Film: Hoop Dreams
(Netflix streaming and DVD, on reserve at Ayala Library)
“Today, fifteen years after I first saw it, I believe “Hoop Dreams” is the great American documentary. No other documentary has ever touched me more deeply. It was relevant then, and today, as inner city neighborhoods sink deeper into the despair of children murdering children, it is more relevant. It tells the stories of two 14-year-olds, Arthur Agee and William Gates, how they dreamed of stardom in the NBA, and how basketball changed their lives.” Roger Ebert 2009
At the end of your documentary review, connecting the film to course content, please address these questions.
1. What do you think the odds are for a high school basket ball player to make to the NBA?
(1/10; 1/50; 1/100, 1/10,000)? It is 1/10,000
2. Who are the main characters and what are the relationships?
3. How did the families help or hinder William and Arthur in their pursuit of basketball dreams?
What was special about Mrs. Gates and Mrs. Agee?
4. Why was Arthur able to stay away from drugs and Shannon was not?
5. Both William and Arthur entered private school on a 4th grade reading level. Do you think a non-athlete would have been admitted with these reading scores? What did they gain by going to private school?
6. Both needed good grades to play college basketball. Why do you think Arthur was not prepared for college?
In your opinion, were William and Arthur prepared for any other career if pro basketball did not happen for them?
7. William believed that basketball was his only ticket out of poverty, but Catherine disagreed. Do you think there was another way to get out? What else could William have done to get out of poverty?
8. How did William’s life change after Catherine had their baby?Whose life was affected most, William or Catherine?
9. How would you life be different if you became a parent while in high school?
Do you know anyone who is a teenage parent? How did their life change?
10. Where are William and Arthur now?
11. Research and write about the education backgrounds of Kobe Bryant, Shaq O’Neal and one of your favorite basketball players.
12. How does education give you more control over your future plans?
Film: Koyaanisqatsi
Netflix DVD, on YouTube in 9 parts, on reserve at Ayala Library
This is a pro-postmodernism film. “The film is an apocalyptic vision of the collision of two different worlds — urban life and technology versus the environment. The musical score was composed by Philip Glass.
“KOYAANISQATSI attempts to reveal the beauty of the beast! We usually perceive our world, our way of living, as beautiful because there is nothing else to perceive. If one lives in this world, the globalized world of high technology, all one can see is one layer of commodity piled upon another. In our world the “original” is the proliferation of the standardized. Copies are copies of copies. There seems to be no ability to see beyond, to see that we have encased ourselves in an artificial environment that has remarkably replaced the original, nature itself. We do not live with nature any longer; we live above it, off of it as it were. Nature has become the resource to keep this artificial or new nature alive.” … in the sense of art, the meaning of the film is “whatever you with to make of it.”
At the end of your documentary review, connecting the film to course content, please address these questions.
1. The creator of this film says it is meant to offer an experience rather than information or a story. What is the message of this film?
2. The twin towers the are in the film are not the World Trade Center towers that fell on 9/11/2001 20 years after the film). Does reflecting on 9/11 add anything to the interpretation of the film?
3. Most of the human images in the segment are of people dressed for work (for example, white collar workers on escalators) or at work (for example, blue collar workers on assembly lines). How do these images make you feel about work? How do these images make you feel about the evident economic disparities between affluent and assembly line workers?
4. How do these images make you feel about the amount of material resources we consume by going about our “normal” activities?
5. There has been disagreement about this film. Some viewers (and reviewers) of this film interpret it as denouncing the pervasiveness of industrialization,while others regard it as an “ode to technology. “Which do you agree with? Why?
6. This film could not have been produced without the very industrialization that produced modern technology. Can this fact be reconciled with the view that the film may be understood to denounce technology as excessive or immoral? Are we using scientific advances and technology in the best ways?
7. The title of this film is Koyaanisqatsi, which according to the end credits is the Hopi word meaning: “1. Crazy life. 2. Life in turmoil. 3. Life out of balance. 4. Life disintegrating. 5. A state of life that calls for another way of living.” In your opinion, which of these definitions most appropriately fits what you saw?
(Netflix DVD, online at PBS https://www.pbs.org/theforgetting/watch/index.html)
Alzheimer’s disease will have a huge public-health impact as baby-boomers age. There is much research the causes and prevention of this disease. It difficult to diagnose and difficult to predict.
“Based on the bestselling book by David Shenk, The Forgetting is the first television program to tackle the entire spectrum of the Alzheimer’s epidemic, from the personal tragedy to the worldwide race to stop the disease in its tracks.
