Making Curriculum Pop

Grabbed a flier for this collection the night I heard Sidney Lumet speak at Lincoln Center this July. The collection is a partnership between Human Rights Watch and First look films and looks to have many teachable films on very challenging topics. Alan Teasley has probably already seen all of them so we'll have to wait for his recommendations:)

ABOUT THE HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH COLLECTION
In May 2004, First Run Features and Human Rights Watch launched a collaboration to bring films dealing with human rights issues to a wider audience. The Human Rights Watch International Film Festival division annually endorses selected First Run titles that shed light on human rights abuses throughout the world.

First Run Features and Human Rights Watch have long shared a philosophy that film has a unique ability to engage, inform and make a difference. For 25 years, First Run Features has brought films dealing with political, social and humanitarian issues to a wide and diverse audience. Similarly, since the inception of its International Film Festival in 1988, Human Rights Watch has embraced the power of film to influence public opinion and international policy.

American Outrage

Two feisty Western Shoshone sisters put up a heroic fight for their land rights - and their human rights.

Carrie and Mary Dann endure terrifying roundups by armed federal marshals in which thousands of their horses and cattle are confiscated, for the crime of grazing them on the open range outside their private ranch - even though that range is part of 60 million acres recognized as Western Shoshone land by the U.S. After the government sued them for trespassing, their dispute went to the Supreme Court, and eventually the United Nations.

Why has the U.S. spent millions persecuting and prosecuting two elderly women grazing a few hundred horses and cows in a desolate desert? The Dann sisters say the real reason is the resources hidden beneath this seemingly barren land, their Mother Earth: it is the second largest gold producing area in the world.

A Jihad for Love

Fourteen centuries after the revelation of the holy Qur’an to the Prophet Muhammad, Islam today is the world’s second largest and fastest growing religion. Muslim gay filmmaker Parvez Sharma travels the many worlds of this dynamic faith, discovering the stories of its most unlikely storytellers: lesbian and gay Muslims.

Produced by Sandi DuBowski (Trembling Before G-d) and Sharma, A Jihad for Love was filmed in 12 countries and 9 languages and comes from the heart of Islam. Looking beyond a hostile and war-torn present, it reclaims the Islamic concept of a greater Jihad, whose true meaning is akin to ‘an inner struggle’ or ‘to strive in the path of God’ - allowing its remarkable subjects to move beyond the narrow concept of Jihad as holy war.

S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine

S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine is part of The Human Rights Watch Collection.

In 1975-79, almost two million Cambodians lost their lives to murder and famine when the Khmer Rouge forced the urban population into the countryside to fulfill their ideal of an agrarian utopia.

The notorious detention center code-named 'S21' was the schoolhouse-turned prison where 17,000 men, women and children were tortured and killed, their "crimes" meticulously documented to justify their execution.

In this award-winning documentary and astonishing historical document, survivor Vann Nath confronts his captors, some of whom were as young as 12 years old when they committed their atrocities.

La Sierra

La Sierra is a barrio in Medellin, Colombia - the cocaine capital of the world.

Here, lives are defined by drugs, guns and violence. A state of perptual urban warfare exists, with paramilitary gangs, leftist guerrillas and the US-sponsored Colombian military battling continually for power and control.

This award-winning film portrays three of La Sierra's inhabitants: 22-year-old paramilitary leader Edison, a self-professed killer and father of six children by six women; gang soldier Jesus, ready for death at any moment; and Cielo, only 17 and already a mother with a boyfriend in prison.

Entering a world where few journalists dare to venture, La Sierra reveals not only startling moments of violence and its aftermath, but also those of tenderness and faith which give the community hope for survival.

The Devil's Miner

The Devil's Miner is an astonishing portrait of two brothers, 14-year-old Basilio and 12-year-old Bernardino, who work deep inside the silver mines of Cerro Rico, Bolivia. Raised without a father and living on the slopes of the mine, Basilio and his brother must work the mines when they are not in school to help support their family and afford supplies vital to their education.

In the mines, which date back to the 16th century, it is an ancient belief that the Devil determines the fate of those who enter. Basilio and his brother place their faith in the mountain devil's generosity, hoping to earn enough money so they can continue going to school - their only chance of escaping their destiny in the silver mines.

