-saturated world, flush with information documenting the daily toll of human suffering, it is understandable that a visual immunity has developed as a line of defense against this clichéd imagery provoking any kind of an emotional response to tackle the crisis of childhood malnutrition head on. It was in this context that we challenged VII to capture a new visual identity for malnutrition when Stephen Mayes, VII managing director, and Ron Haviv, VII founding member, met in late 2008. We had the strong experience of working together in Congo, and this offered another compelling opportunity for collaboration between VII and MSF.

t21: How did the partnership with the VII Photo Agency develop?
JC: I worked with Stephen Mayes and Ron Haviv to identify the other photographers in the agency that would join the project. We looked at the map of malnutrition hotspots around the world and began to focus on some key areas that we knew needed to be covered to accurately tell the story of childhood malnutrition. I did not want to focus solely on what MSF is doing to combat malnutrition. The crisis is much bigger than our organization’s response. There are other organizations and, more importantly, governments tackling the issue. This is what brought John Stanmeyer to mountains of Oaxaca State in Mexico to document the impact of the Progresa/Oportunidades program. And why we sent Ron to Bangladesh to look at how Save the Children was building a community-based approach to counter malnutrition in Barisal Division.

t21: How do you think documentary films and multimedia content contribute to issue-based campaigns?
JC: Storytelling remains essential to the ability of organizations to communicate about critical issues such as malnutrition. Even with the emergence of Facebook, Twitter, and other social media to rapidly exchange information, there is still the thirst for compelling and powerful visual stories. We have this massive statistic of 195 million malnourished children. What does it mean? How can I relate to such a figure? The only way to really begin to understand what this statistic means is to break down the number into its visual elements. This is where documentary and multimedia content is instrumental in turning indifference into action. At the same time, technology has lowered the barriers to entry so much that we are absolutely inundated with information on a daily basis. Practically, the only way you can compete in this environment is to muster incredibly talented visual artists like VII to break through the noise with powerful and compelling content.

t21: How did you decide the countries and specific stories to showcase as part of the campaign?
JC: We worked together with VII to identify the places to send the photographers. It was up to the photographers to find the stories. They worked alongside MSF teams in Djibouti, Burkina Faso, Congo, and India. In Mexico, the United States, and Bangladesh, the photographers were going after the story through other contacts and we really relied on them to find the images and footage that would bring the story home. At the same time, I see each film as a chapter in a book. With Marcus Bleasdale piece from Djibouti, you see through the eyes of an MSF team the frustration that no matter how many children they treat this crisis is so much bigger than the response of one organization. Then we go to Burkina Faso with Jessica Dimmock to see the malnutrition through the experience of one mother, and to Bangladesh and India with Ron Haviv, and Stephanie Sinclair, respectively, to the heart of the malnutrition crisis in South Asia, and then the war zones of Congo, and finally to Mexico and the United States where we see how early childhood malnutrition has been virtually wiped out with national level programs. You are taken through the entire experience of malnutrition from the different points of view – aid workers, local health officials, and parents – and geographic regions.

t21: What were the major challenges in the development of the campaign?
JC: Some of the major challenges were getting access to the areas, making the local contacts, especially in areas where MSF is not working. It was difficult for us to get Antonin Kratochvil to have access to the food aid factories and farms where the bulk of U.S. food aid is produced, and is the basis for his piece, The Double Standard. There were some difficult logistical issues in terms of getting John Stanmeyer into Oaxaca. It was a two-day trip from the state capital to reach the community where the Oportunidades clinics were operating. Jessica Dimmock spent a tremendous amount of time to tell the US Standard in Pennsylvania about the WIC program. She spent weeks trying to gain the proximity to the mothers in this story given that there is so much stigma attached to poverty in the US.

t21: How did you decide the countries and specific stories to showcase as part of the campaign?
JC: I was asked by MSF to do it after we pitched ideas to them. But when we settled on this campaign it was easy to work out that it was a hugely worthwhile project

t21: Besides the website, you have been showing the Starved for Attention campaign in venues around the world. What has been the response to these exhibits?
JC: Besides the websites, there have been multimedia exhibits of the documentaries as well as still images slideshows in New York City, Toronto, and Milan. We are planning additional exhibits in the coming months in Washington, DC; France; Switzerland; Greece; Italy, Belgium; Canada; and the UK. The films are also being exhibited in several West African countries in the Sahel region, a major malnutrition hotspot. These showings will take the form of conventional museum exhibits along with presentations in major public spaces or even mobile trucks displaying the films. We recently created an “Action Kit” that allows the general public, students, and others to screen the films on their own and put on a Starved for Attention event to spread the word about malnutrition and join our international petition drive to rewrite food aid policy. The kit can be ordered at the Starved for Attention website here: http://www.starvedforattention.org/action-kits.php . We have also developed a free application available on the iTunes app store.

t21: How do the exhibits differ from and compliment the online component of the campaign?
JC: The exhibits give you the full visual impact of the stories with the large flat screens televisions that LG INFINIA donated for Starved for Attention. It is a different experience from watching the films on your computer or mobile phone.

t21: Are there any related actions that will be organized around International World Hunger Day?
JC: We will be sending letters to government officials of the top food aid donor countries—such as the US, Canada, EU countries, Japan, and others – about the Starved for Attention campaign. We will have events in Washington, DC; Paris; Ottawa; Rome; and other cities around the world to draw attention to the crisis. We have also launched an appeal to people across the US to help us hold 500 Starved for Attention events using our Action Kit.

t21: What is the plan for the petition that is central to the campaign?
JC: We are planning to deliver the petition to government officials of the top food aid donor countries next year around the G-8 Summit. This summer our medical teams have treated hundreds of thousands of children for malnutrition in dozens of countries. We know the next malnutrition season, particularly in the Sahel region, is just around the corner. We absolutely need to see a stronger commitment of governments to supporting food aid that meets the nutritional needs of young children. Right now, the majority of food aid is composed of fortified blended flours that are not tailored to needs of young children. These products do not help children recover from malnutrition. Yet, they continue to be used in food aid programs around the world. There is no reason for this to continue when there are other products available today that are specially designed for children affected by malnutrition and the most successful malnutrition prevention programs are based on supporting mothers and children to get access to high quality foods.

t21: Has the campaign been successful?
JC: We have had a good start with media coverage worldwide, a number of successful events, and more than 30,000 petition signatures by end of September. The project has been featured in a number of photographic blogs, the PBS Need to Know television magazine program, Newsweek Japan, a host of Italian and French publications, Mint newspaper in India, among others. We are optimistic though that this is only the beginning.

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