Acting Out [excerpt]

Category: Juvenile justice system
Broadcasts: PBS WHYY in Philadelphia


This feature-length documentary is a portrait of several young men living in a juvenile detention center that flies in the face of stereotypes about who ends up in the juvenile justice system. The focus is a theater workshop that took place at Saint Gabriel's Hall, a juvenile detention center outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In the 6-week workshop under the tutelage of a trained actor, the boys perform in a series of skits, protraying hardened criminals, victims of crime, family members of criminals, law enforcement officers... all to stimulate discussion and reflection about their lives and what led them to commit crimes, and to show the viewer how varied this cross-section of young men is in terms of personality, attitude, ethnicity, life experiences... they're not who you might expect.

Unconventional Coverage

Categories: political activism, protest, dissent
Full Title: "Unconventional Coverage: The Message and The Means"
Awards: WINNER, Best Documentary, Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema's Festival of Independents, 2001
Broadcasts: PBS WHYY in Philadelphia, FreeSpeech TV - available on The Dish Network



This feature-length documentary, created and produced by video collective BiG TeA PaRtY, is a comprehensive look at the protests at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia in the summer of 2000. Dismayed by the local media's coverage of the protests, which treated them as a nuisance, spending more time telling people how to avoid traffic jams than exploring why people would take to the streets to express dissent, BiG TeA PaRtY set out to show the world what the protests were really about. Besides a thorough investigation of the plethora of voices and issues throughout the course of the week-long convention, the video also reveals a carefully targeted attack by the police dept that stripped many of the marches of their visual messages, and also how the police rounded up and arrested leaders and facilitators to make the protests seem more disorganized and random. There is discussion of the planning and organizing that goes into a large-scale protest, the tactics of jail solidarity, interviews with people who were arrested and mistreated, interviews with ordinary people about their opinions of protesters and politicians, mention of the necessity of independent media to cover such events, and so much more! Basically this documentary is a primer for the modern protest movement, and a refreshingly ground-up view of the reasons for and importance of dissent in the political life of the U.S.

Homeless Diaries [excerpt]

Categories: homelessness, poverty in America


This documentary, written and directed by Frances Negron-Muntaner, focuses on "Tent City" which was a city block full of temporary structures created on an abandoned lot in Philadelphia, not only as living space for homeless people and families waiting to get into city housing, but also a public protest against government neglect. The film explores homelessness, the way the media portrays homelessness, and also the filmmaker's relationship to the largely Puerto Rican American residents of Tent City, as her documentation of their struggle brings up thoughts and questions in her mind about her own Puerto Rican heritage and the struggle of Puerto Ricans in America.