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Documentary Film (documentary + film)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences60%

Selected Abstracts

The Ideological Implications of Using "Educational" Film to Teach Controversial Events

CURRICULUM INQUIRY, Issue 3 2009
JEREMY D. STODDARD
ABSTRACT Use of media in today's classrooms, from feature and documentary film to news clips streamed via the Web, has grown exponentially. Film can be a powerful medium for teaching and learning, but is often viewed as a neutral source of information. This collective case study focuses on two teachers who use documentary film to teach about controversial events, with the goal of better understanding teacher selection and use of film as part of pedagogy and the experiences of students who are engaged in deliberative activities with film. In this case, teachers utilized film to help students examine two controversial events in U.S. history, the use of atomic weapons against Japan at the end of World War II and the role of the United States in Vietnam. These cases illustrate a tension that many teachers, who want to engage students in deliberative activities but who also want students to adopt particular moral or political stances, face in today's classrooms. The teachers in these cases utilize film as a neutral source for students to use as evidence for taking a position, despite the value-laden perspectives included in the films, perspectives that aligned with the teachers' own political beliefs. Other findings include student inability to recognize the perspectives in documentary films, the epistemic stances of teachers and students that documentaries are accurate and neutral, and the characteristics of students who are better equipped to recognize ideological perspectives. Implications for teachers, teacher educators, and especially democratic and social studies education researchers are explored. [source]

Disciplining Subjectivity and Space: Representation, Film and its Material Effects

ANTIPODE, Issue 2 2004
Jennifer England
Although the distinction between representation and reality is increasingly blurred, I argue that representational discourses have material effects in everyday life. By moving "outside the text" I trace the messy terrain between visual discourse and everyday life in Downtown Eastside, Vancouver by examining two questions: (1) how do discursive productions of visual culture articulate, inscribe, and discipline space and subjectivity and (2) how do aboriginal women negotiate the material consequences of those representations? Using discourse and feminist analysis, I analyse how a documentary film, produced by the Vancouver Police Department, constructs spaces and subjectivities of deviance through techniques of realism and the moral gaze of the police officers. I argue that aboriginal women negotiate these deviant representations through their experiences of racism and sexism by police officers. Consequently, aboriginal women are rendered either hyper-visible or invisible by police officers, marked by their gender, race, and class. Combining an analysis of the documentary film and in-depth interviews with aboriginal women, I argue that critical geographers must consider the analytical spaces "outside of the text" to explore the material effects of visual representations. [source]

On Ethics and Documentary: A Real and Actual Truth

COMMUNICATION THEORY, Issue 4 2006
Garnet C. Butchart
This article brings recent psychoanalytic theory to bear on contemporary moral opinion about ethical practice in documentary film and video. A critical distinction is made between ethics and morals, and Alain Badiou's (1993/2001) philosophical conception of an ethic of truths is used to challenge the restrictions put upon documentary. It is argued that visual perception remains the truth of any documentary, and three modes are proposed according to which an ethic of disclosing this truth may be practiced with a view to overcome the obstacles of morality-based ethical systems. [source]

The Ideological Implications of Using "Educational" Film to Teach Controversial Events

CURRICULUM INQUIRY, Issue 3 2009
JEREMY D. STODDARD
ABSTRACT Use of media in today's classrooms, from feature and documentary film to news clips streamed via the Web, has grown exponentially. Film can be a powerful medium for teaching and learning, but is often viewed as a neutral source of information. This collective case study focuses on two teachers who use documentary film to teach about controversial events, with the goal of better understanding teacher selection and use of film as part of pedagogy and the experiences of students who are engaged in deliberative activities with film. In this case, teachers utilized film to help students examine two controversial events in U.S. history, the use of atomic weapons against Japan at the end of World War II and the role of the United States in Vietnam. These cases illustrate a tension that many teachers, who want to engage students in deliberative activities but who also want students to adopt particular moral or political stances, face in today's classrooms. The teachers in these cases utilize film as a neutral source for students to use as evidence for taking a position, despite the value-laden perspectives included in the films, perspectives that aligned with the teachers' own political beliefs. Other findings include student inability to recognize the perspectives in documentary films, the epistemic stances of teachers and students that documentaries are accurate and neutral, and the characteristics of students who are better equipped to recognize ideological perspectives. Implications for teachers, teacher educators, and especially democratic and social studies education researchers are explored. [source]

Cleaners' Organizing in Britain from the 1970s: A Personal Account

ANTIPODE, Issue 3 2006
Sheila Rowbotham
In the early 1970s the Women's Liberation Movement in Britain set out to unionize night cleaners. A long and intensive campaign resulted in two strikes and a greater awareness in the trade union movement about this neglected group of workers. But though the publicity generated by newspaper articles, meetings, and the making of two documentary films on cleaners focused attention on their conditions, organization proved very difficult. This was compounded by the economic and political climate from the late 1970s and the impact of privatization, which contributed to the growth in inequality in British society. This article outlines a disregarded history of attempts to organize cleaners, a history which is gaining a new-found relevance in the wake of the "Justice for Janitors" campaign in the US and the awareness that low-paid service work plays a key part in the global economy. [source]