NBC Narrator Rosalind Jordan looks back at the story of Emmett Till, who was 14 when he left Chicago to visit his family in the segregated South. Two white men accused Till of making a pass at Bryant's wife, Carolyn, and Till was brutally murdered.
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A hundred years ago, in communities across the U.S., white residents forced thousands of black families to flee their homes. Even a century later, these towns remain almost entirely white. Banished tells the story of three of these communities and their black descendants, who return to learn their shocking histories. This event presents a screening of the film, followed by a conversation with director Marco Williams. Williams, a member of the faculty at NYU, is a documentary and fiction film director. His films have been broadcast on cable and public television, including Showtime and Frontline, and have been screened at film festivals throughout the world.
Divided We Fall is the first feature-length independent documentary about hate violence in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. Filmmaker Valarie Kaur documented stories in the Sikh, Muslim, and Arab American communities. Over the next five years, Kaur's journey unfolded into a larger exploration of "who counts as American." In 2005, Sharat Raju and his film crew joined Valarie as she retraced her steps across the country, revisiting her original interviewees and other scholars, lawyers, and legislators about race, religion, and security in post-9/11 America. The screening is free and open to the public. It will include a showing of the film and comments by Dr. Jaideep Singh, co-founder of the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund, Assistant Professor in Department of Ethnic Studies, CSUEB, and Ranjit Singh Sabharwal Chair in Sikh and Punjabi Studies and by Neha Singh, Western Region Director of the Sikh Coalition, Fremont. A question-answer period with panelists will end the program
Bill Moyers's documentary, Becoming American: The Chinese Experience, explores the challenges faced by Chinese Americans from the 1800s to the present and raises questions about the tensions between race, democracy, and citizenship. Participants view excerpts and explore parallels between the Chinese experience and those of other newcomers to the U.S.—what it means to "become American" today.
In conjunction with Facing History's content and themes of rescue during the Holocaust, participants will deepen their understanding of the ways one person can make a difference. The workshop will feature the documentary Blessed is the Match, one of Facing History's latest resources that tells the story of Hannah Senesh, the World War II-era poet and diarist who became a soldier, martyr, and national heroine in Israel.
"Across the country, an increasing number of teachers have discovered an exciting and innovative way to promote a love of history. Easy-to-use software (such as Microsoft’s PhotoStory and Movie Maker, and Apple’s iMovie) and extensive copyright-free online images (like those found on the Library of Congress’s American Memory site) make it possible for students to create high quality, Ken Burns-like videos combining narration, text, graphics, and historical images and music. Professor Mintz, a pioneer in the application of new technologies to history teaching and research, will lead teachers through the process of creating digital documentaries with their students."
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Interpretation in Action examines a mixed-ability 9th-grade class working with documentary films. This video shows students working to plan, write, and organize their own documentaries about World War I. In this video, students create an account of the Battle of the Somme and, in so doing, practice evaluating historical evidence and constructing interpretations. This video provides examples of two promising practices:
Before beginning work on their films, students spent a week developing deeper understandings of World War I, particularly the Battle of the Somme, the subject of the documentary film that students viewed in the first part of this two-part video. Students then spend time collecting accounts of the battle that they will use for their projects.
According to the instructor of this class, creating their own documentaries helps students understand that history is a result of evidence-based interpretation. The task turns the process of doing history inside-out, asking students to construct narratives rather than simply learning them. It also makes transparent the dual purposes of documentary historical film: providing a credible record of the past and entertaining a target audience.
In this assignment, students create historical interpretations as if they were planning a documentary film. To do so, they are told, requires careful use of evidence. Consequently, the students' first task is to examine primary sources regarding World War I and the Battle of the Somme. After asking questions about the reliability of sources and comparing them against each other, students begin to piece together narratives. Then, having constructed initial interpretations, students are asked to return to the evidence to carefully select images and words, which they then sequence in a documentary-style narrative. By having students move back and forth between evidence and interpretation, the instructor helps them understand a complicated process.
Many teachers use documentary film in the classroom, but few use it to teach about historical interpretation. This lesson takes this concept a step further by having students plan their own documentary films. Consequently, the lesson directly engages students in the work that historians do and helps them develop skills that they will continue to use throughout their history coursework.