YFEP winners Alexis Opper, Naomi Clements, and Daniel Pritchard at Youth Voices Uncensored.

“Books have been written for centuries to preserve and exhibit new thought,” says filmmaker Daniel Pritchard in his short film Excluded. “Why would we ever want to get rid of that?” Pritchard—winner of the  National Coalition Against Censorship‘s Youth Free Expression Project People’s Choice Award—was on hand with other young filmmakers this Saturday at the New York Film Academy for Youth Voices Uncensored, a special screening for all the winning films in NCAC’s annual film contest.

In addition to the winning YFEP films, works directed and produced by young people from the Global Action Project, a social justice organization for young people, and Reel Works, a teen filmmaking mentorship program, were also shown at the event.

The Youth Free Expression Project, made possible by the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation, invites people ages 19 and younger to submit videos related to censorship. This year, participants were given the theme “You’re Reading What?!?” and asked to create films focusing on book banning.

YFEP winners are joined at the screening by Karim Alexander, a producer at Reel Works Teen Filmmaking.

Through films infused with arresting visual imagery, references to actual book challenges, and poignant personal accounts, the teens vigorously defend the right to read freely, and demonstrate a strong passion for freedom of speech.

First-place winner Eden Ames relies upon the contrast between black and white and color film to underscore the restrictive, limiting nature of censorship. Her film Waking depicts a bleak, grey environment comprised of blindfolded inhabitants. A young boy is scolded by his mother when he attempts to read, warning him that books could potentially confuse him, but by removing his blindfold and accessing a library, he soon discovers a new vibrant, colorful world. Acacia O’Conor of NCAC praises the film for its nuanced look at censorship. “It admits that a lot of the things we read confuse us,” she says. ”They’re difficult to swallow, these books that show us the ugliness of our lives sometimes, but they are so rewarding.”

The filmmakers also express concern for current and recent book challenges. In her film Banned, second-place winner Naomi Clements cites the recent challenging of Patricia Polacco’s In Our Mother’s House, which portrays a family with two mothers. School librarians in Davis County, Utah were forced to shelve the book behind their desks until full access was restored.

Clements employs simple yet powerful animated images—bookshelves being locked away, a child staring at a book hidden behind a desk—as she narrates her beliefs in her own and others’ right to read: “It is not the right of one parent or person to decide what everyone else can read. I do not want to live in a world dictated by the insecurities of others.”

Third-place winner Alexis Opper also references recent book challenges in her film You Do Not Speak for Me, but delves into her personal feelings on the issue as well. The film shows Opper visually rearranging her own favorite books that have been banned or challenged—such as Matilda, Just Ella, and Speak—as she describes the need to safeguard access to all titles. And she pleas to well-meaning adults seeking to remove seemingly disturbing material in an attempt to protect teens: “You do not make darkness disappear by covering it up. You don’t save us by taking away reality, and you don’t determine what helps and what hurts.”

Michael O’Neil, NCAC communications director, wrapped the screening by announcing the theme for the next 2013 contest: “Video Games in the Crosshairs.” Because video games are so often viewed as potentially dangerous to young people by parents, legislators, and educators, NCAC encourages young people to share their views on this subject that directly affects them.

O’Neil emphasizes the importance of giving young people the chance to voice their opinions. “What we really strive to do with this film contest,” he says, “is to give young people a chance to speak for themselves. There are so many adult authority figures who spend a lot of time speaking for kids…and we need more opportunities for young people to speak up for themselves.”

The book, In Our Mothers’ House (Philomel, 2009) by award-winning author Patricia Polacco, was relocated behind the desks of librarians in schools serving K-6 students in Utah’s Davis School District. The book is about three adopted children of differing ethnic backgrounds and their lesbian mothers.

Children in the district must present written parental permission to see the book, according to a 26-page complaint filed by the ACLU and the ACLU of Utah Foundation on November 13.

