Film Presentations

Hooray for Hollywood is an award-winning, puppet-based film shown from a child’s viewpoint on enduring and escaping human trafficking. Raven Kaliana has presented this autobiographical film at Amnesty UK, United Nations in Geneva, Commission on the Status of Women, London City Hall, Oxford University. She has presented Hooray for Hollywood during keynote speeches at conferences for policymakers, prosecutors, police, and NGOs; as well as puppet festivals in the UK, Denmark, France, Taiwan, Puerto Rico, Israel, and Kazakhstan. Raven has taught training events using the film for drama therapists, social workers, applied theatre, and play therapists at universities across the UK, as well as staff at charities and safeguarding teams. The film is suitable for ages 16 and up, is not explicit, but shows the level of coercion, distress, and entrapment experienced by the child. It ends on a note of hope, and demonstrates the positive outcomes possible when those with concerns about a child reach out. Discussion topics can include techniques for working with post-traumatic stress and dissociation; exploring dynamics of generational abuse; prevention and intervention; the use of puppetry in healing processes; the political realities of commercialised abuse; puppetry as a form of testimony for awareness-raising and social change.