Documenting Change
Documenting Change was a semester-long documentary film project built around an examination of groups and individuals who have fought for greater social justice within U.S. society. During this project, which was conducted as a collaboration between two Humanities classes, our students studied a particular U.S. Social Movement enacted in pursuit of change and, after exploring its causes, goals & significant events, honed in on a Cultural Movement that served to support this larger effort. Each student had the opportunity to look deeper than the political and legislative achievements of the movement and examine the ways in which art, music, civil disobedience, technology, theater, economic action, education, social media or similar methods have challenged the social norms of an era.
Driven by questions such as How did these events spread ideas? Affect behaviors? Establish cultural esteem for minority groups? each member of our team was able to derive a personal understanding of the ways in which cultural efforts have supported social change.
With a learned perspective the topic they chose to explore, students worked in groups to imagine, write and produce a documentary film depicting their research and offering their commentary. As our students headed out to conduct interviews, organize primary source footage, record narrations, and master many other aspects of the production process, our team was able to create movies depicting what we discovered about the rights and opportunities of groups who have been socially, politically or economically marginalized in the United States. Along the way, we had the invaluable guidance of several community members, including Matt Amar of Leomar Productions and Susan Botello of the International Mobile Film Festival, who offered professional insights that ultimately helped each of our movies become polished works of art.
Beyond the films, each student worked to author a Cento (a poem constructed using appropriated materials) and a historical fiction piece. These writings captured the potent messages embedded within the efforts for social change that our team had examined and, after much critique & revision, were compiled and published in an anthology titled Documenting Change to be exhibit with our final films.
After taking on focused research, developing savvy with various technologies, and employing creativity during the group effort required to craft our final products, our work was exhibited for our community at Queen Bee’s Art & Cultural Center as a means of sharing our voices with the society we are each members of.