Written by Gianni Risper
Being addicted to human interest, I watch a lot of documentaries on things that most people usually don’t see. So far I have three favorites that I try to share with as many people as possible.
First, my all time favorite is “The F Word”. It was an independent film about a radio talk show host whose program, “The F Word”, is being shut down by the F.C.C. after racking up indecency fines. On his last day on the air, which ironically coincides with the last day of the Republican National Convention he broadcasts a one-man march through Manhattan.
t has fictional scenes set among actual protests with documentary footage of people he met on the streets of New York with a microphone in his hand. He talks to people in Central Park to Republicans who were attacked by anti-Bush protesters. He blends a wonderful story that shows the other side of the news and puts you in the middle of protests, marchers, and the occasional radical.
Second, a movie shown to my class is called “Invisible Children”. It takes place in Sudan, Africa chronicling the story of child soldiers and homeless night commuters, who walk miles just to sleep on the ground in the city where they can be safe.
The documenters travel all the way to northern Uganda where you see the brutality of the LRA, Lord’s Resistance Army, a group who fights the government and violates many human rights such as torture, mutilation, and the use of child soldiers, most of whom were abducted and drafted into this army, for means of genocide.
Unlike the Holocaust, a systematic genocide, this is pure chaos. They run in, and just kill whoever is in the streets, alone at night, anyone at all. Those who are left are abducted or raped and mutilated. This movie sparked so many things that are trying to help the people who are victims of genocide all over Africa.
Third is a movie so hard-hitting I couldn’t believe it the first time I watched it. It was entitled “Jesus Camp”.
This documentary takes place in North Dakota, where children are taken to a place called Devil’s Lake to partake in a Pentecostal summer camp called “Kids on Fire School of Ministry”. The camp is run by a children’s pastor who is to say the least is a bit extreme. The story follows three children who have been raised as devout Christians. The things in this camp go from a “prophet” who fights to end abortion to basic brainwashing using symbols to “stick the message of God in their minds” to having children convulsing and speaking in tongues.
The camp’s leader, Becky Fischer, is a children’s ministry teacher who believes that to keep children interested in Jesus you have to immerse them in the church experience. She instills in them a mob mentality that they are chosen and all others shall perish and those who are not like them are to be shunned. In one particular scene, she is yelling about the evils of Harry Potter and that if he was in the Old Testament he would have been put to death. She said that Harry Potter’s death was the right thing to do and that he deserved to die. Becky also took her charges to a superchurch in which the pastor, two months after the documentary was filmed, was charged with homosexual prostitution and methamphetamine distribution. She still supported him outside the courthouse.
I guess you can condemn a fictional character in a book but not a human being who is physically hurting other people.
Her extreme methods were even contradicted by popular Pentecostal talk show radio hosts. She remained stalwart and her program runs on.
These movies show us not how the other half lives but the people we don’t think about live. These films are life captured and brought to you. What I wrote here barely scratches the surface of each movie, but I hope my writing about them will at least let you know what some teenagers are watching.
I enjoyed all of these films thoroughly and hope that you at least take a look at them.
