Ethics of documentaries

The new topic this week for my 10-12 year old classes is Documentary Films. I spent the morning writing up my lesson plan, with questions about the ethics of staging scenes for documentaries, dramatising re-enactments, and whether it’s okay and/or educational to film and present scenes of wild animals hunting and killing each other.

After eating lunch, I took Scully for a longish walk, stopping at a bakery to sit and refresh with a glass of water and an orange-almond cake. The sky was a weird mix of patchy blue on the eastern half, and very dark grey cumulus clouds on the west. It looked like it might storm, but it held off.

And tonight I had the first three classes with the Documentary topic. I think it’s an interesting one. We discuss Nanook of the North, which provides an example of the first really successful documentary film, but also examples of staging scenes. I considered talking about White Wilderness too, with its famously faked scene of lemmings leaping off a cliff, but decided I had enough examples to talk about.

For dinner I made pumpkin soup, with a touch of Thai red curry and coconut cream. It turned out delicious, and we had it with freshly baked sourdough, still hot from the oven. Mmmm…

New content today:

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *