Friday, June 25 was my day to spend at the SilverDocs film festival. I attended two conference seminars, the Public Media Corps, Building Community session and the Technology of the Future in Education session. I attended these sessions because of my interests in social media and S.T.E.M. (science, technology, engineering and math) education. Perhaps the most significant perspective from the Public Media session was from a young panelist who had taught social media to inner city youth. He felt that though bloggers, Tweeters and the rest of the social media reporters are now seen as secondary citizens in the eyes of mainstream media journalists, that they would eventually reign supreme after they “knocked the bottom” out from under major media by presenting our world’s events with the truth – not sensationalized reports meant to sell publications and earn ratings.
The education technology session focused on “transmedia storytelling” and had two presenters. One a producer from Canada who had created a multimedia curriculum called “Breakout!” (www.breakoutonline.com). Breakout! consists of 25, 8-minute video episodes that are focused on youth activism for topics such as water conservation, AIDS, community, shelter, sustainable living, sport ethics, child labor, peace, biodiversity, education and chidren’s rights. Each topic comes with grade-specific curricula and on-line games to engage the students.
The second presenter was from Apple and talked about his company’s ITunes U. He said that most people think the name means iTunes University, when in fact it means iTunes YOU. Apple’s focus on education is rooted in the belief that education formats need to be created from the students’ preferred method of learning… from the inside out. He show video interviews with young students who were so media and technology savvy that it was somewhat scary, and ended the presentation with the subtitle, “Coming soon to a school near you!” Teachers be aware!
“The Woman with Five Elephants”, Vadim Jendrayko
This was one of the most movingly beautiful films I have ever seen. The story is told by 85 year old Svetlana Geier who as a young girl in Kiev, survived the Nazi occupation by becoming fluent in German. This skill gained her the respect of high level Nazis who ultimately sent her to work at Gestapo headquarters in Germany in exchange for a grant that lead to her attaining a Ph.D. In order to augment her professor’s salary, she has been painstakingly translating from Russian to German the voluminous works of Dostoyevsky’s five great novels – the five elephants.
The layers of the story are what are what bring magic to this film. Dr. Geier’s accounts are given validity when she is returns to Kiev for the first time in over 60 years to address a group of high school students. The plot is further enhanced by her daily, humorous interactions with her two equally detail-oriented translation co-workers (it takes her an average of three years to translate one book), her extensive family dinners, her love of the tactile when caring for her family heirloom linens, her care and acceptance of the death of her son, and the fact that her attention to detail and honor is prevalent in every facet of her life.
Dr. Geier is still translating today, and the film was validated by an audience member who had been a student of hers and gave her the highest praise as an educator and humanitarian. He attended SilverDocs just to see this film. What a small world!
Restrepo, Tim Hetherington, Sebastian Junger
Restrepo is going to become one of the most important, real life portrayals of the U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. Hetherington and Junger followed the tour of duty of a platoon of soldiers from their bus ride to deployment through the vacating of their hold in the Korengal Valley. Known as the most volatile Afghan region, these soldiers were under fire every day, and were able to positively change the dynamic of the region after building a new outpost called Out Post Restrepo, named after one of their fallen platoon members.
The quality of the footage holds true to National Geographic’s standards, as they are distributing the film. However, the up close and personal interviews of members of the platoon after the fact, and the open and honest capture of real life activities of the day of a soldier are what give the film its raw poignancy. One side item here is the number of times the soldiers use the “F” word. Personally, I always say that I only use that word for emphasis. However, in war, profanity simply adds validity to the chaos at hand and should be accepted for what it is – a way to express emotions that are so off the Richter scale that no other word will do.
I was impressed that the scenes shown were not gory in the Hollywood respect. The fallen soldiers and locals were covered with no blood and limbs strewn about. Yet the tragedy and emotion of everyone impacted by this war was perfectly shown through the emotion of the soldiers when they saw the aftermath of each situation. Most memorable for me were scenes showing injured infants and toddlers and the reaction of one soldier when he discovered that one of his best friends had been killed just moments before.
The after-viewing panel discussion included Judger and the platoon leader, and both were met with a standing ovation. The Silverrods showing of Rest repo was the first time the platoon leader had seen the film, and he admitted to being quite overwhelmed with emotion. When asked how he felt about the fact that the U.S. had surrendered the Korengal Valley months after his platoon returned home, he said “I felt a lot better about it before seeing this film.”