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Norma writes for Selvedge Magazine
Issue #109 -- Rise Up, November 2022
Norma Writes for Selvedge Latin Issue #89
Why We Left, Expat Anthology: Norma’s Personal Essay
Norma Contributes Two Chapters!
- Norma Schafer and Oaxaca Cultural Navigator LLC has offered programs in Mexico since 2006. We have over 30 years of university program development experience. See my resume.
Study Toursd are personally curated and introduce you to Mexico's greatest artisans. They are off-the-beaten path, internationally recognized. We give you access to where people live and work. Yes, it is safe and secure to travel. Groups are limited in size for the most personal experience.
Programs can be scheduled to meet your travel plans. Send us your available dates.
Designers, retailers, wholesalers, universities and other organizations come to us to develop weaving relationships, customized itineraries, study abroad programs, meetings and conferences. It's our pleasure to make arrangements.
Select Clients *Selvedge Magazine-London, UK *Esprit Travel and Tours *Penland School of Crafts *North Carolina State University *WARP Weave a Real Peace *Methodist University *MINNA-Goods *Smockingbird Kids
Tell us how we can put a program together for you! Send an email norma.schafer@icloud.com
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‘Weaving a Curve’ Movie Just Accepted to 100 Mile Film Series–Short Shorts
ChathamArts in Pittsboro, North Carolina, holds a series of documentary film screenings that are produced and directed by people who live within 100 miles of the “epicenter” — Big Culture in a Tiny Town! That would be: Pittsboro. I submitted our short film (just under 6 minutes) to the Short Shorts screening and we were accepted! The series coordinator is Linda Booker, a distinguished NC documentary filmmaker.
The screening is Tuesday, July 28, 2009, 7:30 p.m. at the Fearrington Barn, Fearrington Village, Pittsboro, NC. You can find out more on the ChathamArts website www.chathamarts.org This will be the first time the film will be shown on the big screen.
The film tells the story of Federico Chavez Sosa, master weaver of Teotitlan del Valle, how he learned to weave and perfect making the curve using the two-pedal, two harness tapestry loom introduced by the Spaniards in 1521. Federico talks about what it means to him to be a weaver, combining the aesthetic and spiritual, the past and the present. In Spanish with English subtitles.
I wrote, produced and directed the film with my friend Eric Chavez Santiago who shares billing with me. Eric is the director of education at the textile museum in Oaxaca, and took the documentary filmmaking workshop with me in his village of Teotitlan del Valle last February. We both thought it would be a useful skill to know, and this has proven correct. Eric has gone on to make short documentaries of aging weavers, dyers, and spinners in remote villages of Oaxaca. I am now making a documentary at the UNC Chapel Hill School of Nursing about an innovative nursing research project that is looking into hunger and fullness feeding cues that infants and toddlers give to their parents and caregivers. If the cues are not recognized or are ignored, it is believed that this can result in early childhood obesity which could then lead to childhood type 2 diabetes.
Erica Rothman, our workshop instructor, repeatedly said that the goal of our documentary filmmaking workshop was to provide the skills to enable people to go back to their own communities and tell their unique stories through film. For me and Eric, I think we achieved this goal.
The next Oaxaca Filmmaking Workshop: Visual Storytelling is scheduled for February 19-26, 2010. If you are interested in attending, see the blog post for all the details or write me at normahawthorne@mac.com
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