What’s right? Watch 5 films that explore the concept of social justice

Social justice is a topic we know well at the NFB. It’s a topic that lends itself well to the documentary form, and as a result has formed the backbone of many a film.

There are so many facets to explore in the relationship between individuals and society; in the distribution of wealth, opportunity, and social privilege. It is through this exploration that we can examine, and perhaps come to some agreement, on what is fair and just in these regards.

At the heart of it, I think that’s what these 5 films aim to do – offer us an opportunity to examine these issues and draw some conclusions about what it means to live in a fair and just society.

Payback

This feature doc from 2011 was based on Margaret Atwood’s bestsellng book, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth. The book, in turn, was based on a series of Massey Lectures that Atwood gave in 5 different Canadian cities back in 2008. The subject was debt, but from a very different perspective.

We tend to think of debt in financial measures – that which is derived from borrowing and lending. And while the latter remains true, debt isn’t always a financial construct. This film looks also looks at the psychological, theological, literary, and ecological aspects of debt, as well.

Payback is an exploration of the relationship between debtors and creditors, both traditional and non-traditional. It seeks to uncover how debt affects relationships, societies, governments, and life and the planet itself. It does this by looking at specific stories, bringing us right into the heart of what it means to owe and be owed. From the wealth of Conrad Black to the near-slave conditions of the tomato field workers in southern Florida, we see it all.

It is the perfect film to kick off the topic of social justice.

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Wal-Town the Film

Talk about your crazy road trip. In this feature-length doc, six students based out of Quebec embark on a cross-country mission to visit 36 of the 200 Walmart stores. Why? To raise awareness about their business practices, and how it affects cities across Canada.

Joining the activists is, obviously, a film crew, but also – just for fun – a wacky gonzo journalist. Not quite Dr. Gonzo gonzo, but pretty entertaining nonetheless. He was researching a story on Walmart that he’d pitched to a publication when he came upon the Wal-Town crew (that’s what the students call themselves). He gave them a call and asked if he could ride along.

While he works on his story, we see the students working hard toward their goal. According to them, their aim is to take culture back from the giant multi-national corporations. They’re worried about “being consumers at the risk of being citizens.” It’s a social justice mission at its finest.

They kick off their journey by visiting the only unionized store in Canada, so we actually do get to see both sides. It’s a fascinating and entertaining film, no matter which side of the conversation you fall on.

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The Downtown Project

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I sat down to watch this film. The description we have on the site paints it as a film about a seedy social housing complex that sits at the centre of Montreal’s downtown core. I was expecting social justice style activism in petitioning for better living conditions. But it only takes a few minutes of watching the film to realize that the residents don’t view their home in this way at all.

Les Habitations Jeanne-Mance is, or was at the time of filming in 2011, the largest social housing complex in Quebec. Its population is made up of 1700 residents, the majority of which are immigrants. As one resident says, it’s like living in the United Nations. Of those 1700, about 500 are youth 18 and under. After listening to just one of those kid’s stories, you realize that some of them see their home as paradise on earth, compared to where they’ve come from.

The film is a real wake-up call. This is a community of people who, for the most part, are truly grateful for what they have. It’s a stark look at the contrast between the privileged middle and upper classes vs. the lower-class minorities. The average yearly income for residents at the complex is $12,000 per year. Think about that for a moment.

This is a small film with a lot of heart. The stories will touch you and open your eyes. In French with English subtitles.

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Au Chic Resto Pop

Watching a film about hungry children living right in your own city is enough to make anyone’s stomach churn. It is so difficult to wrap my head around the dire situation that some of these families are in. As I shop for groceries, snack between meals, have meals, there are kids who go days without food.

Filmmaker Tahani Rached attacks the issue of hunger head on with this engaging, and oddly hopeful, feature-length doc. It focuses on an organization, Le Chic Resto Pop, which recycles discarded food to feed the hungry for a buck a meal.

We get to see all facets of the Resto Pop, from the staff that works there to the people it serves. We’re privy to how they attempt to balance the business side with the social cause they’re serving. And how important it is to understand that they’re not a charity, but a community practicing self-sufficiency. And all of it set to a great soundtrack.

Rached is no stranger to social justice issues. One look at the films we have online and you’ll see it’s a common theme in her work. This film is no exception. French with English subtitles.

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VTR: St-Jacques

This short film forms part of a collective body of work known as the Challenge for Change project. Challenge for Change was an initiative that made use of newly-available portable video equipment to get right into the heart of community and social justice issues, with the goal of empowering Canadians to help themselves.

The program ran from 1967 to 1980, and is one of the NFB’s most well-known, and controversial, endeavours. This film was made in 1969, so pretty early on. The objective as to stimulate social action in a poor Montreal neighbourhood, by taking a camera and microphone right up to community members and having them talk about their issues.

