Film Clip Project Reflection

The young adult novel that inspired me to complete all the tasks in our technology class is a brilliant novel by Nancy Farmer, entitled A Girl Named Disaster. The setting takes place in a rural village in Mozambique. The protagonist discovers her own strength as she leaves her village and family in order to avoid an unfairly arranged marriage. Before I began reading the novel, I knew little about Mozambique. Therefore, I went to http://streaming.discoveryeducation.com/ and used by trial membership to watch a video about Mozambique. The video I found is titled “Africa’s Child: Street Wise: Mozambique.” The movie follows a young boy, Adolpho, through his day of leading tourists through the streets of his city. The video also displays his desire to become a teacher as in the most touching moment of the film, he arrives at class but the teacher does not. Instead of leaving the classroom Adolpho stays and studies his books. The short documentary was extremely informative and touching. Mozambique is definitely on my list of places to visit.
The project I completed after watching the video consisted of analyzing the video through film techniques that we briefly studied in Reading in the Dark: Using Film as a Tool in the English Classroom. It was fun to watch the video with an eye for camera angles, lighting techniques and pan shots. Although I do not expect to become an expert on analyzing film, I think there are many useful parallels that can be utilized to teach and analyze books in Language arts classes.