In the News

Lake Travis Film Festival announces June lineup

BY SARAH ASCH : Austin American Statesman May 1, 2021

The Lake Travis Film Festival announced a packed lineup full of short films and feature length productions for movie lovers to enjoy. The event was pushed back until June 10-13 and will be held in person for the second year of its existence…

…In a very different film about health care, Melissa Kirkendall’s short tells the story of an indigenous healer and midwife in Ecuador, Carmen Cumba, who is fighting for equality for indigenous people and women. The project, which is in Spanish with English subtitles, was partially funded by grants from the city of Austin, Kirkendall said. Filming was interrupted by the pandemic but she was still able to turn the material she had into a short film.

Meet Melissa Kirkendall / Texas based filmmaker

08 July, 2021

Hi Melissa, how do you think about risk?
Risk taking is an important step in both the creative and entrepreneurial process. You must willing to risk failure in order to succeed.

I have always been a risk taker. In my early twenties I took risks in order to own my own business’ first with an art gallery, then with a punk rock club and eventually with a music production company. As I took each risk, I learned more. I had to keep taking bigger risks to grow my business and be successful.

I feel like my journey in the film industry is a constant series of risks. Early on it was accepting one job and turning another down hoping I made the right choice for the one that would actually happen. Over the years, my risks in film have become more creatively based with my own projects. I took a big leap of faith risk to jump on a plane to Ecuador on a hunch that there was an interesting story there… and now my short film “You are Me & I am You” is evidence that I was right.

COMPLETED

To learn more about one of the projects below, click on the photo for that project.

 Please Live, Don’t Die

Please Live, Don’t Die is a social awareness video we made for Hopechain.com as a part of their campaign to spread more acceptance and love around the world.

“Hope Chain is a movement with a mission to raise money and awareness about anxiety, depression, and the issues for young people that contribute to the suicide epidemic. We harness the power of social media and the need for connection to spread good in the world. 

We can all have an impact on another person's life. Your words and actions matter.” ~ Hopechain.com

YOu are me & I am you

At a young age in the wake of the devastating loss of her own baby during childbirth and having seen friends suffering similarly, Carmen Cumba decided to learn the ancient ritual of Pakarina (child birth) to prevent more mothers and children from dying unnecessarily during the birthing process.

Carmen spent years apprenticing and studying the ways of the Partera’s (midwives) and also those of Yachak’s (shamen) learning as much as she could about plant medicine even though she could not read or write. Through a thirsty curiosity, stubbornness, tirelss dedication and a lot of hard work she now has one of the largest organic medicinal plant gardens in the Andes that serves as her pharmacy where she, much like a pharmacist, expertly gathers all the right ingredients straight out of the ground to create medicine to treat her patients. She turns no one away. People have been known to travel hours to consult her for health issues they cannot seem to remedy through other means.

Carmen is now considered an authority on plant medicine locally and regionally. Even the Red Cross has consulted her. She wants to share her knowledge before it is lost as fewer and fewer youth in her community are interested in learning this ancient knowledge, instead choosing to pursue higher education to earn more money. She believes that if more people understand how natural medicine works, it will become normalized as a part of overall health practices. Carmen and her fellow partera’s share their knowledge through seminars, training programs, tourism and even a few published books even though she and most of her colleagues cannot read or write.

For decades, Carmen and her fellow Parteras and Yachaks have been treated with skepticism and often a total lack of respect by Western medicine.  While this is starting to change as the Ecuadorian Health Ministry has started to work with the indigenous medicine community, there is still a gap in how they are treated and compensated. Carmen has become a leading advocate for helping to bring fair treatment to her fellow midwives and healers in the hospitals and medical community where they typically do not get paid for their time, skills, knowledge or services.

Carmen believes that both Natural and Western medicine should be used appropriately and in tandem.

We asked Carmen on our last day with her back in January of 2019 what she hopes and longs for in her life. She expressed that she wants to share her knowledge with the world. She said she dreams of building a place where scientists and doctors both indigenous and western can come together to share and teach each other what they know, what they’ve learned and what they imagine to be possible. This project is in part about helping these dreams become her reality.

This is the story of Carmen Cumba.

We are proud to be a 3 time recipient of the CORE Grant from the City of Austin which gave us seed money to get started. The Motion Media Arts Center/ Austin School of Film is a full sponsorship partner. In May of 2020 we decided to move forward with making a short film out of the footage we captured in 2019 as the Covid Virus caused us to scrap our plans to keep filming and make a feature.

Educate yourself

Below are materials and articles from and about organizations who are working to fight for equality for women and in women’s health around the world.

Politics of Women’s Health

Women are healthier in places where policies promote equal access to health care and education; clean, safe neighborhoods and workplaces; fair and livable incomes; and the power to participate democratically in decisions that affect our lives.

These markers of social and economic equality have significant influence over our health and longevity. The articles in this section provide an overview of the economic and political conditions that affect health care access and quality of care.

More than 800 women die every day from complications related to pregnancy or childbirth.

That’s 1 woman every 2 minutes.