Maisie Crow

03.14.17

ABOUT

In Tuscaloosa today, nearly one in three black students attends a school that looks as if Brown v. Board of Education never happened. Central High is one of those schools. Meet Principal Clarence Sutton Jr. as he fights to save his students from the effects of resegregation.

This short film is part of ProPublica’s investigation into the resegregation of America’s schools. Sixty years after Brown v. Board ruled “separate but equal” had no place in education, many schools have moved back in time, isolating poor black and Latino students in segregated schools.

 

Read ProPublica’s yearlong investigation into Tuscaloosa schools, among most rapidly resegregating in the country: propublica.org/tuscaloosa

Or join the conversation on race and education by sharing your story with ProPublica and the Race Card Project: propublica.org/sixwords

 

 

03.13.17

ABOUT

Abortion remains legal in America but anti-abortion efforts have succeeded in making it virtually inaccessible in some places and in the Deep South, often unthinkable. At one time Mississippi had fourteen abortion clinics. Now only one remains.

Since the passage of Roe v. Wade more than four decades ago, the self-labeled “pro-life” movement has won significant cultural, political and legal battles. Now, the stigma of abortion is prolific in Mississippi and women in poverty and women of color are particularly vulnerable. Jackson is wrought with the racial and religious undertones of the Deep South and explores the nuanced nature of abortion in America’s Bible Belt.

Shannon Brewer is the director of Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the only remaining abortion clinic in the state. Barbara Beaver runs the Center for Pregnancy Choices and is a leader of the anti-abortion movement in Mississippi. April Jackson is a young mother of four children faced with another unplanned pregnancy.

Jackson is an intimate, unprecedented look at the lives of three women caught up in the complex issues surrounding abortion access. Set against the backdrop of the fight to close the last abortion clinic in Mississippi, Jackson captures the essential and hard truth of the lives at the center of the debate over reproductive healthcare in America.

SELECT PRESS

“Elegant, unsettling” Village Voice

“Crow’s debut feature film, Jackson comes at a pivotal moment for reproductive rights” New York Magazine

“Easily one of the year’s strongest documentaries” Criterion Cast

“Crow explores not only the hurdles that face a person wanting to access an abortion by depicting the clinic and its patients, but also through a second storyline shows the just as pressing question of who can a pregnant person turn to when she has no resources to draw on?” Cosmopolitan

“Strong and scrupulously even-handed” Los Angeles Times

“This well-crafted film adds to our understanding by humanizing some of the opponents.” The Hollywood Reporter

“A grim warning of what restrictive abortion legislation across the U.S. actually looks like” The Huffington Post

PROJECT WEBSITE www.jacksonthefilm.com

 

AWARDS

SOCIAL IMPACT MEDIA AWARDS
Best Documentary Feature, Winner

DENTON BLACK FILM FESTIVAL
Jury Award for Best Documentary Feature, Winner

HOT SPRINGS DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL
Jury Award for Best Documentary, Winner

INDIE MEMPHIS
Jury Award for Best Documentary, Winner
Audience Award for Best Documentary, Winner

LOFT FILM FESTIVAL
CICAE Art Cinema Award, Winner

NEW ORLEANS FILM FESTIVAL
Jury Award for Best Documentary, Winner

TALLGRASS FILM FESTIVAL
Outstanding Courage in Filmmaking, Winner

PORTLAND FILM FESTIVAL
Jury Award for Best Documentary, Winner
Audience Award for Best Documentary, Winner

SOCIAL JUSTICE FILM FESTIVAL
Gold Jury Prize for Feature Documentary, Winner

NEWBURYPORT FILM FESTIVAL
Jury Award for Best Documentary, Winner

OJAI FILM FESTIVAL
Jury Award for Best Documentary, Winner

SIDEWALK FILM FESTIVAL
Jury Award for Best Documentary, Honorable Mention

 

 

 

 

 

09.13.13

09.13.13

09.13.13

The statistics are bleak. Although the population of Ohio has increased by just over one percent in recent years, the number of people living in poverty has risen by more than forty percent. Furthermore, seventeen million American women are living in poverty and nearly forty percent of female headed-households are living below the line. But, behind the numbers are the stories of millions of women, struggling to escape poverty and make decent lives for themselves and their families.

