Tinasbeen

Documentary project

Just a quick update on the staus of one of my projects at the Institute - a documentary on the experiences of high school students in Newark during the 1967 riots. I'll be collaborating with current high school students and college students here, as well as with high school teachers, faculty members at Rutgers, and the staff of the NJ Historical Society on the project, which is going extraordinarily well. Information about how to sign up for the project can be found here: http://65.36.189.169/iecme/?section=events&fuse=main&id=64

Some of the questions we'll be researching over the next six months are how high school students (and other teenagers) in Newark experienced the 1967 riots, both as observers and as participants in that conflict, how these experiences varied by race, ethnicity, gender, and class, what high schools in Newark were like before the conflict, and how they changed after it, how these changes were connected to the riots, and what young people in Newark today know about the conflict.

Our research will culminate in a panel discussion of young people’s experience of the Newark riots, which will include scholars, those with personal experiences of that era, and the students who participated in the research. This discussion will be videotaped, edited, and combined with the prior research to create a half-hour documentary, which will be screened at a public event hosted by the Institute, offered to high school teachers for classroom use, and submitted to New Jersey Network for broadcast.

In the past two months, I’ve met with Professor Edin Velez of the Visual
and Performing Arts department at Rutgers-Newark (http://www.edinvelez.com/), with staff members of
the New Jersey Historical Society (http://www.jerseyhistory.org/), with Dr. Max Herman (http://www.newark.rutgers.edu/socant/max.htm), a sociology
professor at Rutgers who has done extensive research on the riots (http://www.67riots.rutgers.edu/) , and
with numerous local high school teachers and students who are interested
in collaborating on the documentary.

Currently ten students and three history teachers at several high schools
in Newark have expressed interest in working on the documentary, including
students from St. Vincent’s Academy and History High School. Some of the
students signed up as part of Rutgers – Newark’s Saturday Academy program,
while others were recruited by teachers or found out about the project
through friends. Some students are interested in doing research for the
project, some in helping with filming, and some with both of these
activities.

Professor Velez has generously agreed to provide the technical expertise
and post-production resources for the documentary, and will be recruiting
current undergraduate students in the Visual and Performing Arts program
to help shoot and edit the documentary. He has also provided advice on
what type of equipment will be necessary for shooting the documentary
footage; we anticipate that shooting will begin in Spring 2007.

The director and staff of the New Jersey Historical Society and Dr. Herman
have generously offered to collaborate on the research for the
documentary, and are interested in having it become part of their own
exhibit on the riots, scheduled to open in June 2007. I'm in the process
of scheduling an afternoon visit to the Historical Society’s
library to begin the research process. Should be fun!

posted by Tina @ 5:30 PM