|
 |
|
|
| |
Adventure Diva Holly Morris Is One Girl on a World Pilgrimage
By Kathleen Gasperini photos by Mark Van S
This is a story about Holly Morris--a woman who lives up to the accolade she so often gives other inspirational women around the world--an adventure diva. Unknowingly, in the wake of her pilgrimage to discover divas around the globe for her television series, Adventure Divas, Holly, 35, has become
one herself. Welcome to her world--a place where women icons do exist--in
places rarely visited and even less understood.
The concept for Adventure Divas, Holly recalls, was a culmination of
her experience and interest during the years she was the editor at the
feminist book publishing house, Seal Press, in Seattle. The concepts and
stories of women divas around the world surrounded Holly.
"But I was turning 30," recalls Holly, and I went to Sumatra for a
month and came back from traveling very clear-headed and inspired to make a
change in my life." That change came in the form of combining work and play
with a commitment to womenıs ethics. Taking advantage of what she knew about
women, travel, and media, she decided it was time to take her ideas and
launch a "girl-driven media empire," as she calls it, dedicated to these
concepts. "It was strategic also in that these ideas werenıt just mine. I
saw this huge demographic that wasnıt getting spoken to. I thought, it would
be great to give this demographic more visibility."
The result was the launch of Adventure Divas, a television series on PBS
featuring her global search for modern-day heroines, and a website,
www.adventuredivas.com.
"We want to have a multi-media approach for this whole thing. I come
from book publishing, but I want to have a bigger impact. Television is the
most impactful medium there is," explains Holly. "It is a borderless globe.
I want to take these ideas into that medium. The website isnıt an ad for the
show but a medium in and of itself. Some of the ideas and sensibilities [of
Adventure Divas] can go into any medium, and you have proved that in the
magazine world with W.i.g., too. As for the web, you can go there and get
additional information about the show. For example, in TV you can send
messages visually, but thereıs a lot that we wonıt put in. There are no
limits [to the web], thatıs the nice thing about it. Also, with the
timeliness factor on the web, we can move forward and convey the spirit on
the pilgrimage right away."
Each Adventure Diva show is aired in a different country, taking the
viewer inside its culture, not by means of the usual tourist fare of sites
and museums, but through the people. "The roadmap," says Holly, "is the
people and their stories." The result is as thorough an understanding of a country and its culture as is possible without actually being there. As for the female-slant, "My ethic
about celebrating women is another component of the pilgrimage. Weıre
melting genres of women and geography thatıs scrappy and soulful at the same
time. I hope people will respond to that."
I did. What intrigued me most about the teaser, the website, and chats with
Holly, was that if there were all these women doing impactful things in
places such as the "non-country" of Cuba, who else was I missing? Like an
astronaut glimpsing Earth from the moon for the first time, I was suddenly
in a larger world, filled with new stars almost too overwhelming to count.
According to their website, the Adventure Divaıs mission in Cuba, their
first show, "was to show something beyond Fidel, the embargo, or that
cob-webbed Bay of Pigs." As Holly pointed out, most women from our
generation werenıt even around during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1963.
 "All we know about Cuba is cigars and Fidel Castro and salsa," reminds
Holly. (If I think about it, I canıt even remember when Castro was
considered a good guy.) "I think the trade embargo has been, in fact, an
information embargo instead. Weıve been isolating ourselves from them. I had
a sense that the times are changing and that Cuba will take a new place in
the world soon. And itıs only 90 miles away, which is amazing to me. Then we
started doing research, and found out that thereıs lots of women and artists
there and so we interviewed several of them."
Among the Cuban Divas interviewed in the pilot are Assata Shakur, an
ex-Black Panther living in Cuba in exile, Emelia Machado, a Santeria
Priestess who drums like the devil (or an angel depending on who you ask),
and Lizette Vila, the president of the Cuban Association of Film and Radio,
who is often criticized for being a feminist in her work. Responds Vila,
"Feminism is alive, philosophic, full of ideas, projects. What is Machismo?
It is empty; it is nothing."
Other people the Adventure Diva film crew came into contact with, were
everyday Cubans who were unintimidated by this small, merry band of
filmmakers. One such chance meeting was with "Instincto" all-girl rap group
who give Holly some tips on rap, along with other insights on life as
teenagers in Cuba.
Most likely, you wonıt find these sorts of stories on National Geographic
Explorer. Nor would you discover that gas is precious and stored in
Tupperware containers, and that it takes more than a dozen big containers to
make it from Havana to Santiago. On the other hand, as correspondents go, I
canıt see Dan Rather ever being caught in the travel debacle Holly found
herself in when she had to push a O51 Chevy a few miles to the nearest black
market gas dispatch. Then again, this is the stuff Emmys are made of.
Of course, such filmmaking (and Diva-empire building) doesnıt happen
without a uniquely talented crew. Besides Holly, who directs, stars, and
co-produces the Adventure Diva series, there's her mother, Jeannie Morris,
the producer and a former producer of several national programs, as well as
a recipient of the Nell Shipman Award for outstanding achievement in film.
For the Cuba episodes, there was Felicity Oram, the editor, two filmmakers,
Cheryl Dunn, who had her own film, "Sped" premiere at the Rotterdam Film
Festival (also, check out her work in the Artist of the Week), and Paul
Mailman, also known for his cinematography for the Sundance Film Festival
Filmmakerıs Trophy winner, "Smoke Signals." The Cuba shows, along
with 6 more Adventure Diva shows from India, New Zealand, and Iran, will air on PBS this
fall.
Meanwhile, where to next season? Maybe Eritrea, maybe Turkey. That all depends on the
research. The Diva crew looks at a country that interests them, then read
books, magazine articles, and most importantly, start talking to people.
Theyıre not looking for stars, rather, icons with subsistence. "But," Holly
admits, "the most exciting material comes through word of mouth. Like at the
beginning, we would ask people, "Whatıs a diva?" and what came forth were
names that werenıt necessarily mega stars. They were people who had touched
peopleıs lives. For example, some people would say their mother, or a bus
driver in Russia they once met, or Eleanor Roosevelt. People were excited to
talk about people they admired or heard of, but who donıt necessarily get
talked about in mainstream press. The grassroots approach is where itıs
happening."
"I have no doubt that itıs going to work," states Holly about Adventure
Divas. "Why? Because all the people working on this, and myself, weıre
living this reality. And while it may not be in the boardrooms, itıs a huge
market, and we are America. Itıs not just altruism; itıs the recognition
that the cultural climate is right, then taking that sensibility to the most
impactful medium. The time has come when there needs to be a meeting of
passion and the marketplace."
The time has come for Adventure Divas.
A different version of this story originally ran in W.i.g. Issue #7. Look
for Adventure Divas TV series premiering this Fall on PBS. Meanwhile, check
out their website at www.adventuredivas.com.
###
|
|
|
|
|
|
