We Deserve Better
When Keya Rice and her mother moved into a New York City Public Housing Authority (NYCHA) apartment in 2011, it was a step up. Now, nine years later, Rice, an emerging journalist, uses the apartment she shares with her mom, as a window into the experiences people living in the largest public housing authority in the nation must endure everyday. Inspired by tenant activists who will stop at nothing to get heard, Rice turns her camera on LaKeesha Taylor, a single mother of two from Yorkville whose issues with heat and hot water have forced her to light a fire under NYCHA’s feet. When a global pandemic hits, and a world wide social justice movement takes to the streets, Rice must ask an essential question: why are all these crises so interconnected?
SCREENs live at 3:30 p.m., Saturday, Dec. 12
Q&A with filmmakers to follow
Filmmakers
Keya Rice is a documentary filmmaker and multimedia journalist from Brooklyn, New York. Having grown up in a working-class family, Rice gained an interest in the racial and economic disparities that low income communities of color face. Rice also has interests in environmental issues, entertainment and art & culture. Prior to Columbia, Rice studied Media & Communications at SUNY Old Westbury.
Mariam Kah is a multimedia journalist and documentary filmmaker from Pakistan. She is interested in social and racial justice stories, especially those that give minorities a platform to be heard. We Deserve Better is her filmmaking debut. Growing up in the Middle East and in Lahore, Mariam always had a passion for news and issues unfolding around her. She completed her undergraduate degree in Economics and History in Lahore before moving to New York to study documentary filmmaking at Columbia Journalism School.