Growing up in poverty is difficult for anybody, but the young women I have photographed face different obstacles than those of young men. While women throughout America have more power and liberty than in the past, poor women have not progressed as much as the middle class and wealthy.

Poverty is persistent, and there is no simple solution. People succeed economically when they save and invest, but looking beyond tomorrow is a luxury when one finds it difficult to live for today. Generational behavior patterns have a tendency to repeat themselves, and impoverished communities can be insular, leading young women to feel both trapped and protected by the enclaves that bore them.

Many young women living in below the line struggle with unplanned pregnancy, lack of adequate health care, emotional instability, financial insecurity and fewer educational opportunities than their middle class peers. Teenage mothers are more likely to drop out of school, harming their chances of future employment. Children raised by young single mothers are far less likely to achieve economic success.

This project explores the lives of young women living in rural Ohio and growing up in the cycle of generational poverty.

09.12.13

Curated images from my Instagram feed. Follow me @maisiecrow.com

07.01.13

Watch The Last Clinic

A multimedia collaboration with The Atavist Magazine.

ABOUT 

In Mississippi, a new law threatens to shut down the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the last abortion provider in the state. From one of the clinic’s doctors, who feels duty-bound to travel there each week from out of state; to a leading protester, a doctor who once performed abortions herself; to the young women wrestling with a decision that will change the course of their lives, this unique multimedia story takes you beyond the slogans. The Last Clinic captures the humanity behind an incendiary issue.

 

 

 

PRESS 

“Even for those familiar with the story, Crow’s film creates the feeling of really understanding the issue for the first time.” WIRED

“The film offers an intimate look inside the Jackson Women’s Health Organization and its patients, staff, nurses, and the physician who flies from Washington, D.C. monthly to perform the procedures.” Take Part

How We Got Our Story Columbia Journalism Review

RECOGNITION

First Place, POYi, Issue Reporting Multimedia Story, 2014

Nominated for a News and Documentary Emmy, 2014

Finalist for a National Magazine Award, 2014

04.11.13

Some of the villages have long been overgrown with grass. When you go there it’s as if nothing ever existed. Just the earth, the river and the wind. It’s hard to imagine what once lay where you stand. There are others, still four villages, that remain. One has been relocated, kind of, it was moved 5 kilometers just last year. And, the other three have long been designated as a safe place to live.

But one has to question how safe the river is, there are high cancer rates and birth defects in each village. And when there is not a specific ailment to inflict, the uncertainty is enough to unsettle.

During the late 1940s, as part of their nuclear weapons program, the Soviet Union hurriedly built the Mayak Plant to make plutonium for weapons. Just one year after completion, in 1949, the plant began dumping high levels nuclear waste into the Techa River and they continued to do so until 1956.

Today, portions of the river cannot be used for drinking water or irrigation while others are deemed “safe”. But, the the Mayak Plant continues to dump large amounts of nuclear waste into the Techensky Reservoir Cascade, two large nuclear waste lagoons. These reservoirs are intended for dumping but it is said that up to 1 million cubic feet a year of contaminated water is estimated to be leaking and flowing into the Techa River each year.

04.10.13

12.10.12

You remember something everyday, its memories. And if you don’t have memories, you don’t have anything cause, cause life is but a memory. There is a harvest time for everything in the world. When an orange gets ripe, you either eat it or it rots. When a tree gets so big it should be cut and used because it is going to decay and rot back into the soil, and a human life is the same way. You have to learn to manage and take care of what you have or you don’t have anything.   -Tom Rose

I met Tom  by chance and I asked if I could make his portrait. I arrived at his house the following day. He told me that a few months earlier he had lost Mary, his wife of sixty years. He was having a hard time dealing with his loss, and we spent a lot of time talking about it. Over the course of the next 8 months I continued to visit him and take pictures. He taught me a great deal about life and gave me the opportunity to share his story.