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Films about women meant to inspire By Caitlin Fowlkes of the Ashland Tidings Jul 12, 2019 05:32 PM A A Ashland resident Beckon Duel is producing a documentary series composed of women telling personal stories of overcoming hardship. His intent is to share the women’s stories in order to empower others. “I’m almost moved to tears by what women go through,” Duel said. “I’m fully aware that women have been oppressed for thousands of years. I feel that we are at a dawn where women are beginning to assert themselves and move into another space in our society. Women need to be empowered.” Each episode focuses on one woman’s story and lasts about 10 minutes. The stories include triumphs over sexual abuse, oppression and racism. Most of the women are local, but two are international travelers who pop into Ashland on occasion. Duel said his goal is to find women of varying ages, ethnicities and backgrounds. “I want to tell the story of the world, not the story of Ashland,” Duel said. “It would be very easy to fall into the trap of interviewing 10 new age white women in their 50s, but I didn’t want that.” Wanda Borland, a volunteer producer at RVTV, is volunteering to help produce the series. She was one of the women interviewed. Her story touches on transracial adoption. Borland was adopted by a couple in the Rogue Valley when she was 5. In the middle of the Korean war, she was found walking the streets of Seoul, South Korea, hand-in-hand with her brother, who was also adopted by her parents a year later. Borland’s cultural identity was suppressed. Her family made no effort to honor her heritage, and instead she learned to become white. “Racist sentiments were very strong here. There was a lot of white privilege, a lot of, ‘I’m white, and this is our country. What are you doing here?’” Borland said. “It was a very isolating experience growing up in a family where you look into eyes that look nothing like yours.” She said she participated in a class prior to her interview that helped her understand how she adapted her attitude and ideals to reflect the culture around her. At the end of the class, she told her story for the first time. “My story was one of being an immigrant, and that was a new label for me,” Borland said. “I was practicing racism toward myself. My parents did the best they could; they just didn’t have the right tools.” She said the powerful thing about the series is that when local people see it, they’ll learn something inspiring they may not have known about their friends and neighbors. “You can look at a person, but you don’t know their stories,” Borland said. “People are going to see people they know and learn so much about them.” Duel said every story is meant to inspire. “It’s really interesting what we go through in life and how it affects the window in life we see through,” Duel said. “How much have you transcended?” He said he chose to interview women because women have been taught to be in the background and not be heard. “We are seriously out of balance as a species,” Duel said. “Men have been running the species for too many years and basically we’re destroying it. If we don’t bring women into a space of power, and I don’t mean women’s rights, I mean putting women in power, I’m concerned we’re going to face incredible devastation of this planet because women have the gene more than men do for nurturing, protecting and validating life, whereas men have more of a gene for conquering and controlling. To bring that into balance, in my opinion, is to ensure the survival of the human species.” He said his goal is to have multiple seasons of the show air on local television stations, radio stations, its website and YouTube. He’ll also reach out to women’s organizations to share the series. Each season has 10 episodes. He’s wrapping up edits on the seventh episode now and has a goal to release the series this fall. He said he’s been asked several times why a man is producing these stories. “I have deep compassion and reverence for women and what they go through in this world,” Duel said. “More men need to step up and say, ‘Hey, let’s honor women, revere them and treat them like the amazing spiritual beings that they are.’ I care about women.” He said his inspiration stemmed from watching a young woman who has been close to his daughter since they were toddlers overcome a traumatic experience and yet still turn into a successful adult. The young woman witnessed her father be brutally murdered by her brother when she was in high school in 2012 in Santa Rosa. He said he watched her overcome that trauma, graduate college, and become a successful and whole person. “I watched her recover, and that was very impressive to me,” Duel said. She asked him to write her a song, so he wrote “The Strength of a Woman.” He said it was a spiritual awakening when he woke up one night with the idea that the song could be a theme song and that he would find women with compelling stories to tell. The project has been in the works for two and a half years. He said he’s found some women for the series on his own, and others have approached him and asked if they could be interviewed. He often meets with a woman first, then spends an hour or more interviewing her to find the meat of her story. Then he condenses it down into a 10-minute segment. “When you take an hour interview and condense it down to 10 minutes, it can become really powerful,” Duel said. He said the series will launch debt free, but he hopes to find funding for the second series after the first is released. Once it’s ready to be released, the link to the series will be available on social media platforms and the website. For more information, see www.strengthofawomanfilm.com. Contact Tidings reporter Caitlin Fowlkes at [email protected] or 541-776-4496. Follow her on Twitter @cfowlkes6. (July 15: Story updated to correct the misspelling of Borland.) Jenna Sheppard hiking Grizzly Peak in Ashland, Oregon. Sheppard helped inspire the documentary series, according to executive producer Beckon Duel. She is currently attending graduate school at Yale. Photo courtesy of film staff.{ } Wanda Burland is a volunteer producer at RVTV. She is helping produce the series and was interviewed in the series.{ } Photo courtesy of film staff.{ }