Reflection #6

Throughout these two semesters we have watched several documentaries that were from different genres. Filmmakers of these documentaries had a purpose to reinstate an issue that deeply mattered to them and believed it should be significant to their viewers as well. They each centered their movie on specific aspects of the issue by including images or interviews that would get their point across. The films that we have watched are: Food, Inc., Forks Over Knives, GasLand, An Inconvenient Truth, The Day My God Died, The Times of Harvey Milk, Seoul Train, and Hoop Dreams. All of them belong to their own category such as food, environment, social injustice, activism, and sports. the documentaries obtained facts and evidence that made viewers think of their actions. An example of this would be for Food, Inc. and Forks Over Knives; both documentaries talked about the dangers of certain foods and showed clips of food being produced that made viewers want to watch what their eating. The same thing occurred in GasLand and An Inconvenient Truth, where filmmakers backed up their information with images, clips, interviews, and statistics. As for The Day My God Died, The Times of Harvey Milk, and Seoul Train, activism and social injustice were its type of genre. In these films you see people take action and fight against the social injustices occurring in their nation. Lastly, Hoop Dreams was about two young teens and their dream of being part of the NBA. Although this was the weakest topic it still taught viewers about taking chances in life. The strongest category for me was activism and social injustice; those three films introduced to me to the life of others outside of the U.S. and what actions they were taking to make their living a much better place. Aside from that they also broadened my knowledge and made me want to contribute in some way.