I think that my film has indirectly helped Sindyanna and all of their projects. By spreading the word about what they do and who they are, they have received more donations and outside help, which can be invested in their various projects. For example, donations that Sindyanna received because of my film have supported installing more hydroponics systems in the houses of different women.
As a part of our series about “Filmmakers Making A Social Impact” I had the pleasure of interviewing Steven Hoffen.
Thirteen-year-old Steven Hoffen is an award-winning documentarian who is especially interested in building a better future for humanity. Created during the COVID-19 pandemic, the eighth grader’s debut film, Growing Peace in the Middle East, documents the amazing story of Jewish and Arab women in Israel being brought together through hydroponic farming and sustainability. To date, the short has earned nominations and wins in over 70 categories globally, including the prestigious London Independent Film Festival and International Human Rights Arts Festival. In 2021, Steven founded Growing Peace Inc., a non-profit organization that is working to help people around the world access food and become self-sufficient. Steven lives with his parents and older brother and enjoys debating and learning about technology.
Thank you so much for doing this interview with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to get to know you a bit. Can you share your “backstory” that brought you to this career?
I went to Israel with my family in the summer of 2019 and visited an organization called Sindyanna of Galilee. There I met two women, Hadas Lahav who was the founder of the organization, and Hanan, the co-founder of Sindyanna. It was very inspiring seeing Hadas, a Jewish woman touring us around with an Arab woman, and it kind of gave me a look into what Sindyanna did as a whole, bringing the Arab and Jewish communities in Israel together. It was important to me to create this film because I think that Sindyanna’s approach at creating Arab-Jewish collaboration is a very good one.
I was inspired to make this film because of three main interests of mine. First, I was interested in filmmaking. I remember watching a David Attenborough documentary with my family and I was so mesmerized by all of the clips that he was showing of wildlife as well as his voice and commentary. Second, I’m very interested in human rights. Mainly what got me interested in human rights was my conversation with Yoav Tamir (the director of the hydroponics project at Sindyanna). He described the unemployment of Arab women in Israel due to factories closing down and moving. The reason that unemployment is related to human rights is that one of the basic human rights is the “right to work, to free choice of employment.” In Israel, although many jobs are available, Arab women don’t truly have the opportunity to work since most jobs require more education.
Can you share the funniest or most interesting story that occurred to you in the course of your filmmaking career?
Here’s a funny/sad story. When I first started editing my film (before I moved to Final Cut Pro), I was using iMovie. Whenever I opened iMovie, it would completely crash! For some reason, the file for my film had gotten so large that the entire library just crashed. I’m not exactly certain what happened, but my movie was no longer there. I switched over to Final Cut Pro, but when I imported the last version of the movie that I had, everything was fused together, and I could no longer move things around. Normally, you would have a lot of different blocks of clips, music, and images, but when everything got fused together, it was all one big block. I could no longer separate things to move them around. I had to edit the rest of the movie like that, and thankfully, it didn’t erase again.
Who are some of the most interesting people you have interacted with? What was that like? Do you have any stories?
I really liked speaking to all of the members of Sindyanna, especially Marwa and Mofida (two participants in it’s hydroponics project) since in those interviews, rather than learning about Sindyanna itself, I got to learn about their lives and their backstories up until that point. I learned about their parents, their kids, and how the hydroponics project really helps them. They explained how, with hydroponics, they had to do a lot less physical work than in normal farming, which benefitted them both, as they’d injured their backs. I also liked hearing about how Marwa loves to sit with coffee and watch the plants grow. They told me about how their lives were changed a lot by the hydroponics project, and how not only could they support their family by making food and generating income from the food that they didn’t eat, they also enjoyed the process of hydroponic farming.
Which people in history inspire you the most? Why?
I think one of the most inspiring people for me would be Abraham Joshua Heschel. He was a Polish-born rabbi and philosopher, and my old school was named after him. During the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, he risked his life to protest with Martin Luther King Jr. I admire everything that he was willing to do in order to advocate for social rights, and I hope to become more like him throughout my projects.
Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview, how are you using your success to bring goodness to the world? Can you share with us the meaningful or exciting social impact causes you are working on right now?
Presently, I’m working on a different project. I raised the funds to install a hydroponics system at a food bank in Tel Aviv, Israel. This foodbank isn’t like any other ordinary food bank, though. It opened up at the beginning of Covid, and its main goal is to provide food for asylum seekers, particularly those fleeing from places such as Eritrea and Sudan. It’s a little bit more complicated than this, but basically, these refugees don’t get access to much help from the government because they are not citizens, and this food bank is designed to help these refugees. The hydroponics system is actually in construction now, and I plan to make a series of short videos about the project.
Many of us have ideas, dreams, and passions, but never manifest it. But you did. Was there an “Aha Moment” that made you decide that you were actually going to step up and take action for this cause? What was that final trigger?
