Movie Analysis Essay on Stolen Education

Introduction

In the movie stolen education, the Director, Rudy Luna seeks to investigate the historical segregation discrimination and racism in the American education systems. In the documentary, the directors take the audiences to the historical context of the American education systems by interviewing the eight Mexican American who experienced discrimination.

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Production

The director is a child of one of the children who was put on the stage to testify in the case between the American education systems and the parent of the Mexican American pupils in Texas. The sources of the funds for the video is not indicated but must have been provided by the decision research group including the Department of Educational Leadership & Policy Studies at the University of Texas at San Antonio, Department of Education, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS), and the Center for the Study of Race + Ethnicity in America (CSREA).

Discusses Central Questions Posed by the Film

The main question posed by the film is the historical injustices by the American education systems against the Mexican American children.

Content

The issues that are overt in the film include discrimination, racism, and segregation of the Mexican American children. The children were forced to undergo go first grade learning in three stages including beginners, low first and high first grade without testing the students for academic ability but on racial identity. The placement of the Mexican American children in separate classes from the mainstream classes demonstrates the segregation and overt racism in the American education system

Which are implied or assumed?

It is implied that Mexican American children's cognitive development was lower than that of the whites as such could not be included in the same classes as the whites.

Who do we hear from?

In the video, the parents and the eight children are interviewed to tell their stories of their experiences from the first-person perspective.

Are there voices left out?

The voice that is left out include the boards of those schools in 1950 that passed the resolution to separate the students. They should have been allowed to give proper reason defending their positions on the matter because the reason was given then was flimsy.

Who is given authority to speak about this situation?

In the 1956 students are given the authority to speak in the cases with the lead voice being the children of the then students who were summoned in court to give evidence of their eloquence in English and their brightness. The children of the then students were given the authority to speak against the historical injustices.

Cinematography

The documentary combined five main elements of documentary including interviews with the victims of segregation allowing them to describe their experiences during the segregation days. Finally, the processed footage with few behind the scenes footage where the directors are on-camera giving the shots of the location where the film was shot. Finally, the director also films the photograph and add shot of the old videos of the older Texas region to give a glimpse of the schools, the farms, the school boards. The use of archives is what gives the credibility of the claims. For example, the old news videos, cuttings from old newspapers give the desired credibility to the video

Conclusion

The documentary was aimed at reviewing the historical cases of injustices in American schools against the Mexican American. The film directors have achieved their goals of the documentary by using cutaways such as closeups of locations, storytelling shots, emotional cutaways developed using characters and settings, and general coverage of the then farms and the pictures of the settings of the days when the segregation was rampant. The video also used the cinema verite as the characids interact without interruption or questions. The directors manage to combine the lean-in and the lean back footages thereby managing to change the general modality of the audiences' experiences.