Sabrina McCormick
Working with Documentaries

Sabrina McCormick uses documentary filmmaking to bridge
the gap between the ivory tower and the public. "Many valuable ideas are generated in academic settings, but they often go unnoticed because they are not communicated to broad audiences.  The films I make are an attempt to undo that disjuncture." 

Her recent documentary short, “Damming Brazil” portrays the conflictual nature of hydroelectric dams in Brazil.  Over 600 hydroelectric dams exist in Brazil.  They have flooded homes, displaced people, destroyed vestiges of forest, and overrun crops with water; leaders of the anti-dam movement argue that the construction of these dams has had vast social and environmental impacts.  Yet, 500 more dams are planned for construction, with several large dams already planned for the Amazon.  From another perspective, Brazil desperately needs dams.  Its economy is fragile.  Energy production is the key to industrialization, the reclamation of national financial stability, job creation and poverty reduction.  Dams produce ninety-three percent of Brazil’s energy.  The Brazilian government claims that without them the country would be in an economic backslide.

“Damming Brazil,” was shown at the Human Rights Watch Festival and AS220 in Providence, Rhode Island, at the Women and Film Festival at Yale University, and New England Women in Film.  It is also currently being considered at a number of other festivals.  There are also plans to show this piece to policy-makers and activists in Brazil. 

Her first feature-length film, entitled “No Family History,” is in post-production.  It attempts to address why breast cancer rates are climbing so rapidly.  Two hundred and seventy thousand women will contract breast cancer this year.  Forty thousand will die of it; every 13 minutes we will lose another woman to the disease.  This documentary film makes these statistics real by following three women in three different states – New York, Massachusetts, and San Francisco.  These areas have some of the highest concentrations of breast cancer in the world.  These women demand to know why they got breast cancer, posing questions about their exposure to environmental toxics. The intimate stories of these women bring the visually hidden experience of breast cancer into light, and motivate us to ask why so much illness and why don’t we know how to stop it?  It includes a close look at the removal of one woman’s breasts and consequent chemotherapy, the story of another woman’s conversion to becoming a powerful activist, and a focus on the early deaths of African-American women with breast cancer.  For more information, go to www.nofamilyhistory.org.