DOCUMENTARIES WITH A POINT OF VIEW
community engagement
According to a recent poll conducted by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, Americans say that health care is one of the most important issues in the 2008 presidential election. Roger Weisberg's film Critical Condition paints a disturbing and gripping portrait of what happens when you're sick and uninsured in America. As health care becomes an increasingly salient issue in our nation, find out what you can do to participate in the national dialogue around health care reform.
Engage with local and national organizations
Visit the Critical Condition Take Action page to join local community groups and national organizations that are pushing the next president and Congress to move the nation toward health care reform. Learn more about organizations working for change.
Host a screening
Share the stories told in Critical Condition with a larger audience and host a screening of the film. The film is available, for free, for public institutions, schools and community groups. Sign up for updates about the film, its broadcast and related P.O.V. activities around health issues.
Download the Viewer's Guide
Do you want to learn more about the 2008 presidential candidates' viewpoints on health care reform? Need help understanding the current U.S. health care system? Don't know the difference between single payer and tax credits? Download the Critical Condition Viewer's Guide.
Tell us your thoughts
Add your opinion about the health care debate by visiting the Critical Condition website and posting a comment, a question or a review of the film.
Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North chronicles a unique and disturbing journey into the history and legacy of the U.S. slave trade. The documentary tracks what happens as filmmaker Katrina Browne comes to grips with the discovery that her New England ancestors were the largest slave-trading family in U.S. history. Her film is a probing essay into divergent versions of a nation's history.
Browne invites 200 DeWolf descendants to join her in facing their shared past and its relationship to their own lives. Nine end up traveling with her to retrace the Triangle Trade, from Bristol, Rhode Island, to slave forts in Ghana to sugar plantations in Cuba and back. Theirs is an emotional trek, with each step raising important questions about culpability and compassion, hurt and healing.
The family confronts not only their own assumptions, but also America's depiction of slavery as a predominantly Southern institution. As the film reveals the North's vast complicity in slavery, it forces viewers to examine the mythology of Northern innocence and the repercussions for race relations.
Katrina Browne says that it can seem as if white people like her have only two choices: "Either listen to African American calls to deal with the history, which can make us feel guilty and bad about ourselves, or shut it all out so we don't have to feel bad." What is a third way? In what ways does our knowledge of history influence our current beliefs and actions?
Juanita Brown tells the group, "It's important for me that white people take responsibility and that ultimately it's about human liberation — liberation of my people and also about your liberation." Do you agree with Juanita? What does "taking responsibility" mean for you?
Katrina talks in Ghana about being glad that her cousin Dain Perry was on the "hot seat," not her. What are the everyday ways in which you find racial dynamics challenging? In which situations do you get stuck or tongue-tied?
Candid and compelling, Traces of the Trade challenges viewers to ask themselves the same contentious questions that Browne and her family ask: Why is it so difficult for Americans to have a conversation about the legacy of slavery and racism? As a nation, how do we deal with what we inherited from our country's history?
Share your thoughts and opinions in comments.
I recently read an article by Dana Gioia titled "Connect the Prose and the Passion." In the article, Gioia explored the etymology of the word "passion," revealing that it comes from the Late Latin word passio, which means "suffering".
What does any of this have to do with documentaries? This month, I attended a screening of Revolution '67 (P.O.V. 2007) hosted by Civic Frame and Alpha Phi Alpha, Inc. at the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The screening was followed by a discussion with April Yvonne Garrett, president of Civic Frame, and filmmakers Marylou and Jerome Bongiorno. Given that Newark, NJ is just across the way from New York City, many audience members had had experiences there as teachers, residents, and visitors. One woman from California recounted her experience living through the Watts and Rodney King riots. "We didn't get a supermarket in Watts until 1989," she added. "The riot was in 1965."
Revolution '67 by Marylou and Jerome Bongiorno
The personal stories that people shared after the screening showed the pressing need for documentaries not only to be seen, but to be discussed. These types of films record a shared history and engage viewers on a personal level. But another thing that the discussion made me realize was the inherently subjective nature of documentaries when an audience member asked, "What is the role of the filmmaker?"
It is always interesting when conflict arises from a screening. Many times, people are just happy to be part of an event or too bound by social norms to complain. However, at the end of this particular screening, there was one gentleman in the audience who was upset over what he perceived to be the filmmakers' hands-off approach to making any real change in Newark. Essentially, he argued that they "made a good film" but still spoke from a pulpit, and not from the trenches. April graciously gave him time to speak, and the filmmakers accepted his critique while offering their own opinions. It may have been a heated, uncomfortable moment, but this exchange also addressed an important point. It heartened me to see that the films we air on P.O.V. are able to entice such provocative commentary and encourage communities to come together through constructive, even if sometimes painful, dialogue.
I know I've digressed a bit, but let us go back and revisit the idea that passion is linked, at least etymologically, to suffering. Perhaps it is the case that when people — whether they are filmmakers or audience members — are passionate about certain subjects, there may be an element of suffering involved; that learning is not always simple, that it can bring us to question our motives and ourselves, and ultimately, that though grappling with different perspectives is complex, it may help us gain a better understanding of difficult issues.
P.O.V.'s Community Outreach and Education department participates in a range of conferences and workshops throughout the year. In an effort to explore using media in classrooms — even those where you might not expect to — Jessica Lee and Irene Villaseñor attended the Radical Math conference at Long Island University in Brooklyn, NY last week. Jessica reports that the event was a great success.
Last week, Irene Villaseñor and I presented a workshop at Radical Math's Creating Balance in an Unjust World conference. Radical Math is the brainchild of educator Jonathan Osler, who, in 2006, started the website as a way to encourage and support math teachers who wanted to incorporate issues of economic and social justice into their curriculum. The conference was attended by nearly 400 people from 26 states and 37% of its workshops were facilitated by youth.
Since math isn't exactly the most obvious subject to be showcased in a social issue documentary series, it was very heartening that the conference organizers accepted our workshop proposal. Their decision reflects a positive trend: more and more educators are looking to engage their students by using media in their classrooms — and they look to programs like P.O.V. to help them make that transition.
Math teachers discussed how to inspire students to study algebra with Roger Weisberg's Waging a Living at the Radical Math conference in Brooklyn.
Though math isn't really an overt element in many of our films, we have broadcast many films that showcase injustice. In the Community Engagement and Education Department, we want educators to be able to use our films as examples of academic concepts embodied in real life. Irene and I decided to show our workshop participants clips from Roger Weisberg's documentary Waging a Living (P.O.V. 2006), which is about hard-working Americans struggling to make a living wage. Irene and I showed clips from the film and presented the companion lesson plan and discussion guide. Given that we're not math teachers, we wanted to give the group ample time to brainstorm with each other. In our department, we strongly believe that organizers, educators and those who borrow our films know their constituencies best and like to think of ourselves as a resource that can help meet community needs. As we were getting breakout groups together, one teacher said, "I think this would be a great introduction to algebra for my students. Does anyone want to talk about how we can use the film to talk about algebra?" Several teachers joined her group and they began a lively discussion on how concrete mathematical skills could be drawn out while still emphasizing the film's social justice message.
It's easy to assume that social issue media might be better matched to subjects like Language Arts and Social Studies, but the enthusiasm that we saw at the Radical Math conference proves that there is a diverse group of educators out there willing to further develop their teaching techniques and expand their repertoire. It's a natural fit for our films, too — in a sense, it's a pretty logical idea. Documentary filmmakers are educators, illuminating information deemed relevant and necessary, and they want audiences to learn something new each time they tune in. And it's fun for us to be part of process, too!
