When Tim Matsui began working on his project about the sex trafficking of teenagers around Seattle in 2012, he followed a group of police officers who for years had been repeatedly arresting the same girls for prostitution or drugs. Tired of seeing these youths not get the help they needed, several of the officers created Genesis Project, a drop-in center they hoped would set them on new paths off the streets.
As Mr. Matsui documented how these officers went far beyond their job description, he tried to make his audience understand the dangers that his subjects faced and feel the pain and suffering that he witnessed.
“The Long Night,” a film produced by MediaStorm, directed by Mr. Matsui and funded by the Alexia Foundation, is a gut-wrenching exploration of the effects of sex trafficking on seven people, including victims, survivors and law enforcement officers. The film was released today.
But he had an even bolder goal: change.
“The Long Night,” a feature film by Tim Matsui and MediaStorm, gives voice and meaning to the crisis of minors forced and coerced into the American sex trade.
“To just show off my imagery is really about validating me,” Mr. Matsui, 41, said. “This is not about winning awards, but it is about how valuable is this for the people that are being affected directly.”
To make his project helpful to the young women, Mr. Matsui realized he had to start conversations among the people involved — from the police, judges and social workers to the victims, family members and lawmakers. Wanting to look beyond the typical audience, he turned to Laura Lo Forti and her husband, Andrew DeVigal, whose company, A Fourth Act, focuses on helping photographers and filmmakers interact with audiences more deeply in order to affect the issues they care about.
“Making your story and releasing it is only half of the work,” said Mr. DeVigal, a former multimedia editor at The New York Times. “The other half of the work is to really engage with an audience and capture the needs of a community so it sparks change.”
Photographers and filmmakers documenting social issues seek the broadest audience possible, hoping some of them might be moved to action. But change is elusive. No matter how emotionally moving a film is, few people act and fewer know what steps might be effective.
Mr. DeVigal and Ms. Lo Forti are not looking for large crowds, but for the people who are most involved with an issue and those in position to spur change. Through documentaries and moderated conversations, they seek to turn stakeholders into problems solvers.
To accomplish this they started up a web-based mobile app, Harv.is, which captures audience feedback in real time and creates data visualizations to facilitate conversations.
Last month in Bellevue, Wash., Mr. Matsui and Mr. DeVigal gathered social workers and police officers at a multiplex theater and presented a 17-minute chapter of video focusing on the officers’ outreach to the teenage girls. The screening was part of a community engagement program for Mr. Matsui’s project funded by a Fledgling Fund grant.
The audience members set up the Harv.is site on their smartphones and filled out a quick survey to identify their role in the community. They were instructed to swipe up on the screen when they thought of a promising response to what they were seeing on the screen and down whenever they felt powerless.
Afterward, Mr. Matsui, Mr. DeVigal and Lesley Briner, a human trafficking expert, led a conversation as graphics of the collective responses were juxtaposed with thumbnails of the film or pull quotes.
Mr. Matsui also showed a version of the film to prosecutors recently to a strong response — one called it “a kick in the teeth” — as they saw the lives behind the statistics.
“As prosecutors, we read about this aspect of life on the streets all the time in police reports, and we hear witnesses testify to it, but to actually see it happening gives us a much deeper understanding,” said Anne Summers, a senior deputy prosecutor for King County, Wash.
The discussion was vigorous and impassioned and turned to how the film should be used in area schools, in hopes of reaching those who might fall victim on the streets.
While Mr. Matsui knows a single showing of the film will not end the exploitation of these children or stop the cycle of arrests, drug use and prostitution, he left the screening optimistic.
“It’s not enough to just open up wounds and divisions,” he said. “If I can take it one step further, then I can help them to co-design solutions that they own and help the survivors be able to heal.”
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