What really inspired me to want to make this film was my interest in Sindyanna overall and their hydroponics project, and my interest in documentary filmmaking (from watching David Attenborough documentaries). There wasn’t necessarily a “trigger” for wanting to make the documentary. However, I do remember that when I was interviewing Yoav (the director of Sindyanna’s hydroponics project) I was really interested in everything that he was saying. He told me about the third industrial revolution, unemployment in Israel, and hydroponics. That was the moment that made me even more excited to do this project since not only would I be interested in it in many ways, but I would be helping others through my work.
Can you tell us a story about a particular individual who was impacted or helped by your cause?
I think that my film has indirectly helped Sindyanna and all of their projects. By spreading the word about what they do and who they are, they have received more donations and outside help, which can be invested in their various projects. For example, donations that Sindyanna received because of my film have supported installing more hydroponics systems in the houses of different women.
Are there three things that individuals, society or the government can do to support you in this effort?
There are many things that you can do to support this effort. First of all, you can donate to Growing Peace Inc. (growingpeaceinc.org), my new non-profit foundation that I created to support various projects. Donations support efforts like building more hydroponics systems in the houses of Arab women, as well as continuing to fund the hydroponics system at the Mesila Lasova food bank. You can also raise awareness about the situations that asylum seekers are going through by writing an article, creating a documentary, or spreading the word through other means. Another great thing to raise awareness about would be hydroponics as a means to alleviate food insecurity. Hydroponics has many great merits such as not requiring much space, not using a lot of water, and not needing a lot of work, all of which make it a very good tool to alleviate food insecurity.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why. Please share a story or example for each.
- I wish someone had told me how important it was to add visuals and music to documentaries. Early on when I was editing my film, I realized that it was really just a lot of clips of me talking to the audience. And then it struck me: My film would be really boring without any visuals. And so that day, I looked for around 50 images and multiple music tracks to accompany my talking. I also created some diagrams to explain some more complicated things.
- I wish I knew that good interview questions need to be specific. I remembered that when I was looking back at the transcript of my first interview, I didn’t really get the information that I truly needed out of it. And so I finally realized that my interview questions needed to be a lot more specific in order to get the needed information, and information that I was really curious about. As I went on with my interviews, my interview questions got better and better.
- I wish someone told me about how to transition between different parts of the film. When I was editing my film, I knew I had everything that I needed and that all I had to do was put it together, but I didn’t know how to cleanly transition between the introduction, the interviews, the facts, and everything else. Everything was kind of choppy at the beginning until I realized the secret to un-choppy-ness: transitions. I started with just a little bit of music between clips, then I added title slides, and then changed the script a bit to flow from the last part of the script. In the end, the film was so much smoother than it previously was.
- I wish I knew how long it would take. When I first started making my documentary, I thought it would take a couple of months at max. How wrong I was! The interview questions, interviewing, and transcribing took a month and a half on its own. The main things that took so long were writing the scripts, recording, and editing. I spent about a month writing the first draft of the script, and when I started editing and recording, I consistently went back and re-recorded, as well as changed the script. In total, the entire process took about a year.
- I wish I had been more familiar with video editing software. One of the main things that made the editing process so long was the fact that I had to learn how to edit in the first place. I had previously explored around with iMovie a couple of times, but I had not actually professionally edited with it, and I didn’t know what most of the features did. Things got even harder when I switched over to Final Cut Pro due to technical difficulties with iMovie. There were so many buttons and options, and nothing was in the right place as I had remembered from iMovie. In the end though, all of the options in iMovie were really helpful to make my film more interesting.
If you could tell other young people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?
To anyone considering getting involved in something with a social impact, I would encourage you to find something that actually interests you. If you make an impact through something that interests you, not only will you be making the world a better place, but you will also be doing so through work that you enjoy yourself.
We are very blessed that many other Social Impact Heroes read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, whom you would like to collaborate with, and why? He or she might see this. 🙂
For me, a really inspiring social activist is Greta Thunberg. I admire her persistence and the effort that she puts into making sure that climate change is recognized as a serious issue. Although I mainly focus on human rights and she works on climate action, I hope to maybe someday introduce her to hydroponic farming as a means of climate change mitigation.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“The earth is what we all have in common”- Wendell Berry. This is actually the quote that I used at the beginning of my film. I think that this quote is relevant to my documentary because according to Mr. Berry, the earth is what unites us, and it’s what makes our differences less important.
How can our readers follow you online?
You can follow me through my socials: Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/growingpeaceinc, Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/growingpeaceinc/, linkedin at https://www.linkedin.com/company/growingpeaceinc/, or through my website at https://www.growingpeaceinc.org/.
This was great, thank you so much for sharing your story and doing this with us. We wish you continued success!
Filmmakers Making A Social Impact: Why & How Steven Hoffen Is Helping To Change Our World was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.