“Firefighters engage with members of the community during our most traumatic
experiences of life and often engage with us in very intimate ways, often coming to us
when we are emotionally vulnerable“-Corrine Bendersky,
Professor of Management, UCLA
Author: Making U.S Fire Departments More Diverse and Inclusive- HarvardBusiness Review
Why This Film? Why now?
America’s firefighters are our heroes. Every day we depend upon them to save our lives when fires devastate our homes and when accidents and medical emergencies occur.
But Fire Departments nationwide lack the diversity needed to serve their communities well. 82% of all firefighters are Caucasian and 95.8% of these are male. And now that 90% of all calls nationally are medical and emergency-related, firefighters need to be more than strong and brave.
Firefighters also need the intellectual, social, and emotional skills required to deliver medical emergency aid, support each other through traumatic experiences, and engage intimately with the communities they serve.
And in many Fire Departments, the few firefighters who are female and/or people of color are being harassed and discriminated against.
This is the crowdfunding site for BEYOND THE HERO, our forthcoming documentary exploring how to end the lack of diversity within the ranks of Fire Departments in yourcommunity and nationwide.
Your support is essential to shine much needed light on this important issue. Scroll down to learn more about the issues, the film, and the
filmmakers.
DONATE
HELP US LAUNCH THIS IMPORTANT PROJECT
Your tax-deductible donations help cover initial production costs to prepare the project to apply for major funding.
When people are asked to describe a typical American firefighter, the most frequent
answer is still “a big white man.” But heroes can come in all sizes and colors.
ENGINEER
$100
CAPTAIN
$250
BATTALION CHIEF
$500
FIRE CHIEF
$1000
Fundraising Progress
During this crowdfunding phase of the project we aim to raise $30,000 towards the creation of a sizzle reel and the writing of major funding proposals. To date, thanks to the generosity of over 60 individuals we have raised over 25% of our goal amount.
Our donors come from all walks of life and from all over the United States. Many donors are members of the firefighting community.
ANY AMOUNT HELPS
MAKE YOUR TAX DEDUCTIBLE DONATION NOW
L to R: Battalion Chief Tricia Tapia, Capt. Lauren Andrade, Firefighter Heather Martin
Production Update
At the end of August, just after the promo of our upcoming film BEYOND THE HERO went public, the Mayor of San Jose invited some members of Equity on Fire, an organization that was created to promote fairness in the fire departments, to discuss the issues that women have faced in the city’s troubled fire department. NBC covered the event on their news series. Three of the four women firefighters at this meeting will be featured in our documentary.
Synopsis
Nearly twenty years ago, Bann Roy and Barbara Multer-Wellin’s documentary TAKING THE HEAT: The First Women Fire Fighters of New York City premiered on the PBS series Independent Lens. The film exposed the struggles faced by Brenda Berkman and a small, racially and culturally diverse group of women who successfully sued the city of New York to replace FDNY’s gender-biased physical exam in the late 1970s. Berkman retired in 2006 at the rank of captain. Today there are fewer female firefighters in FDNY and across the country than during Berkman’s career. Significant inclusion of women and minorities has yet to be achieved by the U.S. Fire Service. According to the 2021 Census, 82.2 % of all U.S. firefighters were white, of which 95.8% were male. The U.S. Fire Service remains the least diverse of all American emergency and military organizations. The exclusion, racism, violence, and sexual abuse experienced by Berkman and many others still goes on today.
Roy and Multer-Wellin’s new documentary, BEYOND THE HERO, tackles the issues behind the U.S. Fire Service’s striking lack of progress, starting with the enduring myth of the White Male Hero. Many fire departments across the country recognize that their lack of diversity makes providing the highest level of assistance to the communities they serve much harder to achieve. But the path to diversity is impeded both by an organizational history of chauvinism and racism and by the general public’s misunderstanding of what the actual work of firefighting today entails. BEYOND THE HERO brings viewers to firehouses around the state of California to witness fire scenes and the accidents and medical emergencies that comprise 90% of the calls most fire companies make every year. The film will also investigate current efforts to reform testing, training, and hiring procedures to make them fairer and more standardized, campaigns to construct separate bathrooms and sleeping quarters for female firefighters, fire camps to introduce young female and minority students to the possibilities of firefighting careers, and career advancement education for mid-career African American firefighters. Finally, BEYOND THE HERO will explore how counseling and feedback sessions after traumatic incidents can help reduce the soaring rate of suicide and substance abuse that haunts the firefighting profession and perpetuates the often-described” frat house culture” of many fire departments.
Filmmakers
BARBARA MUTLER-WELLIN
Producer
Barbara Multer-Wellin’s work as a nonfiction Writer/Producer has been seen on PBS, HBO, Showtime, KCET, The Discovery Channel, UPN. Lifetime, TBS, HGTV, etc. She won an LA Area Emmy for her work on the television and web series, YOUR TURN TO CARE. The series also won a Gracie Award. Barbara has produced and written two films for the acclaimed PBS documentary series, Independent Lens. TAKING THE HEAT: The First Women Firefighters of New York City, a documentary narrated by Susan Sarandon, is about the 20-year struggle to bring women into the New York Fire Department, an institution traditionally hostile to change rocked by the overwhelming trauma of 9-11. The second film, PAUL CONRAD: Drawing Fire, narrated by Tom Brokaw, tracks the career of the three-time Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonist, focusing on the eleven presidents he lampooned. Her latest film, ORCHESTRATING CHANGE, co-produced and directed with Margie Friedman, about Me2/Orchestra, founded by and for people living with mental illness, was seen on public stations across the country. ORCHESTRATING CHANGE is the sole winner of the 2021 Austen Riggs Erickson Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media. She is a graduate of the California Institute of the Arts and a former Chair of the Documentary/Reality Committee of the Producers Guild of America.
Anirban “Bann” Roy
Director
Anirban Roy is an award-winning filmmaker who moved from New Delhi to Los Angeles
in 1993. His films tackle various subject matters that have one thing in common –
marginalized human beings caught in the trap between dreams, expectations and reality. Be it illegal street vendors from Central America in downtown Los Angeles, running from the police and hunger (Pepino Mango Nance). Or a lonely foreign student, hopelessly lost in America, at war with himself and family responsibility (For
Here Or To-Go?). Or a rebellious kid waging a war of wits with her orthodox family
(Audacity) Or two vindictive old men living in an uncaring senior living facility, plotting
revenge against each other (The Parting Shot). But his most viewed film is the PBS film Taking the Heat, a film about how women joined the Fire Department of New York. This film was covered nationally on NPR, New York Daily News, TV Guide and many other press outlets. Anirban has also directed a national campaign of TV spots Why I Make about the Maker Movement that has had over 200 Million broadcast views, according to Nielsen Ratings. Anirban’s latest projects include a story about an army brigadier and his gay son (For the Time Being) and Beyond the Hero, a film about the current state of affairs about women and minorities in the US Fire Service.
ENDORSEMENTS
