It can be really hard to find worthwhile short documentaries these days, especially when you’re considering specific age groups. The market is absolutely flooded with advertising for reality TV programming, people who might have skimmed a Wikipedia page posing as experts, and outright scammers trying to sell shoddy products. To sift through all the useless grit to find a few gleaming nuggets is hardly worth the time of a busy librarian or teacher. Equally useless is playing a documentary of any length that fails to engage students, spreads misinformation as fact, or both! You can save some time and effort by looking to some of these outstanding titles and a resource any high school librarian should familiarize themselves with.
Freedom Summer (2014)
America’s racist history isn’t just in the distant past. There are many alive today who were born under segregation, and racist attitudes often drive political action in the federal government still today. Released fifty years after the events discussed in the film, Freedom Summer looks at the actions of more than 700 student activists who in the summer of 1964 worked to reverse voter suppression among black communities in Mississippi, helping to form the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Stanley Nelson is a skilled documentarian, and many of the titles he’s directed are available on PBS streaming services. Freedom Summer does an excellent job of jumping between the violent reality of Jim Crow repression and the fruitful actions of student, informing viewers of the past and inspiring young students to join their own political actions in the future.
▶ Watch Freedom Summer here.
In the Shade of the Fallen Chinar (2016)
The violence in Kashmir has been ongoing for decades, new conflicts erupting from the embers of the British-engineered Indian/Pakistani split in 1947. Directors Shawn Sebastian and Fazil NC give us a glimpse into a Kashmiri college students’ art collective with footage shot only weeks before the civil unrest of 2016. Using music, painting, and poetry, this short film tries to get across the political, emotional, and personal desires of the people living in Kashmir. At just sixteen minutes in runtime and with a potent, student-focused message, In The Shade of the Fallen Chinar will definitely appeal to high schoolers, especially those hoping to study art in college.
▶ Watch In the Shade of the Fallen Chinar here.
Silence Sam (2019)
Another student-focused film, Silence Sam is a chronicle of a student action. In 1913, John A. Wilson (A Canadian commission sculptor) completed a statue of a confederate soldier for the North Carolina chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy. This statue was erected at the University of North Carolina, and was simply called “the confederate monument” until sometime in the 1950s, when the student newspaper began calling the statue “Silent Sam.” The first calls for removal came in the 1960s, and these calls, activism, and vandalism only ramped up in the coming decades. Silence Sam focuses on the 2018 student activism demanding the statue’s removal before it’s subsequent toppling. A bit longer than the previous films at forty minutes, Silence Sam would make a great addition to history classrooms discussing the ripple effects of the Civil War in modern history.
▶ Watch Silence Sam here.
Crow Country: Our Right to Food Sovereignty (2020)
Winner of Best Documentary Short at the American Indian Film Festival, Crow Country is a twenty-minute documentary about indigenous food sovereignty in Montana. The Apsáalooke tribe living on the Crow reservation faces a unique food scarcity problem. Due to Federal budget cuts, the Crow Agency had to lay off 1,000 of its 1,300 workers, and soon thereafter, the reservation’s sole grocery store burned down. With federal and tribal government failure mounting, some people on the reservation turn away from non-profit food aid and begin looking to the land and the same foods that nourished their ancestors. This short documentary focuses on three stories–that of a journalist, an elder, and a hunter–as they each try to navigate this complex and critical challenge. Used in history classes to touch on Native American existence in the here-and-now, or social-studies classes to examine government failure, Crow Country will be a powerful addition to High School library resource shelves.
▶ Get Crow Country: Our Right to Food Sovereignty from Good Docs here.
Give and Take (2021)
Shot during the cold and frightful February of 2020, this eleven-minute short doc takes aim at an intriguing project. As the COVID-19 pandemic began in earnest, a fridge appeared outside the Bed Stuy apartment building, providing free food and supplies to the community in shock from the sudden and deadly rise of the Coronavirus. Soon thereafter, more and more fridges popped up in other neighborhoods. This very short doc shows that another option is possible if communities can band together to care for one another. With most of their teenage years touched by the pandemic, especially those living with Long COVID or who’ve lost loved ones to the virus, high schoolers will identify with the recent history and messages in this fantastic documentary.
▶ Get Give and Take from Good Docs here.
Above and Below: The Art of Tsherin Sherpa (2022)
Traveling to San Francisco from his native Nepal in 1998, Tsherin Sherpa sought to solidify his place in the art world and preserve the ancient Tibetan Buddhist art form of thangka painting. With footage spanning 19 years, we watch Tsherin develop both as an artist and an individual, and his struggles are relatable to anyone growing up in the rapidly-shifting modern world. This fantastic art and culture documentary will be a must-see for art students or those looking to inject a bit of Tibetan culture into art history classes.
▶ Get Above and Below: The Art of Tsherin Sherpa from Good Docs here.
Even the Women Must Fight (2023)
We’re often shown the male side of the Vietnam War, often specifically that of the American soldier. Even the Women Must Fight gives viewers a unique glimpse into the experience of five women who worked in Ho Chi Minh's volunteer youth brigades. These women, often under fire themselves, repaired infrastructure, provided support services like food and medicine preparation, and hauled critical supplies through the many secret paths along the Ho Chi Minh trail. For its rare footage and outstanding historical perspective, Even the Women Must Fight is a perfect addition to any high school history class discussing the Vietnam War.
▶ Get Even the Women Must Fight from Good Docs here.
Good Docs
The last four short documentaries in this list are published by Good Docs, a documentary service any High School librarian should look into. Their flexible rights options and the streamability of their titles via Docuseek make Good Docs a must-have resource for any High School. Their institutional rates are incredibly reasonable, especially for larger institutions, and their catalog is ever-expanding with new titles on any topic you can imagine. I’ve reviewed several dozen Good Docs titles during my time at Video Librarian, and they’ve yet to show me a single “bad doc.” Consider screening rights for community activities or fundraising events, and look into their catalog for all the titles teachers at your school will be clamoring for.
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