“Every Two Minutes” film (Photo – everytwominutesfilm.com).
There can be a feeling of inevitability in any social issue documentary: powerful bullies assault with impunity; railroaded victims suffer in silence; this one small film will be their only justice. Not so for the subjects of “Every Two Minutes,” screened recently at the Pasadena Film Festival.
By Melanie Hooks
In fact, the entire film, which follows the Michigan State University Sexual Assault Crisis Intervention Team and medical advocates, leaves one with a hopeful aftertaste. Here is a problem that people aren’t just exposing; they’re tackling it head-on 24/7. And their tools are winning ones that you can use too.
Producer Laura E. Swanson and her Michigan State University team, many of whom have personal experience with the campus volunteer effort, begin the film with an attention-grabbing montage of interviews. All subjects (17 unique stories in the film) are past victims of sexual assault, some incidents uncomfortably fresh. One young man retells a horrifying incident at a camp for assault survivors where he was serving as a counselor. A young woman recounts both her childhood and campus rapes. But this is not where the film dwells. Instead it uses this stream to establish a different rhythm, one that takes the assaults as given facts, not debated political or newspaper headlines. The method is effective: the very similarities between the horrors eradicates doubts about their veracity. Assaulters know their victims, choose them often because they won’t be believed later, counting on the victim’s families’ and friends’ doubt to cover their tracks. Social stigma and lack of witnesses do the rest.
This is all before the opening credits. Often this is where the end credits leave you – convinced, outraged, but helpless.
What “Every Two Minutes” does so well is to show that help and how it’s reshaping the silence into voices for change. Those victims from the beginning? All now volunteer with the sexual assault crisis hotline. They carry an emergency bag of supplies and resources for 24 hour shifts. They meet victims at specialized medical advocate care rooms in local hospitals to gather evidence if needed and comfort them as they receive medical care. They speak frankly about their own personal experiences on-camera, but spend each call listening to the other person, acknowledging their pain and advising healthy avenues for help. And each of them refers to themselves not as victims, but as survivors. Or, as the assaulted counselor acknowledges, “surviving.”
A still frame from the film Every Two Minutes ((Photo – everytwominutesfilm.com).
The power of their own voices feels core to the regaining of personal power. The most common reaction given by all to their first attempt to tell someone else about their abuse experience: disbelief. “This couldn’t haven’t happened. You’re making it up. You must have misunderstood or misremembered.” It’s hard to accept, and most people turn into prosecutors instead of allies. They’re looking for the “perfect victim,” a sober virgin assaulted by a stranger, only the smallest minority of cases. Unfortunately, this denial is the biggest silencer. The power of “I believe you” shines as the first step to healing. What this film shows more than anything is the transformation that speaking one’s truth brings. Even to policy.
In one of the documentary’s strongest moments, the film’s best-known survivor, Michigan State Senator Gretchen Whitmer appears in floor footage from a debate over healthcare restrictions for rape victims. Whitmer sees a room full of men unfamiliar with the face of a real survivor. She puts down her prepared notecards. Unscripted and with clear pain in her voice, she plunges forward with her own story: not breaking down, but standing up to be counted. One believes by the end that learning to listen could rob perpetrators of their greatest aide: our own willingness to help them operate in the shadows.
Other very encouraging signs: the number of campus volunteers, including men eager to help; the feasibility of installing such programs in communities nationwide; and the film’s free online availability.
Screenwriter and columnist Melanie Hooks has lived on both coasts and in Hawaii, as well as the Midwest and the United Kingdom. Someday she hopes to follow JK Rowling’s lead and buy a Scottish castle. Until then, find her Pasadena discoveries here.
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