“Every good story has a problem,” explains Flo Stack, a former reading specialist who founded Turning Pages, a literacy and family reunification program for fathers who are incarcerated at the Baltimore County Detention Center (BCDC) and their families. Across the United States, right now, 2.7 million children have a parent who's incarcerated. In addition to the anxiety from being separated, financial and childcare strains can cause the loss of a home or car, the need to move or change schools, resulting in further destabilization for the family. And for the children whose dads are inmates at the BCDC, there are few opportunities to have contact visitation with them. In general, interaction is through glass – until Turning Pages provided the opportunity for fathers and their children to read together in a shared physical space, hugging each other, and doing crafts. Through a series of fathers’ workshops, the dads learn the importance of reading to children, how to pick out appropriate reading-level books, how to use stories as a gateway to life discussions, and how to use inflection to make the stories more dynamic to their listening children. And through the alternating family nights, the fathers are able to reassure their children and reinforce their role as parents. The “Book By Its Cover” documentary follows the experience of fathers as they participate in the Turning Pages program, detail what led to their incarceration, share how it feels to be separated from their families, and tell how this program is making a difference in their lives as they look to the future.   The full film can be seen here.

Four elderly nuns feel so strongly about closing the School of the Americas (now the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) that they put their own freedom at risk. In fact, as a result of their peaceful protest, they are sentenced to six months in a federal prison. This 2003 Student Academy Award winning film by Renee Fischer follows their journey. The full film can be viewed here.

Inside Richard Macksey's house, books were literally everywhere. They stretched from floor to ceiling, filling the house and a garage converted into a library. For more than half a century, Macksey inspired his students at Johns Hopkins, stirring in them a love of literature and the arts. This video celebrates his legacy and can be viewed here.

Shot on 16mm film, this independent short film which premiered at the Maryland Film Festival and Cinequest subtly examines our throw-away society as some people discard turtles purchased when they were 15 grams, not realizing they would grow to be more than 100 pounds, or abandon them at the vet's office when they need care because they are “only a turtle.” In addition to meeting others who respond by establishing sanctuaries for these forgotten pets, we also see the personalities and intelligence of these creatures which have been around for 200 million years, but now have half of their species in danger of extinction due to interference by mankind. The film can be viewed at this link.

Through CAPABLE (Community Aging in Place – Advancing Better Living for Elders), a program created and operated by the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, older adults work with a nurse, an occupational therapist, and a handyperson to learn new skills and make modifications to their environments, to promote safely remaining living at home. The film can be seen at this link.

Johns Hopkins University Sheridan Libraries – in conjunction with the Film and Media Studies Program in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences – receives a donation of more than 7,000 vintage films, dating back to the 1930s, from the Academic Film Archive of North America. This one-minute, experimental montage gives just a sampling of this eclectic collection and can be viewed at this link.

It began by chance, with two individuals waiting at a car repair shop. But after the two struck up a conversation, they learned they had music in common. Before long, Minister of Music Marcus Smith of ARK Church on North Avenue invited cellist and Peabody Professor Andrew Talle to come to a service and hear his choir perform. Recognizing the important connection between art and music and the vibrancy of a community, Talle did attend and was so impressed he created a new course, a graduate seminar in musicology, involving a reading and writing component, but also visiting and performing at Baltimore area gospel churches. All agree both Peabody and the churches are benefiting from the exposure to the different styles and discovering the commonalities.  The film can be seen here.

Marina Horiates – Johns Hopkins School of Medicine student and Alfred DeSanctis, MD, Scholar – talks about how having leukemia as a toddler inspired her to go into medicine, to emulate the clinicians who helped her. The full video can be seen at this link.

Yoshiaki Horiguchi – a Peabody double bassist and Aegon/Transamerica Scholar – explains how music saved his life, the concept of citizen artist, and how he now uses his talent to help others, like hurricane survivors in Puerto Rico. His video can be seen here.