Dreaming Lhasa

Karma, a Tibetan filmmaker from New York, goes to Dharamsala, the Dalai Lama's exile headquarters in northern India, to make a documentary about former political prisoners who have escaped from Tibet. She wants to reconnect with her roots but is also escaping a deteriorating relationship back home.

One of Karma's interviewees is Dhondup, an enigmatic ex-monk who has just escaped from Tibet. He confides in her that his real reason for coming to India is to fulfill his dying mother's last wish, to deliver a charm box to a long-missing resistance fighter. Karma finds herself unwittingly falling in love with Dhondup even as she is sucked into the passion of his quest, which becomes a journey into Tibet's fractured past and a voyage of self-discovery.

Dangerous Living: Coming Out in the Developing World

Dangerous Living: Coming Out in the Developing World is the first documentary to deeply explore the lives of gay and lesbian people in non-western cultures. Traveling to five different continents, we hear the heartbreaking and triumphant stories of gays and lesbians from Egypt, Honduras, Kenya, Thailand and elsewhere, where most occurrences of oppression receive no media coverage at all. By sharing the personal stories coming out of developing nations, Dangerous Living sheds light on an emerging global movement striving to end discrimination and violence against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people.

The Camden 28

Summer, 1971. Protests against the Vietnam war are spreading across America. In Camden, New Jersey, a group of 28 activists, mostly conscientious objectors from the Catholic left, plan to break into a local draft board office and destroy records - striking a blow against the system. But little do they know a mole has infiltrated their operation...and within hours of beginning their mission they are rounded up and arrested by the FBI, under the personal authority of J. Edgar Hoover.

Featuring a treasure trove of archival materials as well as current interviews with members of the Camden 28, scholars such as Howard Zinn, and a former FBI agent involved in the case, this award-winning documentary uncovers a story of potent dissent - one that has special relevance in our current political climate.

Silent Waters

Silent Waters is set in 1979 in Pakistan, when General Zia-ul-Haq took control of the country and stoked the fires of Islamic nationalism. Ayesha, a Muslim woman who gets by on her late husband’s pension and by teaching young girls the Koran, invests her hopes in her beloved son Saleem. But when Saleem takes up with a group of Islamic fundamentalists just as a group of Sikh pilgrims come to town, Ayesha’s haunted past turns her present life upside down.

Roses in December

On December 2, 1980 lay missioner Jean Donovan and three American nuns were brutally murdered by members of El Salvador’s security force. This “sensitive, marvelously constructed film” (Catholic New York) chronicles Jean’s life, from her affluent childhood in Connecticut, to her decision to volunteer with the Maryknolls in El Salvador, to her tragic death.

An award-winning classic for the ages, Roses in December is both an eloquent memorial to the commitment of this courageous young woman and a powerful indictment of U.S. foreign policy in Central America.

Full info on the entire collection can be found here

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Replies to This Discussion

how can you incorporate foreign films at the elementary level? Any titles or ideas? Gracias!
Gustavo - a million ideas on that question - in the meantime check out these examples...

Media Circles Using Pixar Short Films (elementary)
5th Grade Unit of Study: The Holocaust
Julia's ABC Song Finds Its First Images (little little ones)

Also check out the film "Bully Dance" from bullfrog films

You might also pose the question above - just give a little extra background on you and the work you do - in the Teach with Moving Images Group discussion forum - I can crowdsource the question to the whole Ning membership!!
Some movies I would recommend are the following: (These recommendations are not for elementary level but for Ryan's original post; sorry if I misplaced my response. I'm new at this!)
Secondhand Pepe A film by Shell & Bertozzi (2007) 24 minutes www.secondhandfilm.com With funding by the Mass. Foundation for the Humanities. Produced at Harvard's Film Study Center (vanbertozzi@gmail.com) It's about the past recycling into the present through the movement of clothing around the world via Goodwill. A very interesting film. Has English subtitles.
Born into Brothels Documentary. Academy Award Winner film by Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski.ThinkFilm.
1 hour and 23 minutes.
The Hidden Face of Globalization: What the Corporations Don't Want Us to Know: A Crowing Rooster Arts Production Film, 2003. 34 minutes; National Labor Committee; also see YouTube for many great video clips from the NLC; I use quite a few for various purposes in my classroom; particularly the two part one of Disney in Haiti.

I hope these help!
Ingrid - nice additions - no, you did the reply right - you can reply directly to a person or to the overall discussion you rocked the ladder - thanks for sharing these resources!

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