Educators and librarians alike can feel inundated by the sheer number of video titles available to teach from. That issue compounds when your field of study or film collection is a broad one such as politics. With so many different angles, opinions, important facts, and values guiding the field, it can become especially overwhelming to find titles suited to the needs of a classroom either physical or online. These are some spectacular educational documentary recommendations for college-level political students and some will have some draw outside the classroom for particularly voracious students.
The Monopoly of Violence
The use of violence by the state has been a hot-button issue since before I was born. This political documentary, while quite philosophical in nature, covers recordings of police brutality and the reactions of many different political and moral beliefs to them. Students, lawyers, historians, police, victims, and bystanders are all shown footage (as are we) and then asked their opinions on the legitimacy of the police officer’s use of force. Various answers arise from just as many places and points of view. The viewer too is asked repeatedly “was that a legitimate use of force?”
While the filmmakers of The Monopoly of Violence obviously have a political point of view, they do not include it heavily in the film, allowing the viewer to formulate their own opinion and weigh it against the ones stated by those subjects interviewed. While an intriguing and valuable resource, The Monopoly of Violence should be supplementary viewing as graphic injury, brutality, and at least one corpse is featured on screen at several points. Despite this, this documentary is an excellent source of both real-world and philosophical debate surrounding modern policing policy and the politics of policing.
Read our review of The Monopoly of Violence
Mariposas del Campo Poster
Mariposas del Campo
While many documentaries about California’s farm workers have been produced, few focus on their children. That is Mariposas del Campo’s greatest strength. This documentary film uses a mixture of footage to tell the stories of several high school students living in and around the Strawberry fields of Southern California.
Each student sits at an interesting and under-studied intersection of class, culture, and ethnicity: These students are all indigenous as well as the children of immigrants. Several are Dreamers. A couple tells stories of entering America as small children, unable to speak Spanish let alone English, and unable to find anyone who could speak their native language.
This fantastic documentary shows some very unique and underexplored perspectives, but also opens the door to a fairly universal issue that high-school seniors face: what do I do after graduation? Those studying to enter political fields will find interest in Mariposas del Campo because it shows very clearly the effects of local, state, and federal policy on young men and women. The shortfalls of policy as well as the strengths of policy can be seen in each student’s life, especially as many give up dreams of college and beyond to help their families with financial or child care issues that arise soon after graduation.
Read our review of Mariposas del Campo
The Wobblies
Classic documentary film fans as well as political students will fall head over heels for The Wobblies. Shot in the 1970s and recently re-released with a 4k remaster, this documentary tells the stories of the actions of the Industrial Workers of the World union from the mouths of union members and supporters during the 1920s and 30s. Some tell stories well known, adding snippets of personal details or going to the former sites of protests, actions, strikes, and speeches. Most importantly, this documentary dives deep into why people would take such action and risk their lives at the hands of police and Pinkerton rifles and truncheons.
These driving forces should be of interest to political students, as many of the reasons which drove political actions 100 years ago are still present today. Personal political beliefs or views on union support aside, no one can deny the impact of groups such as the IWW on labor policy in America: strikes and other actions have helped to end child labor, enact a minimum wage, and allowed for the creation of the weekend we all covet. This outstanding study on the formation of the IWW would be an excellent film for anyone studying politics or labor law.
Read our review of The Wobblies
Petersburg Rising Documentary
Petersburg Rising
While somewhat dry in its stylings, Petersburg Rising is an excellent example of policy in action. Documenting nearly two years in the lives of Petersburg, Virginia high school students, this documentary focuses on Dr. Marcus Newman and his work primarily. Facing bankruptcy, default on staff salary and benefits, buildings falling apart, and the de-accreditation of many schools in the district, the Petersburg Public School District called on Dr. Newman’s experience and assistance after he announced his plans for retirement from Virginia’s largest school district.
With some smart thinking, a lot of grant writing, and simple respect for the students under his care, Dr. Newman turned the district around in a short time. The impacts of Dr. Newman’s actions can be easily seen in the lives of the students documented in this film. I can’t think of any better examples of policy in action that would be available for political students’ viewing. Education and Public School administration students would be most interested in this documentary as well.
Read our review of Petersburg Rising
The Silence of Others
This artful and ambitious documentary seeks to document the voices of those who survived what is perhaps the most forgotten conflict of the 20th century; What is known in the US as the Spanish Civil War. Information, stifled by the fascist government of Francisco Franco, was readily overwhelmed in foreign papers by German machinations preceding World War II.
The eventual victory of the Axis allied fascists and entrenching of Franco’s iron will also be meant the history of the massacres, mass shootings, and other atrocities were glossed over or never preserved while other atrocities such as the theft of infants from ‘undesirables’ still occurred. The ‘installation of democracy’ with Franco’s death in the 1970s didn’t bring justice, truth, or peace.
Those who had been governing months or years before under Franco’s fascist dictatorship retained their positions or earned higher office in the new democracy. The Spanish government enacted a ‘great forgetting’ which included a vow of silence: these atrocities nor those who suffered under them will be mentioned. Despite all this, there are those who still fight, and win, for justice. The Silence of Others touches on many tough subjects, but its existence is in direct denial of the will of a long-dead fascist dictator and of great interest to anyone studying politics or modern Spanish history.
Read our review of The Silence of Others