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Reviewing Human Rights Films |
Before you Begin: You can find a film's bibliographic information by visiting the University of Washington's Information Gateway. There may be more than one record of the film (VHS and/or DVD or available from Tacoma or Bothell). Once you locate a video in the catalog, go to the Odegaard Undergraduate Library's Media Center and check it out. You must have a valid Husky Card ID in order to check out any material from the Media Center. The Media Center also has VCRs available to use in-house and headphones for you to check out. This is the record template used to retrieve all necessary data from a film before its inclusion to the Human Rights Film Directory. Make sure to include everything the template asks for, including publisher, publication date, director, length, etc. (If one or more fields do not apply you can leave them blank). Our goal here is to provide an accurate, objective, and informative description of the film. This review will help professors and students make informed decisions as to the validity, scope, accuracy, and relevance of a film. After you review a film and fill out all the necessary bibliographic information in the template, send it to Glenda Pearson or Memo Cordova. Viewing and Reading Assignments: Please watch the following videos before you begin watching your topic films:
Please read the following before or during the time that you review your topic films: "How Real is the Reality in Documentary Film?"in History and Theory, Dec. 1997, v36 n4 p.80+. You can either read this article in Suzzallo (Periodicals, third floor Suzzallo, call number D1 H8173 1997), or link from the Libraries catalog record here. Click on "Connect to this title online," click on the link called "earliest," and click under 1997 on vol36 no4. There are several interesting articles in this issue, but of particular value is no. 6, "How Real is the Reality in Documentary Film?" You can download a pdf file of the article by clicking on "article availability." Check the Connecting to the Libraries page if you have trouble with access or connecting to an article. Please note that you MUST come into this site on your UW account (or be recognized by the proxy server) or use a UW computer on campus. Techniques for reviewing: Who produced the film? Do a Lexis/Nexis search and a web search on the name of the director and the name of the organization or company that produced and/or distributed the documentary. Do the people involved in making the film have their own political reputations? Have they been involved in other films with a similar scope? What is the theme or topic? If the film is about a specific event or political situation, check Nexis/Lexis again for at least some actual news coverage so that you have some background and context for viewing the film(s). If you can read Spanish, search in the Spanish Language News group. For instance, the keyword search CHIAPAS and HUMAN RIGHTS results in over 175 Spanish language news stories, some from Mexican sources. Check Expanded Academic Index or other more specialized databases for articles on your subject. A search here on CHIAPAS and HUMAN RIGHTS turns up 48 stories, including the first one listed, "Limiting Indigenous Autonomy in Chiapas, Mexico: the State Government's Use of Human Rights," in Human Rights Quarterly, 2000, v22 n4. You can download this article by linking to the catalog record for Human Rights Quarterly from the UW Online Catalog, or go directly to the journal issue here.
(Rebellion in Chiapas during [dates])  Plot summary
gives you a little more space to describe the way the film covers the story,
for example:
"Five very different individuals involved in the Chiapas uprising are interviewed in this film: the "spokesman" for the rebels Sublieutenant X, a U.S. State Dept. official, a low ranking Indian fighter and a peasant woman. These different perspectives are explored in depth."
"The interviewer was definitely very sympathetic to the cause of the indigenous peoples and allowed for lengthy explanations (taking up most of the film time), whereas discussions with the military and US representative were more confrontational and appeared to be more heavily edited. Film footage of damage done by the military, disruption of village life and culture was graphic and painful to watch. The demands of the rebels were clearly delineated and their frustrations with the government were described at length. The film, while putting the people of Chiapas in a very sympathetic light, does provide good historical background and a chronology of events that have led to this impasse with the Mexican authorities."
We can go over what you've found in the way of secondary and primary reading (web pages, newspaper stories, journal articles and monographs) and decide what is appropriate to include in the "References" section of the Review template. If you have any questions please e-mail Glenda Pearson or Memo Cordova. MC 9.02 |