Steve Goodman explained the documentary culture at the EVC and its methods of teaching counter narrative and bearing witness to social injustices. The goal of the EVC is to inspire counter-culture communities of practice through the solidarity of documentary filmmaking. Over his many years as founder and director of this organization, he has seen the value of youth media in raising awareness for the poverty-stricken communities of New York City.
Professor Taub-Pervizpour discussed her role in the HYPE program in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Not only does this program teach these children basic technological skills in media and documentary filmmaking, but it connects the underprivileged youth to a possible future in this career and area of study. She also criticized Neoliberalism for the recent domination of coding, gaming, and app development in government-funded after school activities rather than media integration education. Emphasizing that "there's nothing revolutionary in creating a next generation of coders that capitalism rewards," she closed with the necessity of helping learners invent and enact possible selves through digital media making.
Professor Sawhney concluded the panel with a discussion about his work with community youth groups in Gaza and how basic documentary making and journalism skills positively affected the children. He showed a clip from his full-length documentary called Flying Paper, which cross-cut stories of children growing up in war-torn Gaza with them making and flying kites for a festival to show solidarity amongst the youth community. The documentary was made with six production units of the children trained through the programs Sawhney created.
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