How can we teach girls to be kinder to each other? We see a lot of movies and television shows and ads about the importance of being thin and looking young and smelling good and making money and being quippy and snarky and fast with put-downs and winning by vanquishing everyone around you but we don’t get many positive images of the simplest and perhaps the most powerful quality that is available to everyone: the quality of kindness.
Last September, Lauren Parsekian and Molly Stroud began a month and a half long journey across the country in a Kind Campaign decorated minivan donated by Toyota. They traveled over 10,000 miles collecting stories from hundreds of girls and women all over America. That is the basis for a documentary and a campaign to help girls and women learn to be kind.
As one woman says in the movie, we may not all be beautiful, we may not all be smart, we may not all be talented, but we can all be kind. I’ve made the pledge. Will you?
A Small Act: HBO Documentary about Transformation on $15 a Month
Posted on July 17, 2010 at 3:55 pm
One of the most inspiring films of the year is A Small Act. It is a documentary about Chris Mburu, a human rights advocate for the United Nations, whose life was transformed when a Swedish woman he never met decided to send $15 a month so that he could go to school.
Mburu is from Kenya. Hilda Back, now 85, survived the Holocaust but lost her family. She worked as a schoolteacher and never married. She hoped that the $15 a month she sent, her “small act,” would make a difference in the life of a child by making it possible for him to get an education. Mburu was so successful in school that he graduated from Harvard Law School and now spends his life fighting genocide and injustice.
In this film, Mburu, who has already set up a scholarship fund in Ms. Back’s name, meets her for the first time. She comes to his village, sees where he is from, celebrates with his people. And three students compete for a chance like the one Back gave Mburu. What small acts will they benefit from? What small acts will they make possible? What will you?
A wandering evangelist known only as “What’s Your Name” walks through the world with no money or possessions, dressed like the images of Jesus most familiar to Christians, sharing the messages of the Bible. It is interesting to me that many people approach him because they’ve seen him on television rather than because he represents the spirit of Christianity. But people find their encounters with him genuinely moving and inspiring, and it is touching to see the connections he makes with people, often more from the way he listens than from what he says. Believers and non-believers will both find their assumptions challenged in this film, and as with the people he encounters, your reactions will be more governed by what you bring with you than by whether he is a con man or mentally ill or truly filled with the spirit of God.
Too many children and too few spots — that is the story of The Lottery, a heart-wrenching documentary from Madeleine Sackler, the story of four children hoping to be the among the fortunate few chosen for admission to New York City’s best-performing public schools. The consequences of a random selection can be life-changing for the better or worse and can affect the entire family. Will the child become an active, engaged learner open to opportunity? Or will the child be condemned to a school system weighed down by bureaucracy and a structure that puts the interests of teachers over those of students? And it is a poignant contrast to Nursery University, the documentary about the scramble for New York City’s most sought-after preschools.
I spoke to director Madeleine Sackler about making the film and what she learned.
How did this film come together?
There were really two reasons I decided to make the film. The first was a statistic I read a few years ago out of New Haven that 17% of kids were at grade level. And there’s a school downtown serving the same kids that had 71%. And then several years later I saw footage of the lottery that we ended up featuring in the film and I realized that there were so many parents trying to get their kids into a better school and I became interested in telling that story.
How do you describe your style as a documentarian?
I really like cinema verite films. The director of photography I was fortunate enough to work with had shot some of my favorite verite films like “Children Underground.” The way that the stories are told without narration poses unique challenges for the filmmaker. Initially that was what the whole film was going to be, a portrait of four families. We encountered all of this political controversy surrounding the school that they wanted and I couldn’t ignore that but that meant we had to include more narration than we originally planned.
I was happy to see Geoffrey Canada in the film because I am interested in his work.
He’s an amazing guy and his schools are phenomenal. The three school leaders, Geoffrey Canada, Eva Moskowitz, and Dacia Toll, that are featured in the film have almost 30 schools between them. There are good charter schools and bad charter schools but these leaders show that their schools can be replicated. The point is not whether the school is charter or not, but that some people have demonstrated that they can make it work. Some people point to charter schools that aren’t as successful as a reason we should not have charters as an option but I do not understand that. No one wants to replicate bad schools. There are some school leaders that are willing and ready to open more schools that have a very successful track record.
What works?
