Social Action Project Proposal: Film Festival

                Issue: Undecided, Within the Sphere of eWaste and it's Component Issues

Acknowledgement: Dr. Shutkin suggested the basic idea for this proposal after reading my last blog/discussion question post.  

The film festival project that I have in mind has the potential to address a plethora of social justice issues, depending on which clips and videos are used in the final project. The project will have to address eWaste[an issue that is as old as the first garbage dump in history, no one wants to have to live in or near someone else’s trash], which is—in its-self--a springboard into many potential topics.

1.      The growing issues of increasing consumerism can be directly linked to worsening the eWaste crisis in the third world countries, illustrated by the PBS’s Frontline episode “Ghana: Digital Dumping Ground” and likely many other documentaries and programs would reinforce the awareness to that issue.  Consumerism has really been an issue since the beginning of mass production, leading the European powers to constantly seek out new markets and material hubs to grow their wealth so that their people could then buy more stuff to feel better about themselves.

2.      Disney/Pixar’s WALL-E starts out with showing a simply devastated Earth, full of stacks of trash cubes and the remnant buildings of a formerly populated city. The film later reveals humans flat-out left the Earth after they trashed it to the point that vegetation could no longer grow. Again, this works to show the problems that are, have, and will become worse over time from increasing consumerism.

Sign: Do Your Part, Fill Your Cart

3.      WALL-E could also be used to talk about concerns relating to humanity’s increasing reliance on digital technology. This issue might be outside of the scope that our class is supposed to focus on, it has the digital media component; but, it is on the outer-rim of social justice end. It could be considered somewhat a social justice if we were to consider how individuals who do not or cannot use new technology are becoming ostracized from society. You could argue that since the first time a projectile weapon was used, humans have become reliant on having access to a ready supply of tools to accomplish basic tasks. That can be scaled up to modern day, with cars replacing walking, text messages replacing conversation, etc.

4.      In the previously mentioned Frontline episode, there was an interview with a Chinese illegal eWaste dealer, who made comments that were along the lines of saying that since China is a developing country, it needs to make “sacrifices” to grow and compete with developed nations. He also admitted, implicitly, that the eWaste de-manufacturing is poisonous to the workers who extract the valuable components from the eWaste. Here we could start a conversation on the plight of the developing countries, another major springboard.

What I am really getting down to here is that the film festival idea’s target-issues will depend greatly on what kind of input I would hear from other group members. All I can say for sure is that eWaste should be a stepping-stone, since it can lead to so many other issues discussions, as we have already seen within our in-class discussions. 

Works Cited for the Issue Side

"Ghana: Digital Dumping Ground." Frontline World. PBS, 23 June 2009. Web. 09 Oct. 2014.

"Wall E Earth Images & Pictures." Becuo Images & Pictures. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Oct. 2014. Copyright Owner: Disney/Pixar

"WALL-E Intro." Wall-E Intro. YouTube, 19 Dec. 2010. Web. 10 Oct. 2014. Copyright Owner: Disney/Pixar

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Project Style: Film Festival/Discussion

I think that a film festival-type project would work well to perform an awareness-raising and discussion-starting action for a social justice issue such as eWaste and its component issues. There is far more power to be found for a message in using moving images of an actual event with on-site audio, rather than just hearing a recalled story from a witness, especially from 2^nd hand+ sources. I would think that most people would agree that seeing an event itself is the best source of information. If a picture is ‘worth a thousand words’, how many would a film be worth?

            Really the entire Civil Rights Movement of the 20^th century can be viewed as a type of news-film experience of social justice issues--such as the truth of what “Separate but Equal” facilities looked like--from how much of it made the national TV news, reaching a massive audience in a way not possible earlier in history. Written words and pictures had been used before that time for social justice issues like women’s suffrage in the USA. Films were also used as well, but they took a while to be produced and long time to distribute. Radio came close to films power, but the visual component was missing.

            John Carroll University has already had some film festivals involving social justice on the human rights side: First Annual Second Annual Third Annual (coming up on November 1^st)

These festivals have included films that address issues such as: the homophobic laws of Uganda (“Call Me Kuchu”), imprisonment and immigration (“Broken On All Sides” and “AbUSed: The Pottsville Raid”), and the ramifications of the 20^th century’s events the Holocaust(“The Last Survivor”) and Russia recovering from failed totalitarian communism(“Putin’s Kiss”).

I think that showing a series of clips and/or movies with discussions and supplement media would work well to address just about any social justice issue, particularly for eWaste and its subcomponent issues, since the scale of eWaste is hard to describe in text or speech alone. You need a pictorial component to just see how horrible the problem has become with our so called “recycling” of old electronics.

Works Cited for the Project Form Side

"First Annual JCU Human Rights Film Festival." Inside JCU. John Carroll University, 12 Mar. 2013. Web. 11 Oct. 2014. <http://inside.jcu.edu/2013/03/12/first-annual-jcu-human-rights-film-festival/>.

"Third Annual Human Rights Film Festival." Peace, Justice, and Human Rights. John Carroll University, n.d. Web. 11 Oct. 2014. <http://sites.jcu.edu/pjhr/events/third-annual-human-rights-film-festival/>.

"Tomorrow: Second Annual Human Rights Film Festival." Inside JCU. John Carroll University, 25 Oct. 2013. Web. 11 Oct. 2014. <http://inside.jcu.edu/2013/10/25/tomorrow-second-annual-human-rights-film-festival/>.