Rather than being forgotten, or left on the sidelines, these people were finally being given a voice, and a platform to speak. As a result, they learned that the could be active participants in their own lives. It’s a great look at the power of community video. In French and English, with English subtitles.

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Bear Focus Timer: Concentrate

Bear Focus Timer is a concentration timer app.

Get Focused

Despite its relatively short history of existing, the internet has been around long enough that most of us understand the importance of taking a break from it. Bear Focus Timer is an app that uses technology in order to accomplish just that: putting your phone down and concentrating on whatever the task is at hand. Although there are many such apps on the market, Bear Focus Timer takes a fun, unique spin on the concept. In a cartoonish style, the app displays a bear named “Tom.” As long as you don’t try to use your phone within a pre-set amount of time, Tom will help you. If you lose, he roars in disappointment.

But Take Breaks

Bear Focus Timer operates on the “Pomodoro Technique” of productivity. This method breaks down work into 25-minute incremental chunks, broken up by consistent short breaks and one longer break after several “pomodoros” have been completed. Bear Focus Timer also uses white noise as a soothing background technique to help you get in the zone. Although there are several similar apps out there, this one has one of the best designs and is the most fun to use. It’s worthwhile for people to put their phones down every once in a while, even if they don’t actually end up doing anything productive. If that sounds like something that would help you but you need some motivation, Bear Focus Timer is the best place to start.

Bear Focus Timer: Concentrate posted first on http://film-streamingsweb.blogspot.com

Keelo: High Intensity Fitness For All

Keelo is an app that teaches you high intensity interval training.

Train In Intervals

High Intensity Interval Training, or HIIT for short, is revolutionizing fitness classes and gyms around the world. Although the science seems to indicate that HIIT regimens aren’t the best for increasing muscle mass, they do seem to work at decreasing body fat. For people who dislike working out, get bored or frustrated from doing the same routine for too long in a row, or just want to try something different, Keelo offers a great introduction to the HIIT approach. The app offers a complete workout program, with exercises planned for users to complete either at home or at the gym.

At The Gym Or At Home

Keelo also gets smarter at planning workouts the more you use it, looking at the amount of time you typically spend on the app, the type of workouts you do, and a wealth of other data. The app includes high quality video examples of the different types of workouts that it asks you to do, so it’s accessible even to the complete fitness novice. It also contains helpful exercise data and syncs with Apple Watches for even more accurate results. Keelo has been around for a few years, but they continue to add new workouts and exciting features to the app. If you’re interested in a new approach to fitness, or doing HIIT more easily at home with a personalized training regimen, Keelo is worth a download.

Keelo: High Intensity Fitness For All posted first on http://film-streamingsweb.blogspot.com

Using virtual reality to better understand the plight of asylum seekers

Bad Weather? Watch 5 Films for a Rainy Day

Summer is in full swing. Now that school’s been out for a while, I’m wondering how long it took for some of you to get the “I’m booooored” cry from the kids. When the sun is shining you can kick them outside, but what to do when it’s a rainy day?

Have no fear! The NFB once again comes to the rescue with this handy selection of films. Intended for the young, but enjoyable for the whole family, these 5 kids’ films will unlock the imagination and provide temporary respite from the bad weather outdoors. Enjoy!

Blackberry Subway Jam

Robert Munsch books and kids go together like… peanut butter and blackberry jam. If you’ve got kids, then no doubt you’ve worked your way through Mortimer, Put Me in a Book, and The Paper Bag Princess. You’ve possibly even sobbed your way through I’ll Love You Forever.

This film is based on the story of a young boy whose mother has one simple request – keep the house clean. In theory, that shouldn’t be too much trouble. However, if you’ve got a kid like mine (who we lovingly refer to as Pig Pen), you’ll know that this can present a challenge.

In this film, our young hero, Jonathan, has every intention of keeping the apartment clean, but this proves impossible when he discovers it’s being used as a subway stop. I mean, how else would you explain the utter and complete mess that’s waiting for his mother when she returns home?

But no worries! Jonathan knows just what to do. He heads down to city hall to meet the man who runs the city and discovers first-hand the joys of bureaucratic red tape. It’s a good life lesson for when you’re stuck indoors on a rainy day….

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The Trout That Stole the Rainbow

When you want to get a message across, especially to young minds, there’s no better route than the fable. The fable is a classic literary device that uses animals, which have often been imbued with human-like traits, to tell a story that teaches us a moral.

In this film, we meet a trout who’s envious of all the colour found in the world, especially in the rainbow after a storm. The little trout feels he’s led a grey existence and is tired of watching all the beautiful colours from afar. Determined to possess some of that beauty, he makes a giant leap after the storm and swipes the rainbow from the sky.

