REX MILLER: FILMS AND CINEMATOGRAPHY
646-262-9089
rexpixfilm@earthlink.net
PRIVATE VIOLENCE...anything but private
a film By Kit Gruelle and Cynthia Hill
Dr. Steven Channing, Rebecca Cerese, Co-Producers
Rex Miller, DP
photograph courtesy of Donna Ferrato, Domestic Abuse Awareness
"Why doesn’t she leave?"
A woman is murdered in North Carolina every 4.5 days as a result of domestic violence.
"Isn’t this a private matter?"
Using personal stories of survivors, abusers, advocates, police, district attorneys and judges, Private Violence offers a realistic and often unsettling portrait of this national dilemma. Woven throughout these stories of danger and survival, fatal indifference and courageous intervention, is the history of a social movement created over the past two hundred years.
The messages about domestic violence in the mainstream media are frequently confusing, often erroneous, and even outright dangerous. Often, the crimes of intimate battering and murder are presented as inevitable tragedies with no preventable cause or community remedy. The media not only mislead the public in this regard, they actually point us away from the only realistic solution for ending domestic violence: entire communities of people must make it their business to know, care and act.
Today, despite marked improvement in how we perceive and act against domestic violence, there are still myths, images and assumptions that obfuscate the issue and hinder real progress in ending the rising toll of spouse and child abuse and murder. The illusion that domestic violence is “over there” affecting “those kinds of people,” belies the national statistics that clearly demonstrate that “private violence” crosses all cultural, racial, socio-economic, religious, geographic, sexual and educational barriers, and has far reaching consequences that impact all aspects of our society.
One in every four women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime.
National Institute of Justice and the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention
"What did she do to provoke him?"
"Private violence" crosses all cultural, racial, religious, geographic, socio-economic, sexual and educational barriers.
photograph courtesy of Donna Ferrato, Domestic Abuse Awareness
CONTACT KIT GRUELLE with questions or comments
kgp54_1999@yahoo.com 919.218.2892
a fiscally sponsored project of the Southern Documentary Fund
"But he seems like
such a nice guy"
The cost of intimate partner violence exceeds $5.8 billion each year, $4.1 billion of which is for direct medical and mental health services.
-Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
"This could never happen to me."