Students from Edison Career and Technology High School have embarked on a project of attaining the “American Dream”, and their efforts landed them a top spot on the top 10 films at the 2022 Rochester Youth Film Festival! The filmmakers from Edison Tech took home the Philip Seymour Hoffman "Best of Fest" award!
Students wrote, filmed, edited, and produced a documentary on governmental and societal oppression elements such as redlining, mortgage loans, and the federal housing authority.
Students in Participation in Government & Economics, English Language Arts, and Digital Media Arts and Communications classes all worked together on this project.
In ELA, students read fiction (The Great Gatsby and A Raisin in the Sun) and non-fiction (articles, interviews, historical documents) to create focused contextually grounded questions for interviews with local voices. Students in the DMAC pathway will produce the interviews and create the documentary in Video & Television Production.
To delve into these topics, students conducted interviews with local and state individuals who have expertise in these areas. The interviews were conducted around the City of Rochester. Interviewees included: School Board Commissioner Camille Simmons, Assembly Member Demond Meeks, Rochester Mayor Malik Evans, former Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren, PathStone Foundation founder Shane Wiegand, and author/journalist Justin Murphy. Murphy recently published a book about educational disparities in Rochester.
Students involved in this project participated in fieldwork; conducted interviews, and produced the documentary in the Video, Television & Production studio at Edison. Students created the script for the documentary in English Language Arts and Participation in Government & Economics classes. Classes met together in Edison’s Makerspace to collaborate on various facets of the project.