There’s a few things that are consistent among higher-performing schools. The first is the use of data to drive both instruction and teacher and student evaluation. It’s exciting to watch because every few weeks kids can be moved around according to their achievement level. So the students are always achieving at the highest possible level. They’re not in groups with kids that are significantly behind. They often end up reading at one or two or more grade levels ahead which I think is exciting. And then school culture is something you cannot quantify but it is very noticeable at these schools. They are all very focused on high achievement, from working to get the parents on board to the teachers and students and administrators.
They do things like naming the classrooms after the university that the teacher went to and naming the grades the year that the kids will graduate from college. Instead of being in kindergarten, the student will be something like “Wesleyan 2024.” So they’re constantly working toward that goal.
It’s also the flexibility to hire and let go teachers, to lengthen the school day and the school year and to adjust the curriculum and instruction methods really at the drop of a hat if they see it isn’t working today they can fix it tomorrow.
What are the biggest obstacles to success in the regular school system?
There are some fantastic traditional public schools so it is possible, but the lack of flexibility makes it harder. Those rules have been shown not to lead to success. There are some fantastic traditional public schools, but those rules make it a lot harder and have not been shown to lead to success.
How can you address the problem of reaching parents to make education a priority for their children?
Involving the parents is something the high performing schools work very, very hard at. They don’t necessarily have a 100% success rate but that means they have to make up the difference. As a society it’s a moral obligation for us to give kids that opportunity. I talked to a lot of parents who were very frustrated with all of the rules and obligations, but then when their kids were reading before all of their friends’ kids, they were happy. People respond to results. But a study documented that it is the school that makes the biggest difference.
The greatest documentary film festival in America is Silverdocs, based in the American Film Institute’s gorgeous film exhibition spaces in Silver Spring, Maryland. It is an annual week-long festival that celebrates independent thinking, supports the diverse voices and free expression of independent storytellers, and fosters the power of documentary to enhance our understanding of the world. Anchored in the National Capital Region, where important global and national issues are the daily business, Silverdocs is marked by its relevance, broad intellectual range, and wide public appeal. Silverdocs was created through a unique alliance between AFI and the Discovery Channel, the festival’s Founding Sponsor.
This week’s participating films include:
“Freakonomics,” from the Oscar-winning director of “Taxi to the Dark Side” and the Enron and Jack Abramoff documentaries, and based on the best-seller that uses economics to explain behavior, not just markets.
Stephen Marshall’s “Holy Wars,” the story of two deeply committed men of faith – one a Muslim, the other a Christian – as they travel the world spreading messages they both feel represent “the truth.” The Muslim, an Irish convert living in London, advocates for a global jihad that will ultimately render his faith dominant. The Christian, living in the American heartland, sees Muslims as the enemy and considers it his duty to convert the unenlightened. What would happen if these two men were put in the same room together? This thought-provoking film is sure to push buttons and instigate discussions about the nature not of any one religion, but of extremism and tolerance.
“Making the Boys,” the story of the ground-breaking play (later a movie) “The Boys in the Band,” the first frank and sympathetic portrayal of gay men to achieve mainstream success.
“Restrepo,” from journalists Sebastian Junger (The Perfect Storm, War) and Tim Hetherington, who fully embeded themselves for a year with a platoon of U.S. soldiers stationed in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley. The remote 15-man outpost, “Restrepo”–named after a platoon medic killed in action–is a stronghold of al Qaeda and the Taliban, and arguably one of the U.S. Army’s deadliest challenges. With unprecedented access and unflinching immediacy, “Restrepo” reveals the challenges, triumphs, despair and intense camaraderie among the men who wake up each day under fire, never knowing whether they will make it home again.
“The People Vs. George Lucas” Is there any film-maker with more passionate fans and more passionate critics than the man who gave us Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Jar-Jar Binks? One fan, director Alexandre O. Philippe, presents the cases for and against the legendary auteur. At the heart of the matter is this question: Is film the property of the artist who created it or that of the audience that claims and loves it as its own?
“Wo Ai Ni, Mommy” is a quintessentially American story of hope, love, race, conflict, identity, loss, and re-invention. A warm, affectionate Jewish family from New York adopts an eight-year-old girl from China. They change her name to “Faith.” At first, she is lonely and homesick. But within a year, she considers herself American and has to have help from an interpreter when she calls her former foster family back in China via Skype. For me, one of the highlights of this touching and insightful film is when the documentarian cannot help but be drawn out of her role as objective reporter to serve as a liaison in helping to bring Faith and her new family together by translating what they are saying.
