The Making of Them

Backpack Full of Cash

Documentary warning about the decline of American public schools as they become more and more privatized.

Rise Above the Mark

The purpose of Rise Above the Mark, narrated by Peter Coyote, is to educate the general public about the “corporate takeover” of Indiana public schools and what parents, community members and educators can do to protect their local public schools. Legislators are calling the shots and putting public schools in an ever-shrinking box. WLCSC Board of School Trustees and Superintendent of Schools, Rocky Killion, want to secure resources and legislative relief necessary to achieve the school district’s mission of creating a world-class educational system for all children. The school district’s strategic plan will introduce a model of education that puts decision making back into the hands of local communities and public school teachers, rather than leaving it in the hands of legislators and ultimately lining the pockets of corporations.

NOVA: Judgement Day - Intelligent Design on Trial

In this two-hour special, NOVA captures the turmoil that tore apart the community of Dover, Pennsylvania in one of the latest battles over teaching evolution in public schools. Featuring trial reenactments based on court transcripts and interviews with key participants, including expert scientists and Dover parents, teachers, and town officials, "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial" follows the celebrated federal case of Kitzmiller v. Dover School District.

The Lottery

Four children enter a high-stakes lottery. If they win, they can attend one of the best schools in New York. A look at the crisis in public education, The Lottery makes the case than any child can succeed.

Bulletproof

Bulletproof explores the complexities of violence in schools by looking at the strategies employed to prevent it. The film observes the longstanding rituals that take place in and around American schools: homecoming parades, basketball practice, morning announcements, and math class. Unfolding alongside these scenes are a collection of newer traditions: lockdown drills, teacher firearms training, metal detector screenings, and school safety trade shows. Bulletproof asks what these rituals reflect back at us, looking beyond immediate causes and responses to mass shootings in a cinematic meditation on the array of forces that shape the culture of violence in the United States.

Cafeteria Man

Cafeteria Man is the true story of rebel chef Tony Geraci and his mission to radically reform Baltimore's public school food system with a recipe for change.

Memória, identidades e ancestralidade como possibilidade do estudo de história em sala de aula

Walkout: The School Funding Rebellion

The lowest paid teachers in the nation are in the middle of a statewide walkout in Oklahoma. From start to finish, Walkout follows the teachers as they get organized and demand raises from their state legislature. From crowded classrooms to a packed state capitol, Walkout offers an in-depth, personal look at the latest strike at the heart of a nationwide movement for education funding.

Brooklyn Castle

Brooklyn Castle is a documentary about I.S. 318 – an inner-city school where more than 65 percent of students are from homes with incomes below the federal poverty level – that also happens to have the best, most winning junior high school chess team in the country. (If Albert Einstein, who was rated 1800, were to join the team, he’d only rank fifth best.) Chess has transformed the school from one cited in 2003 as a “school in need of improvement” to one of New York City’s best. But a series of recession-driven public school budget cuts now threaten to undermine those hard-won successes.

15 Days: The Real Story of America's Pandemic School Closures

A documentary revealing why America's school closures lasted longer than almost any other nation. Framed as a forensic analysis of what happened to children during school closures, it blends director Natalya Murakhver's perspective as a Soviet immigrant with voices of children and families nationwide, exposing devastating learning loss, mental health crises, and inequality.

Through These Eyes

An American elementary school program from the 1970s, Man: A Course of Study (MACOS), looked to the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic to help students see their own society in a new way. At its core was The Netsilik Film Series, an acclaimed benchmark of visual anthropology from the National Film Board that captured a year in the life of an Inuit family, reconstructing an ancient culture on the cusp of contact with the outside world. But the graphic images of the Netsilik people created a clash of values that tore rifts in communities across the U.S. and revealed a fragile relationship between politics and education. A fiery national debate ensued between academic and conservative forces. hrough These Eyes looks back at the high stakes of this controversial curriculum. Decades later, as American influence continues to affect cultures worldwide, the story of MACOS resonates strongly.

Left Behind

A group of determined moms band together to create the first public dyslexic school in the largest school district in America, New York City.

Dulwich College and Village

Glorious colour footage of the famous Lambeth college.

Second Glance

A Christian teenager, missing out on his fun years, begins to contemplate his religion but is given the ability to SECOND GLANCE his life had he not been a leader sent by Him.

La scuola

In a high school in the outskirts of Rome, it's the last day before the summer holidays. A literature teacher reminisces the past year and wonders what will become of the students he cared for as if they were his children.

Boys Will Be Boys

Alec Smart, who is engaged teaching in a prison, applies for the job of headmaster at a nearby public school to replace the previous headmaster who has been convicted of writing forged cheques and has just been sent to prison. Smart appeals to the Governor to write him a good reference which he pretends to. Afterwards he writes his real recommendation which is very negative about Smart's talents. The trustee who works as the Governor's secretary, Faker Brown, "accidentally" gets the two letters mixed up and delivers the one praising Smart. On the basis of the letter, Lady Dorking, the who runs the Board of Governors appoints Smart to the job. This angers her deputy, Colonel Crableigh, who had favoured promoting his nephew, the Deputy head.

The Red and the Blue

In a Roman high school, a jaded art professor who lost the spark for the job clashes with an ex pupil of his, an adjunct literature teacher who is trying to rescue an eccentric and rebellious student, while the stern headmistress deals with a student from a difficult background.

An American Principle

After preventing a middle school student from carrying out a shooting, Principal McMack meets with the student's parents to discuss what to do next.

The Guinea Pig

A working-class boy wins a scholarship to a public school, as part of a post-World War Two experiment in bringing boys of different social classes together.

Beat Lingo

Marcus, a reserved teenager with mutism, attends public school for the first time in his life. Pushing through trials and prejudices of the past and present, Marcus soon uncovers a special gift he’s been hiding from the world.