Individual voices, personal empowerment and the resilience of hope all converged at the Uptown Knauer Performing Arts Center in West Chester last Wednesday evening.

Invisible No More, a new, in-progress documentary illuminating the personal stories of marginalized teens in the Coatesville and surrounding area, currently being made by the members of the Restorative Justice Filmmakers Club, received its first premiere showing on June 26 before a large and appreciative audience.

The ten-minute trailer for the film is being produced in partnership with Arts Holding Hands and Hearts (AHHAH) and the Chester County Juvenile Probation Department and developed by filmmaker CJ Witherspoon of 3 Spoons Productions, photographer Sandrien deBruijn and editors Alyssa Brown and Maureen deBruijn.

For Witherspoon, the documentary serves as a platform to a population who has been rendered mute by a judicial system that is often accused of being beholden to incarceration over rehabilitation. He said that as the filming of the project began, the individual stories that were being told became one larger story with an even larger mission.

“This documentary is to help bring voices to the people who are voiceless, in this case, youth under 18 -- and change the narrative and the laws of how these individuals are perceived in the public,” he said. “A lot of these kids come from backgrounds where they don’t trust a lot of people, and we had seven kids who didn’t know each other, and then you put them in a room together, and as time went on, they learned how to trust each other and built camaraderie. They begin to ask each other questions and you see their confidence grow, not just from the person asking the questions but those who are being interviewed – all while forgetting that the camera is in front of them.

“This film has been about them learning leadership, confidence and acknowledging that not everyone is against them.”

The seeds of Invisible No More were first conceived by AHHAH founder Jan Michener, who approached Lindsay Walton and Jason Torres of the Chester County Juvenile Probation’s Community Service unit two years ago.

“Jan pitched us about an idea to create a documentary about these kids telling their stories,” Torres said. “Filmmaking is not exactly a type of community service, but Lindsay and I pitched the idea to our supervisors, and they told us, “Run with it.’ Jan had a vision, and she asked us to become a cog in her wheel to literally piece it together – to bring the proper kids who we knew would be vested in this program, to become engaged in the project.”

Walton and Torres then chose the first six students who were selected for the documentary last year and another six students who joined the program this year.

“Jason and I get to know these kids on a different level, and we had already met those kids whom we ultimately selected,” Walton said. “We want their stories to be heard. We want them to know that there is a safe space where people will be able to hear them.” “We want everyone to see the kids how we see them, they aren’t their crime, they are so much more.”

While the trailer for Invisible No More is only ten minutes in length, the project has several hours of content that is being planned to be included in a full-length documentary, once financing is secured. An extended version of the film, its producers said, will be intended to serve as a catalyst to address the rising rates of incarceration in Pennsylvania that has given it the distinction of being one of the highest states for incarceration in the United States – a reality that pits a strict justice system against juveniles who get caught up in a tangled web of prison time that can last for years.

“We begin incarcerating them at ten, at the time they would be in the fourth grade,” Michener said in her comments before the film. “We spend more money incarcerating than we do on teaching, and for-profit prisons look at third grade reading scores to decide where they will put the next prison or detention center in ten years. Last year, I said, ‘Enough is enough.’ We need to change the mindset by creating programs for youth that gives them an opportunity to switch that trajectory.”

Torres calls Invisible No More a collaborative mission between the justice system and the creative forces behind cooperating non-profit agencies.

“Our agenda is for this documentary to impact our society – how judges and police officers interact with a juvenile defender,” he said. “They’re kids. They have made mistakes. We have all made mistakes, and that’s the purpose of this film – to bring this film before legislators so that they can understand that at the end of the day they are kids. We don’t want them to go to the big house. We want them to be assets in society, which they all can, but they haven’t had the opportunity.”

Torres praised the courage of the seven members of the Restorative Justice Filmmakers Club who shared their stories in the film.

“It takes a unique individual to be able to process their being in a film, to have their story that they had just shared with us shown to the public,” Torres said. “Telling your personal story is a very vulnerable place to be, but they have literally worn their emotions on their sleeve and each and every one of them has a story to tell and they are telling their story.

“Hence, they’re invisible no more.”

To see a short clip of Invisible No More and to learn more about contributing to the funding of the full-length film, visit www.ahhah.org. To contact Staff Writer Richard L. Gaw, email [email protected].