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Nat: Today is the first day of the Soho International Film Festival in New York City, where 60 independent filmmakers are screening their movies in the hope of getting them distributed.

The festival is in its third year and had 650 entries to choose from.

Jackie Mader is live at the Sunshine Theater on Houston street where the red carpet is starting to fill up.

Jackie, why did the founders see a need for another film festival here in New York City, especially just a week before Tribeca begins? (23)
Jackie: Well this festival is really for people on the fringe, or the edge of filmmaking. It can be really hard to get into bigger festivals like Tribeca, so the SOHO festival is trying to attract minority filmmakers, women filmmakers, even student filmmakers. There’s a lot of diversity in the films. They have a puerto rican showcase. And they have a good amount of New York City filmmakers who have made films about the city. I spoke to Sibyl Santiago, she’s the executive director of the festival, and she said that a lot of filmmakers don’t get the attention they deserve, so the festival tries to be a solution.
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SANTIAGO: There’s a little bit of frustration with some of the festivals in the city- they’re not giving them the audience they need or not giving them a chance to put their films out. We are trying to give them a medium to have a place to bring indie films. (0:12)

Nat: Ok so which of these indie films are getting the biggest buzz at the festival this year?

Jackie: Octavia Spencer is involved in two films that are getting a lot of buzz. Remember, she just won the Academy Award for her role in “The Help,” and she was relatively unknown before that. She is acting in a film, but she also directed a short film called “The Unforgiving Minute.” It’s a film about a young boy growing up in a broken home.

Nat: So the festival is attracting some pretty big names.

Jackie: Yes, but mainly celebrities who are still into Indie films. So, Octavia Spencer is popular and could probably go to a bigger festival, but she’s still really involved in the independent market, and is very passionate about these types of festivals. Also, Michael Rymer, who directed Battlestar Gallactica, he has a film here that he shot in Australia. It won several awards over there, but not so much over here. So these are very successful people who but also have side projects that they feel strongly about.

Nat: So who are the filmmakers we should be excited about who we haven’t really heard about yet?

Jackie: Right so Leslie Manning, she’s a name to keep in mind. She directed a film called “Leila” that was shot in the UK. That film has already won awards at other festivals. Also, Nate Taylor, he directed a film called “Forgetting the Girl” and that film sold out in the first three hours when the festival put up tickets to the films. So I would say both of those directors are ones to watch and the films should be pretty good too.

Nat: Sounds like it should be an interesting festival. Thanks Jackie. Jackie Mader was live from Sunshine Theater on the lower east side.

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BY JACKIE MADER

Intro: As a native of the Pacific Northwest, commentator Jackie Mader heard plenty of stereotypes about Southerners. They were hunters with shotguns, superficial debutantes, or racists. But she had to rethink that when she moved south of the Mason Dixon line.

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In 2009, I got my dream job through Teach For America, teaching middle school special education. I was living in Los Angeles, and when I told my friends the job was in Charlotte, North Carolina, they did all they could to make the transition easier. My best friend made a card and drew what she labeled  “Southern Jackie” on the front. In the picture I was eating at a place called “Bojangles,” with a man my friend said was my new southern boyfriend. He was wearing a pastel colored polo shirt.

In Charlotte, I could barely understand people’s accents. The girls I met during training seemed like caricatures. Most of them had been in sororities at huge southern schools and only talked about the South.

So I clung to my west coast culture. I turned up the grunge music while my roommates listened to Kenny Chesney. When we went out, they wore colorful dresses, I wore jeans. One girl gently asked me if I was really going to wear that. I insisted there was no reason to wear a dress to a bar, just like there was no reason to fry every single food you could find.

I stuck out even more when I started teaching. I was a white, blonde 22-year-old Northerner in a mostly African American Southern school. My colleagues let me know they expected me to quit. They assumed most white Teach For America recruits came from money and weren’t invested in the kids.

But my students were the first Southerners I’d met who were excited to learn about me, and their immediate acceptance was humbling. In getting to know them, I saw the effects of decades of poverty and segregation. Many of my middle schoolers couldn’t read, but were eager to learn about the world outside their own neighborhoods. I wanted to know everything about them, and started using what I learned. For starters, I began saying ‘yes m’am’ and ‘no sir’ to the other teachers and parents. I realized it was an important sign of respect, especially when speaking to someone older than myself. I started asking more questions. I also started saying y’all, because honestly, it was just more efficient. The stereotypes I had grown up with were extreme, but I started to understand the history behind them.

As I  felt more accepted by my colleagues, I noticed other things. I was lingering by the dress section in boutiques, and casually asking the girls I trained with, now my friends, where we were going to watch the Alabama football game. They were ecstatic that a Yankee like me was “turning southern,” as they called it.

