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DVD The First Year
A deceptively simple documentary, The First Year follows five teachers in California through the first year of their teaching careers. The teachers are a diverse lot, teaching different ages and classes at five different schools, but what remains consistent are the difficulties they face and the determination they bring to it. Though The First Year is partly a recruiting effort that hopes to persuade more people to pursue teaching, the movie doesn't avoid the problems teachers face, from bureaucratic stumbling blocks (one teacher can't get her own classroom; an ESL program faces being defunded) to the kids themselves, who can be as angry and frustrated as the teachers, often for reasons the teachers are helpless to change. At times, the passion and empathy these five teachers demonstrate is profoundly moving--not because they're performing great feats, but because of the simple, small acts of faith that so rarely get made. --Bret Fetzer
The First Year is a wonderful documentary that shows the daily struggles of public school teachers in the face of apathetic administrations, parents, and students. As a teacher in the state of California this film strengthened my own resolve to be the best educator I can. At the same time the film also illustrates the break down of the public school system. The notes with this disc states that The First Year was "created to recruit and retain the next generation of teachers."In some ways I think this film will scare teachers off because of the way some of the teachers are treated by the school's administration.In any case I think this should be required viewing by any school board members, teachers, and civil servants in national and state goverments.
Absolutely Wonderful Story of First Year Teachers
The real world--that is what this movie (documentary) is about. No special effects--just human beings selflessly giving themselves to children in LA--and somehow surviving on 18K per year. This is an especially wonderful movie for anyone who is thinking of becoming a teacher. The understated love that every one of the teachers has for their children and their profession is what one really takes away from this movie. In that sense, this truly is a love story. And one can only hope that there are enough wonderful teachers like the ones portrayed in this movie out there working. The future of the country depends on them.
The National Society of Film Critics awarded Nicolas Philibert's lovely To Be and to Have a 2003 Best Documentary prize for its pastoral grace and subtle power. Philibert spent a period filming the rhythms and activities within a one-room schoolhouse in France's rural Auvergne region, where a soft-spoken teacher of 35 years, Georges Lopez, instructs pre-middle school children of varying ages in everything from reading to the making of crepes. The tall, mesmerizing Lopez, nearing retirement, is both a formidable and loving presence in his classroom, and the bucolic remoteness of his school has a way of amplifying such ordinary student dramas as fights, lagging grades, and painful shyness. Philibert gets a lot of mileage out of the antics of a loveable kid named Jojo, the decaying... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Nicolas Philibert DVD Release Date: Released the 19 October 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, rejected five times by the USC film school, won the best director award at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival for this alarmingly personal investigation into the health hazards wreaked by our fast food nation. Under extensive medical supervision, Spurlock subjects himself to a steady diet of McDonald's cuisine for 30 days just to see what happens. In less than a week, his ordinarily fit body and equilibrium undergo dark and ugly changes: Spurlock grows fat, his cholesterol rockets north, his organs take a beating, and he becomes subject to headaches, mood swings, symptoms of addiction, and lessened sexual energy. The gimmick is too obvious to sustain a feature documentary; Spurlock actually spends most of the film probing insidious ways that fast food companies... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Dr. Daryl Isaacs DVD Release Date: Released the 28 September 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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An epic in length and breadth, this documentary aims at nothing less than a full-scale portrait of the most dominant institution on the planet Earth in our lifetime--a phenomenon all the more remarkable, if not downright frightening, when you consider that the corporation as we know it has been around for only about 150 years. It used to be that corporations were, by definition, short-lived and finite in agenda. If a town needed a bridge built, a corporation was set up to finance and complete the project; when the bridge was an accomplished fact, the corporation ceased to be. Then came the 19th-century robber barons, and the courts were prevailed upon to define corporations not as get-the-job-done mechanisms but as persons under the 14th Amendment with full civil rights to life,... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Mark Achbar - Jennifer Abbott DVD Release Date: Released the 05 April 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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It came out of nowhere to win the best documentary Oscar in 1980, and by now Best Boy should be acknowledged as one of the finest documentaries in film history. Filmmaker Ira Wohl took as his subject his own cousin, 52-year-old Philly, a retarded man who had lived his entire life with his parents. Seeing the physical decline of the parents, Wohl suggested they prepare Philly for living away from home for the first time in his life. This process becomes a beautiful and soul-stirring (and even hilarious) experience, as the people in Philly's life become indelible characters. Many fiction films try to manufacture a kind of movie "magic" out of fantasy, but Best Boy finds it in tiny steps forward, the delicacy of family, and the joy of singing (you may never hear "If I Were a... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Ira Wohl DVD Release Date: Released the 27 April 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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