The Davis School District claims that the book violates Utah state laws banning support of homosexuality in instructional materials supplied by schools.

“[T]he District’s primary justification for removing the book from the shelves is that, by telling the story of children raised by same-sex parents, the book constitutes ‘advocacy of homosexuality,’ in purported violation of Utah’s sex-education laws,” according to the complaint.

The ACLU maintains that removing the book violates students’ first-amendment rights.

“The Supreme Court has been very clear that schools cannot remove books from the shelf simply because they disagree with their viewpoints,” Leslie Cooper, senior staff attorney at the ACLU LGBT Rights and AIDS Project, told SLJ. “This case is about students’ rights to books in the library.”

“This is not about instructional materials. It is a book on the library shelf,” Cooper said. “A book that depicts a family headed by a gay couple hardly advocates a gay family lifestyle.”

The ACLU is filing the proposed class-action suit on behalf of the two children of Davis School District mother Tina Weber, along with the other nearly 3,000 students in the district.

“I was shocked when I heard that a handful of parents had made a decision about whether everyone else’s kids could have access to this book,” Weber said, according to an ACLU press release. “Our job as parents is to make sure we teach our children about our values. We can do that without imposing our personal views on the rest of the school community.”

How the case evolved

The flap over the book started in January, when a kindergarten student at Utah’s Windridge Elementary School brought Polacco’s book home and the child’s parent objected to it. The parent filled out a form requesting that the book be removed from the library.

As recounted in a June SLJ article, the book was moved from the K-2 section to the 3-6 grade section following a January 27 meeting of the Windridge School Library Media Committee.

The parent, along with 25 others, then appealed to the District Library Media Committee, filling out complaint forms asking again that the book be removed. The group provided statements claiming that the book contains “propaganda, because it puts forth an idea, then makes it look attractive and normal” and that “the author is wanting us to accept homosexuality as a norm,” among other objections, according to the complaint.

On April 30, the District Library Media Committee voted to have the book put behind librarians’ desks in all district schools.

ACLU’s Cooper says, “The removal of the book was deferring to other parents’ decisions about what their children can read.”

According to a Salt Lake Tribune story published on June 1, school librarians were later being told to remove other books touching on gay and lesbian themes.

A web page on the Davis School District site states that “The Davis District Library Media Policies are undergoing review at this time.” A previous school library policy statement was recently removed from the site, according to the complaint.

Utah librarians respond

“It appeared to us that the Davis School District followed the procedures that they had in place,” said Shelly Ripplinger, president of the Utah Educational Library Media Association (UELMA). “As an organization, we support all school libraries having a selection policy and a reconsideration policy.”

“School libraries serve a different function than public libraries,” Ripplinger added. “Our purpose is to support the curriculum, so with our limited budget we have to focus on supporting the curriculum and leisure reading.”

Chris Williams, community relations director of the  Davis School District, was not available for comment at press time.

On November 14, the day after the lawsuit was filed, The Utah Library Association (ULA) posted a new  Statement on Intellectual Freedom on its website.

A video of parents reading Polacco’s book aloud at a Salt Lake City library appears on the ULA Intellectual Freedom Committee portion of the site. The video was created as part of the 2012 50 State Salute to Banned Books Week (September 30-October 6) organized by the American Library Association (ALA).

In Our Mothers’ House classifies as a banned book, said Wanda Mae Huffaker, ULA Intellectual Freedom Committee Chair. “Being placed behind the desk falls into the definition of being banned” because the book is “not accessible to everyone.”

“Few banned books stay banned,” Huffaker observed. “Most of the time librarians are able to get books back on the shelves. We librarians are good at what we do.”

Polacco, the author of more than 85 books for young people, explained in an October 5 article for the ACLU blog during Banned Books Week that she wrote In Our Mothers’ House after witnessing a fourth grade girl with lesbian parents and adopted siblings being told by an aide that “you don’t come from a real family.”