Media That Matters

          As a part of joining forces with the ever growing push for more incorporation of nonfiction materials in the language arts classroom, I’ve added writer’s workshop activities to accompany short documentary films (aka “docu-shorts”) to my English curriculum.  Each week, students will sample short films from the Media That Matters film festival website (http://www.mediathatmattersfest.org/), an organization that showcases independent and student filmmakers’s short films on the most important topics of the day.  Local and global, online and in communities around the world, Media That Matters engages audiences and inspires them to take action.  The Google corporation states that “Equality, human rights, and social justice are heavy concepts. Media That Matters corrals short documentary films that touch upon big topics and make you think.”

            Even though documentaries fit wonderfully into the circle of promoting nonfiction literacy, it is also interwoven with biography, history, narrative, and argumentative writing.  Editor Ann Heilman Murphy states that “The use of documentary film in the classroom whether it be an English class, history class or humanities class raises many interesting issues for discussion with students: is documentary film narrative or truth, how does point of view reveal itself in documentaries, what other film techniques are utilized that are similar to narrative film? The use and analysis of documentary film in the classroom encourages information and technology and media literacy.  We must challenge students to analyze critically the texts they view and to integrate visual knowledge with their knowledge of other forms of language.”