Planning Ahead

It was a cheerless crew of three that blinked the movie theater darkness away in the bright early afternoon light. It had been Emily's preference to go to the movies early and have the rest of the day free, and so she, Heidi, and I had arrived a little before ten a.m. to catch the first show of the day of the Oscar-nominated documentary shorts, and the tales of children in war zones (Kabul and East St. Louis), children refugees in Sweden who are victims of Resignation Syndrome, children trapped by their obedience and drowned on a capsizing ferry in South Korea, and former young refugees finding new refuge in ballroom dancing, had left we three teachers somber and a bit doleful.

"Good thinking to come early, Emily," Heidi said. "Because now?" she continued. "We have the rest day of the to recover!

For the Record

A question occurred to me as I sat watching the five Academy-Award-nominated short documentaries this afternoon. Is the job of a documentary simply to document or is it something more?

I considered the first of the five, the story of young man of Nigerian heritage whose parents had moved him from London to a city 35 miles away in attempt to shield him from the violence that claimed the life of a child from their neighborhood. Confronted by racism in his new home, his survival strategy was to do whatever he could to get the thugs targeting him to accept him, and he was so successful that he eventually became a member of their violent gang.

The next entry followed several terminally ill patients, their families, and caretakers as they negotiated end-of-life situations and decisions with as much dignity and empathy as possible. Mini-doc three consisted of 7 minutes of archival footage of a rally held 80 years ago in Madison Square Garden where 20,000 Americans showed up to support the rise of Nazism in Europe.

The fourth was on refugees fleeing Northern Africa on perilous rafts and boats bound for Europe, a topic that has been addressed by other films, also recognized by the Academy, over the last few years. The final entry told about women in India who, held back by the inconvenience and stigma of menstruation started a pad manufacturing factory that gave them and their clients more freedom to pursue education and employment.

When the last credits rolled and the lights came up, I imagined that my fellow movie-goers were also wondering how best to appraise what these various films were documenting. Was it simply some aspect of the the human condition? Was it a problem? A solution? Or something else?

The Documentary Zone

The theater is warm and the lights are dim when you walk in. The chairs are really no more than glorified folding chairs with a little extra padding and a single arm rest. The screen? By multiplex standards, it is quite small, but it is big enough. Even so, you choose seats in the first row so that nothing will obstruct your view, lean back, and relax. You are about to enter another dimension.

For the next three hours, you will be immersed in the lives of other people. There is a 69-year-old man who carves huge, wondrous caves from sandstone, an 82-year-old WWII vet who is serving life in prison for murder-- you will see him die, an impossibly optimistic 109-year-old survivor of the Holocaust, unarmed Yemeni protestors in Change Square who are gunned down by snipers, and an ex-Neo-Nazi and his friend, the gay former street hustler who he almost kicked to death 25 years ago.

These are this year's Oscar-nominated documentary shorts, a collection of movies both so personal and humanizing, that you will leave the theater a slightly different, maybe even better, person than you were before. That's the sign post up ahead.

Exchange Rate

Sometimes, if I'm tempted by a high-calorie snack or treat, I'll calculate how long on the treadmill it would take to burn it off. With that perspective, it's usually easier to pass up.

Today we saw the Oscar-nominated documentary shorts, and like every year, these five 40-minute films served up a lot of food for thought, as well as close to three sedentary hours on my butt. Still I'm satisfied that they exercised my mind and heart if not my body and heart.

I liked them all, but the one I find my thoughts returning to is Redemption, the story of New York City canners-- a sub-culture of people who comb through trash and recycling to find cans and bottles to redeem. Some simply supplement their income by canning, but most of the people in the movie made their living this way, and hard lives they were.

Early in the film, Walter, a homeless Vietnam vet, drove the enterprise home for me when he started reeling off the cost of things in cans. A Starbucks drip coffee? 50 cans. A box of handmade chocolates? 500 cans.


Such a calibration was momentarily staggering to me, and I could not stop myself from converting my own recent expenditures. The water in the cup holder next to me: 75 cans, downtown parking: 200 cans, that salad at lunch: 160 cans. The sour smell of every redemption center I've ever visited filled my nose, and all of a sudden "just a nickel" seemed like so much more.

Long Weekend Short

The best consequence of the continuing commercialization the Academy Awards is the release of 15 films we might never see otherwise. Animated, Live Action, and Documentary-- going to the theater to watch the Oscar-nominated shorts is always a highlight of our February. It is the antidote to all those big-budget blockbusters (as much as I love 'em), and a reminder that there is so much more to the art than the industry of the movies.

Woe is Us

We went to see the Oscar-nominated documentary shorts this afternoon. This collection of five films between 35 and 40 minutes at first seemed to be a catalog of the world's woes: a Jordanian Muslim man who lost 27 friends and family members when the Amman hotel where he was holding his wedding reception was bombed by terrorists launches a crusade to put "jihad" into its proper Islamic perspective; because their atoll is being consumed by the rising sea, 1000+ people living in the Carteret Islands must find a new home elsewhere, despite the fact that their ancestors have lived on those there with a cash-less economy for 1000 years; the residents of a small village in China must take on local officials to resolve the damages that the local chemical factory has inflicted on their air, soil, and water since the early 1970s; and a former cheerleader struggles with PTSD after her tour of duty in Iraq. Even the last documentary, which was easily the most uplifting of the five, was not without serious adversity-- a public school in Tel Aviv works hard to offer its students everything they need to learn, despite the high proportion of immigrant and refugee kids-- not surprisingly, there were some heartbreaking stories in that one, too.

What is one to do when confronted with such information? There was a part of the last film that really resonated with me-- it was the last day of school, and the audience was invited to celebrate the great gains that the students we had followed had made. It was very moving, and in a voice-over, one of the teachers said something like, each of these kids has experienced the support of at least one adult and has been successful because of it. We hope that they will carry that notion into the world with them and become people who reach out and help others.

When we talk about education and learning, let's not lose sight of that.  It's not enough to fill kids' heads with facts and figures; the feeling that the people in charge care about them will engender the compassion that they will need to face the uncertain future of our planet.