When I left Charlotte last July and moved to New York, I found myself missing certain things. Sitting on a porch in the heat, watching fireflies, and eating fried food.
Now, when I hear the song “Country Roads”  I even miss pretending to hate it.

But I have made it a point to keep the manners I picked up. Calling people ma’am and sir has become my secret weapon. New Yorkers instantly soften, and then give me a curious, confused smile. And when they ask me if I’m visiting from the South, I couldn’t be prouder.

Back Announce: Y’all can find Jackie Mader sitting next to you on the subway, secretly blasting country music.

Success Academy posters have been repeatedly defaced in the Bedford Avenue subway station.

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HOST INTRO: Residents of the Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn have  been contending with the effects of gentrification for more than a decade. Upscale restaurants have forced out mom and pop residents and poor residents worry that they’re getting priced out. Now gentrification may be coming to Williamsburg schools. A nonprofit charter school is slated to open in an existing public school building and that’s divided the community. Jackie Mader reports.

N1: Stand in East River state park and you get a really clear vision of what has happened to the Williamsburg waterfront.

AMB: Water lapping against the shoreline. Distant construction sounds.

N2: Fifteen years ago, this park was an abandoned former freight depot. Now you can see residential high rises stretching down to the Williamsburg Bridge. Median income in the neighborhood has shot up as the area has attracted more residents and businesses.  It has also attracted the interest of a charter school chain called Success Academy. The non-profit has launched an ad campaign in the neighborhood to let everyone know that it’s coming.

AMB: Subway: “The next L train is now arriving”

N2 The Bedford Avenue subway stop in Williamsburg is plastered with posters for the new school.  Opponents of Success Academy have placed stickers on top of the ads. One accuses the charter school chain of spending too much money on marketing. Another accuses the schools of enrolling too few students who speak English as a second language. And its those two issues- money and ethnicity- that are at the center of the fight over Success Academy in Williamsburg. Along the waterfront and north of Grand street, the neighborhood is primarily white and more affluent. South of there, it is primarily Latino and poorer. Opponents of the schools say their founder, former city council member, Eva Moskowitz, is ignoring the south side and targeting the north side for a specific reason.

DEVOR: Her business model cannot succeed, at this point, without an affluent parent body.

Jim Devor is a parent in Cobble Hill. He says Moskowitz targets affluent parents because they’re more likely to make donations to the non-profit that runs nine schools.

DEVOR: To the extent that her schools are successful is because, and to some degree they are, it is because there is substantially greater resources. Not necessarily coming from public funds, but coming from outside funds.

While Success Academy is targeting parents on the north side, it is actually going to be located in the south side. Latino residents in that area feel that the school has completely ignored their needs.  Esteban Duran is the chair of the education and youth committee for Community Board 1 in Williamsburg.

DURAN: What about the South side of the community which actually- is Spanish, speaks Spanish predominantly and where the school is located. They do any of the gathering of signatures there, they didn’t do any advertisements in Spanish until after the first hearing. Its not a public process.

Duran says that what the community actually needs, is another middle school. He’s also worried because the charter school is going to be located in an existing public school building. He thinks the charter school, with its greater resources, will crowd out the struggling public school.

DURAN: You’re gonna see a school that’s gonna get more resources and then a school that is left to die on the vine, and that’s the public school.

Supporters of Success Academy say that’s not likely to happen. Vanessa Bangser is principal of a Success Academy in the Bronx. She says that when a charter school and a public school operate side by side in a public building, good things can happen.

BANGSER: The bigger point is to go back- what was the root of charter schools? It was to provide choice and provide options but also innovate different ideas for schools and to partner with district schools to help improve all schools. So if we just share best practices and work together, definitely both schools can improve.

The four elementary schools in Williamsburg nearest to where the charter school will open could use improvement. Only 30 percent of their students are proficient in English. Success Academy teacher Jessica Johnson says the controversy more about what adults want than about what children need.

JOHNSON: if you don’t want to send your kid to Williamsburg success, fine then don’t. You have the option to send them wherever you want. I just really strongly believe in parent choice.

But Success Academy opponent Estaban Duran says that parents should be concerned if the new school is going to weaken the existing schools.

DURAN: The larger story here is really this interest of public property, public resources being given over to a public entity. That would be ok if there was actually community input. That’s the real issue here.

Success Academy will open in Williamsburg in August with room for nearly 200 kindergartens and first graders. Jackie Mader, Columbia Radio News.

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Jackie Mader brings us the news at 4:00 p.m.