But now what? While the trout gets to lay at the bottom of the river, wrapped in his technicolour robe, the rest of the world must suffer the consequences. Turns out, when you take the rainbow from the sky, you essentially run off with all the colours in the world.

This is an important lesson for kids – the difference between appreciating beauty and possessing it; the line between enjoying something and using it selfishly. This is a gentle film that manages to convey its point without being too preachy. And the resolution at the end is sure to stay with young minds for a long time.

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The Magic Flute

Gayle Thomas has a knack for making mesmerizing films. Have you seen Quilt? This film is no different. The animation and the colours, and the fact that it looks like the whole thing was done with crayons, are just spectacular. It’s a perfect kids’ film.

The film starts with a young boy, stuck inside on a bad weather day, when he finds a flute. A magic flute, as it turns out. Because when he plays the flute, the world around him is transformed. He shares this discovery with a friend, and together they experience the joy of discovering the world around them when the flute sings.

But things go a little awry when a jealous neighbour gets his hands on the flute. When he plays it, it’s not exactly rainbows and unicorns. Turns out, it’s not necessarily the flute that’s able to transform the world around you…

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The Sound Collector

In this film, two brothers are stuck inside on a rainy day. The younger one collects sounds, and the older one is just annoyed. He hates spending time with his brother and thinks he’s weird. Those of us with siblings know how difficult those relationships can be.

But Leonard is able to teach his brother a thing or two, and through the power of their imagination, a rainy day turns into a grand adventure.

This is a great kids’ film, teaching tolerance and the importance of relationships in addition to the overall story of a creative young boy. The perfect distraction on a rainy summer day.

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Big Drive

Apparently, the importance of a good imagination is a strong theme in these kids’ films.

This gem of a film is about a family road trip during a 1970’s summer. Having spent my own summers from 1977 – 1980-something doing the exact same thing, this film resonated hard with me. Just swap a couple of the sisters for brothers, and bam! That’s my family in the back of the station wagon.

The four sisters in this film sit together in the back seat as their parents drive across the prairies. They go through the typical stages of road-tripping but being amongst siblings amplifies everything four-fold. Or 16-fold. My math is terrible. They go from mere boredom to outright antagonizing until that old sister bond kicks in and they manage to salvage a potentially disastrous situation.

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Unsung Canadian Heroes: The Volunteer

This installment of Unsung Heroes brings us the volunteer. Volunteering is one of the most fulfilling things you can do. If you’ve never tried it, I highly recommend it.

Volunteers come in many different forms, each of them valuable and important in their own right. From firefighters to patrons of the arts, there’s a role for everyone to play. These films look at 5 of them.

this river

As we’re all aware, there is a horrifying epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women across Canada. Perhaps more horrifying is the lack of action being taken to stop it, or even investigate. As we’ve seen recently with Tina Fontaine and Coulten Boushie, justice for the Indigenous population isn’t exactly winning the day. So, when good people step forward and volunteer do something constructive, we can safely call those people heroes.

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Call for Volunteers

There’s no denying that women really stepped up during World War II, not only entering the workforce in droves, but also in a volunteer capacity. This 10-minute film shows how the women of Winnipeg enlisted 7000 other women who served as volunteers as part of the war effort. Thanks to their tireless work, they extended and maintained many social services, proving you didn’t need to be at the front to be a hero.

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Jean Giguère: The Measure of a Place

Here is a woman who learned from an early age the importance of being a volunteer. Taught by nuns, she was participating in the concept as early as grade school. Her love of the arts stems from growing up in an arts-and-culture oriented family. If she wanted to keep up at dinner, she had to know her stuff. As such, Jean Giguère dedicated her life to serving the arts. In my view, this makes her a big hero. She claims that the arts are the common link that hold us together, and views it as a privilege to serve.

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The Grasslands Project – After the Fire

When you think “hero” and “volunteer,” what’s the first thing to come to mind? Firefighters. These people must among the bravest human beings there are, and the most selfless. In this short, which is part of a larger series that looks at life across the southern prairies, we follow the Eastend Fire Department as they put out fires in barns and fields, and see firsthand the consequences that comes with the job.

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Los Canadienses

Between 1936 and 1939, 1200 troops from the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion joined together with 39,000 other soldiers in an effort to stop the threat of fascism in Spain. These are people who volunteered to go and fight in a country that was not their own, and did so to preserve peace around the world. Sadly, many of them did not return and this film pays tribute to them.

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Teaching Global Connections with Highrise and Universe Within

This is a guest post written by Merrianne Couture, who currently teaches English Literature at Dawson College in Montreal, QC. She has been teaching for over 20 years and occasionally offers “The City” theme course as a means to examine issues pertaining to social justice, equality and sustainability. Research interests include contemporary literatures, food, autobiography, memoir, comics and urban development.