The Forgetting, produced and directed by award-winning documentarian Elizabeth Arledge, also offers a
window into the world of Alzheimer’s research. World-renown scientists share groundbreaking discoveries on the disease, and explain how and why Alzheimer’s dismantles the day-to-day lives of people like Gladys, Fran, Isabelle, and their families.
As the number of Alzheimer’s cases skyrockets and the research forges ahead, The Forgetting portrays thepersonal and social impact of the disease, and gives viewers reason for hope.” (NY Times review)
At the end of your documentary review, connecting the film to course content, please address these
questions.
1. What is Alzheimer’s disease (AD)?What behaviors indicate this disease?
2. How do people get AD? How is it diagnosed?
3. What are the roles of genetics and environment? How can people lower the risk of getting AD?
4. The film talks about three stages (early, middle and end stages). What happens at each stage?
6. The film has three stories. Which one is the most tragic?
7. What can family members do to cope with a loved one having AD?
7. Do you know anyone with AD? What would happen if your grandparent got this? What about one or both of your parents? What would you need to do?
8. According to the film, what is the current state of research into AD?
9. UCI is doing a great deal of research on AD. What is going on at UCI about this? Who is Frank LaFerla? Can you find other professors at UCI who are researching AD?
10. When is World Alzheimer’s Day?
(Netflix both DVD and streaming, for rent online ($3.99) at https://wewereherefilm.com, on reserve at Ayala Library)
This film chronicles the early years of the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco. It also talks about us caring for people in our communities, which is a theme in the Social Science Public Policy major.
“There was nothing extraordinary about the fact that you lose the people you love because it’s going to happen to all of us,” observes Ed Wolf, a gentle, gay San Franciscan in his mid-50s who devoted years to counseling dying AIDS patients during the peak of the epidemic. “It’s just that it happened in this targeted community of people who were disenfranchised and separated from their families. And a whole group of other people stepped up and became their family.”
The family or community, whatever you want to call it, that coalesced around a public health emergency is the story of We Were Here, an extraordinarily moving, beautifully edited documentary. (NY Times Review)
At the end of your documentary review, connecting the film to course content, please address these questions.
1. What are your reactions to this film?
2. How did homophobia (the fear of gay and lesbian people) impact the initial responses to the HIV epidemic? How does it affect prevention efforts today?
3. HIV has been referred to as a ‘gay disease.’ Do you think this is true? How do you believe HIV has affected the heterosexual community?
4. WWH describes the way HIV impacted San Francisco, an urban American city,during the 1980s and 90s. How do you think the epidemic has impacted thoseliving in rural communities, or in low income urban areas? What about in othercountries like Africa, India and South America?
5. In the film, Daniel expresses some regret for not always having the strength to care for sick friends. What are the issues in your life that determine the choicesin caring for other people?
6. Eileen says that becoming a nurse and working in HIV provided her with a morepurposeful life. Are there things you do or are involved with that providepurpose to your life?
7. All the interviewees in WWH were, at a young age, confronted with a huge andcompletely unpredictable catastrophe. Have you ever been faced with anunexpected crisis? How did you respond? How might you have responded tosituations like those depicted in the film?
8. Research the Shanti Project in Orange County. What do you find? What internships do they offer? What volunteer opportunities do they offer?
This film chronicles the failure of public housing in America against the backdrop images of falling buildings. Some say it signifies the failure of social welfare policies.
Opponents of public housing hailed the image as an emblem of welfare state dysfunction, or the supposed incivility of the poor black inhabitants. But beyond the reified image and floating slogans, what really caused the failure?
This innocent but complex question is the point of departure for the documentary film. Challenging the axiom that Pruitt-Igoe was a place doomed from within, the film’s narrator says, “Little was said about the laws that built and maintained it, the economy that deserted it, the segregation that stripped away opportunity, the radically changing city in which it stood.” Using archival material and original interviews with former residents and scholars, the film constructs an accessible yet substantial history of the project. (Shapiro 2012).
At the end of your documentary review, connecting the film to course content, please address these questions.
1. What was the purpose of Pruitt-Igoe? How many buildings and how many units?
2. Who was it designed for? Why did only poor people end up living there? According to the film, how did the Federal House Act contribute to the concentration of poor people in Pruitt-Igoe?
What does Valerie Sills mean when she says it was a “poor man’s penthouse”?
3. Many residents have horrible memories of living at Pruitt-Igoe, but some reflect on it as a time of promise and hope. What is the reason for these two viewpoints?
4. How did the decline in St. Louis contribute to the conditions at Pruitt-Igoe?
5. What is the Pruitt-Igoe “myth”?
6. What played the largest role in the project’s demise?
7. Why was Pruitt-Igoe an image-making project for St. Louis from the start? (rather than an architectural project)?
8. Which of the resident’s stories impacted you most? Why?