Learning Through Teaching

The semester just ended at Harvard, where I teach in the Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies. This was definitely an experience unlike any I’ve had in more than twenty years of teaching, since it involved leading a new course – Social Justice Filmmaking – entirely online.  My teaching fellow Keisha Knight (who is also Artistic and Managing Director of Sentient.Art.Film) and I had 10 students in 3 continents across 15 times zones. Our department had to ship cameras and microphones to many of them, and smartphone kits to others when we ran out of professional cameras. (I’m incredibly fortunate to teach at an institution that has the resources, and the commitment to equity, to actually ship gear to students!)

The course considered filmmaking as a means to explore social justice. Students learned how to conceive, shoot, and edit digital videos; screened examples of successful works; and met with accomplished social justice filmmakers (over Zoom, of course… not as good as the real thing, but the format enabled us to talk with folks like Deborah Esquenazi, Joshua Oppenheimer, and Brett Story who might have been impossible to bring in person). Working individually and in small groups, our students created films on a range of topics, all the while scrutinizing their role as makers responding to the complex demands of aesthetics, ethical representation, and social impact.

I learned so much about teaching through this new format, and from our incredibly engaged, talented students – whom I have yet to meet in person! They made films ranging from a search for ancestral knowledge about the stars and sky by an Afro-Indigenous student (London Vallery’s Da Bon Lalinn, pictured above); an immersive investigation into noise pollution in Chelsea, Massachusetts; a tender film poem about a father’s exodus from Belfast following The Troubles; and a stunningly cinematic visit with fishers following the eel migration in Italy’s Po River valley.

The essay format proved to be perhaps the most adaptable to a pandemic, in allowing filmmakers to incorporate a range of whatever materials they can manage to acquire – observational footage, in-person or Zoom interviews, found footage, staged scenes, audio fragments – around a carefully considered theme.

The constraints of the 2D classroom gave me a real lesson in how to accomodate different learning styles, make maximum use of time through simultaneous and small-group work, and provide flexible instruction such as pre-recorded technical videos students can watch and re-watch on their own as needed. As always, I find I learn as much as my students do!

Flotation Exploration

Last week my co-director Emma Meyers and I had our first full shoot for our new film exploring the use of altered states of consciousness in healing – at Seacoast Flote in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It was a great learning experience and a lot of fun (aside from the covid tests, double masking, and other necessary precautions). Our DP Thomas Danielczik did an amazing job exploring the kind of abstraction this meditative practice nourishes.

A Nice Tune

I recently put together a fun composite video of a COVID-19 quarantine tune for friend and Guggenheim-award-winning percussionist John Hollenbeck. The members of the Claudia Quintet each recorded “Nice Tune” from the safety of their homes with Chris Speed on clarinet, Matt Moran on vibraphone, Red Wierenga on accordion, John Hollenbeck on drums, and Drew Gress on bass.

It’s been inspiring to see efforts around the world to share music recorded by individuals in isolation during social distancing. Berklee College of Music students performed the touching “What the World Needs Now” showing the importance of joining together during this global pandemic. The original cast of Hamilton’s stirring Zoom rendition of the show’s opening tune has been a big hit.

Harvard University’s Pause For Art showcases alumni, faculty, and students working on their artistic practices and passions at home. They hope that these videos will inspire creativity and create a “moment of beauty, comfort and connection.”

Exploring Altered States of Consciousness

I am exciting to be co-creating a new experiential documentary with Emma Meyers, a final-year neurology student at Harvard Medical School, which will explore the use of non-ordinary states of consciousness in healing across different cultures. The film will present a series of immersive treatment sessions for modalities such as meditation, hypnosis, psychedelics, holotropic breathwork, and drumming-induced trances.

A Violent Act Prevented

We now have a documented case of at least one violent act – possibly a homicide – that our Circle Up documentary helped prevent. After one of our recent workshops at a large urban high school, in which dozens of students and staff “circled up” to watch the film and talk about restorative justice, a school social worker asked film participant Clarissa Turner if she could speak to an upset student.

 “The social worker had been working with this young man for many months and didn’t know what else to do,” says Clarissa, whose son Marquis was murdered in 2011 on the way to visit his son. “This young man was tensed, he was hurt, he was angry. His color was red.” He had been in an escalating confrontation with a rival gang member who lived across the street from his home. After months and months of fights, he was tired of fighting and had begun to speak of getting a gun and ending the situation.

 “Before I give any talk or speak with someone, I always pray and ask God to guide my tongue,” Clarissa explains. I want to be able to give my testimony in a way that can help others.” She introduced herself to the young man and began to explore the situation with him, asking whether there was anyone who knew both sides and could mediate. “I let him know that I see his pain – he was just so exhausted with this situation. I also asked him, ‘What do you want to do in the future, what do you want out of life?’ He spoke highly of himself and had lots of dreams. I told him, ‘Give yourself a chance to do that – don’t allow the streets to cheat you of that.’

“That was our conversation – just birthing in life, decisions, the control and power he has over his choices,” she continues. “We are here to prevent, to plant seeds, to educate on the value of life. So people can think before they do their actions. Because him taking that young man’s life could cost him his life, either through retaliation or incarceration. And I know how that feels to lose.

“Our conversation gave him tools. And finally he said, ‘I don’t know what I’m gonna do, but I’m not gonna do that.’ He was a different kid after that.  His color came back, he was smiling. It brought me to tears when I extended my hand to say goodbye and he gave me the biggest hug.

 “I have been transformed a great deal from doing this work,” Clarissa says. “We bring our true selves and share our testimony – and so many people’s lives have been changed by Circle Up.”

 Clarissa Turner founded Legacy Lives On, a non-profit ministry to support families that have lost loved ones to homicide or street violence.