Urban realities and global pedagogies: The city as metaphor

If you’re like me, and you live in Canada, you probably live in an urban environment: 80 percent of us do. In fact, globally speaking, more than 1 billion people live in urban highrises. As city populations grew, buildings developed vertically to accommodate these expanded living needs. The NFB and director Katerina Cizek bring some of these stories together in a series of short, interactive, multi-platform digital presentations. Teachers can use the three-minute clips, set in global communities, to enhance pedagogy for both group and independent study. I have found that this digital project provides an important critical context for social studies in the classroom.

Highrise in the classroom: A framework for learning

Throughout the 20th century all over the world, the highrise emerged as a dominant vertical structure to house growing populations. Later came the digital revolution, and many of these highrise buildings became sites of resistance, innovation and social development. However, they were also sites of inequality, poverty and class separation. As global connections and social-justice awareness develop, the highrise is also becoming a central means of learning about the world around us. Studying the architecture and its inhabitants is a natural way toward global understanding. Highrise is a multi-platform project that can be used in the classroom to engage students in discovering social, geographic and economic issues while also developing media and research literacies.

Educational support for global connections and Universe Within

I have found that the project engages students effectively because the stories are personal and real. The study guide provides a framework to develop classroom activities using any of the three-minute video guides. In each of the micro-stories, socio-political realities are presented via the backdrop of these densely populated buildings. The 20th century arrives with a global population explosion, and the responses to accommodating this growth are not always equitable or sustainable. In many ways, the challenges of the individual stories represented in the Universe Within project mirror the global concerns of social and environment justice. From Ottawa to Accra, and Tokyo to New York City, students can actively engage with cultures and ideas presented by Universe Within. Teachers can easily adapt the study guide to promote identified learning objectives in several areas: social studies, geography, cultural studies, history, media literacy, critical thinking, reading, writing and research skills. The interactive nature of the project promotes effective learning, which can be adapted for outcome, age and grade level.

Universe Within

The study guide provides pedagogical opportunities that can be adapted for both individual and group work across a variety of grade levels. Discussion questions, independent research work and digital resources highlight the interactive nature of the platform. Class discussion on ethics, privacy, sexuality, surveillance and family stimulate multiple learning objectives.

The Canadian context and Universe Within in the classroom

In teaching urban issues, I begin with the local context and have students work together to research issues pertinent to their communities. From this, the course expands to elaborate on global connections and how we think we know the world. As students learn about Canadian contexts, they also begin to develop the critical-skills set essential to expanding analysis of complex global connections. Teachers can also promote media-literacy skills to reinforce these research, writing and critical-thinking skills. The project highlights some of the challenges of living in an urban context.

You might begin urban explorations with the story set in both Ottawa and St. John’s, NL. Cathy lives on her rural property outside St. John’s, but uses Wi-Fi-enhanced surveillance to keep tabs on her aging mother, who lives independently in Ottawa. The film explores the role of technology as a caretaking tool, but also brings to mind the larger questions of privacy, ethics and the caretaking obligations of family, especially in light of Canadian realities, which might see immediate families living some distance from one another.

As students work with these digital materials, they deepen their understanding of digital implications. I often feature social media in my classes as a tool to engage students. The interactive nature of Universe Within and its emphasis on individual stories illustrates how these communication platforms can also be tools of social justice in other contexts. The assumption may be that both highrise living and Internet technology decrease a united sense of community, but these stories illustrate some of the empowering possibilities of vertical living. Subject areas as diverse as human rights, religious practice and even online marriage enhance media and research literacies. Canada is home to diverse cultures, practices and attitudes.

Teachers can modify the materials to attain pedagogical objectives pertinent to grade levels (7–12).

More global connections in a digital world: Universe Within

Effective learning in my classroom means that students are able to get beyond their own living situations toward accepting diverse views and global realities. As mentioned, several of the segments of Universe Within provide students with a means of learning about international issues and the impact of Internet technology. Most of my students have never known the world without a digital connection, and I like to frame the classroom experience with concrete examples to illustrate how urban areas have adapted technology to specific contexts. In the featured story from Guangzhou, China’s third-largest city, viewers meet Ling, who lives in a highrise apartment with her parents. She has arranged a “mock marriage” (via the Internet) to a gay man so that her parents do not learn of her lesbian identity.

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Ling’s story highlights the important formative experiences of one young person who uses the Internet to navigate the gap between family expectations and individual needs within an urban framework. Educators can use this material to develop research and critical thinking and engage students in these and other equally complex ideas. Stories like this provide educators with a foundation for effective lessons that promote student-oriented discussion and skill development. My approach to urban studies in the classroom context has been to develop materials that engage students effectively. Whether in conversation, group work or written academic research, the framework of making global connections in the classroom often challenges assumptions regarding technology, culture and urban life. This challenge is central for the larger purposes of building equitable and sustainable models of living, one class at a time.

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