August-“The Post”

Posted on February 5, 2018 by Kunying Lin

I watched a documentary fiction called “The Post” last week because it is based on a true case that taught in my COM law class right now. The case is about the US government VS The NY Times in 1971. Basically, it talks about a governor stole the top secret file about the Vietnam war and gave it to the press. This file revealed the true fact about the Vietnam war. The NY Times published it, and they got a call from the government, saying “stop it”. The government claimed to the public that the reason why they did not reveal the true facts was that it associated with national security. However, citizens were not pleased by the answer and knew that the government was lying to them about the Vietnam war. They requested the press to reveal more true facts. At the same time, the Washington Post also got the source and published it. The government sued both the NY Times and the Washington Post. Both press won the first round in their district courts. Things got more and more interesting. The government then sued both press to the appellate court. However, this time the NY Times lost, but the Washington Post still won. It became interesting because both press were sued by the same case with same materials, but one side won and one side lost. Then, this case went to the supreme court. Finally, the supreme court announced that the press won.

The reason why I select this film is that I was moved by the decision made by the CEO of NY Times. It was not easy. At that time, the company just went public for a while. If they lost the case, they had to go to jail and the press would have to be shut down. The CEO needed to be responsible for employees who worked for this company. This decision was really tough, but the CEO still chose to publish the top secret file, which may ended up her career and her whole life. The CEO was brave. She said people have the right to know the truth. This is their jobs as the press.

Posted in law case | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Jing Long-Extremis

Posted on February 5, 2018 by Jing Long

I watched the documentary named: “Extremis.” It is about the doctors in hospital ICU face choices for about the life. They are at the intersection that is end-of-life without pain or keep it but the pain. In the documentary, there are a homeless disease people, the doctor asked: “You will choose your life or you want to me to choose for you?” When the doctor takes off the breathing machine, she said: “I am sorry” and she was crying. She feels say and she does not want to end the life, but she has to.

Image result

Another woman is also face to the choice, when the doctor meets the patient’s family member, her daughter said: “I do not want to let her go.”

Everyone wants to live, but the doctor must keep reasonable and when they meet this choose, they must make the professional choice for the life. They face this choice every day. It is not giving up the life, but respect for the life. A doctor is a doctor, not the god. The doctor can treat the patients, but cannot decide who will die.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The Imposter – Documentary

Posted on January 29, 2018 by Kiara Garcia

Last semester, I had the opportunity to take a course called Documenting Reality, abroad in London. The course was based around U.K documentaries and non-fiction, English filmmakers and production companies. We screened many different styles and themes of documentaries but my favorite one was our last, The Imposter. I recently introduced it to a bunch of my friends here and they all loved it as well. It almost comes across as a fiction feature film because of how wild the storyline is, the inclusion of reenacted scenes (which usually come off really cheesy), and how cinematically shot and scored it is. One point that was brought up after watching it with my friends was how impossible and unbelievable this film would have been, had it been produced as a fiction film. The use of interview of the people involved makes it that much more real and unsettling, at times, as the story unfolds. This is part of why I believe this is such an amazing film; anyone, not even particular fans of non-fiction, can enjoy it. The Imposter is proof that non-fiction stories are just as good, if not better than fiction ones. I would highly recommend this film to anyone (luckily it is on Netflix!).

The Imposter (2012)

Directed by Bart Layton

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The film that I watched last week: Patriots Day (2016)

Posted on January 29, 2018 by Kunying Lin

week, I watched a film called Patriots Day directed by Peter Berg. This film is not a documentary, but it is based on the true story of marathon explosion happened in April, 2013 in Boston.

I feel attached to the film because I went to Massachusetts for my high school. I recalled the time when I exactly came to the States, and I found out that I did first come to the States in 2013, but it was on August, after the marathon explosion. The school that I went to is a very small private school in Amesbury, a city in very north Massachusetts. Although it is not thatclose to Boston, people in Massachusetts were all affected by the explosion event. When I was at school, I joined a cross country club. We would go for jogging after school. When the time got close to the marathon, our coach asked us if we would like to go to Boston to watch the marathon. He said it with a mysterious smile. At first I was confused by his smile, but some students started talking about the explosion the year before. Then, I understood what that smile meant. I was not sure whether or not I wanted to watch the marathon in Boston, but some teachers suggested us not going because there were still some risks there. Although people understood that the city would definitely strengthen the military force to secure the marathon this year, the explosion event still left a shade in people’s minds.

 

After watching the film, I got the idea of what had happened, and felt proud of people who got injured in the marathon explosion but still attended the marathon the next year and completed it. I also felt 

proud of Boston because not just the police and associated department caught the criminals, but also the spirits of strength and persistence existed in every Boston people. I love you, Boston. Keep strong!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Documentaries: Informative Vs. Entertaining

Posted on January 29, 2018 by Mitchell Wolf

This past week in my energy of earth class, we viewed the 2012 documentary titled Switch. As a student who is majoring in film and minoring in Earth sciences a film like this is right up my alley. It follows a man named Dr. Tinker, who travels the globe learning about and exploring the possibilities of alternative energy sources, as well as our main sources of energy used today. It is clear that everyone can relate to this topic as we all use many forms of energy, everyday, to power almost everything we do.

Image result

This documentary caused me to have a mixture of thought about the topic it discusses, and how it discussed such. I did in fact enjoy this documentary, I thought it was filled with tons of valuable information that everyone on earth should be exposed to, as we consume massive amounts of energy everyday and often don’t even think about how large these numbers are.

Image result for the switch energy documentary

Now what festered on my mind more than anything after viewing, was the importance of this documentary, and wondering how few people have actually viewed it. As someone who is attending school to essentially make documentaries similar to this one, many would assume I was constantly intrigued by the film. But there were many points within this film, where I was bored, my mind wandered, and I began to feel tired. This lead me to pose the question of the importance of being able to portray important issues like this in an entertaining manner. Should film makers be striving to make important issues more entertaining, or is it the job of the audience to be mature and recognize when certain messages and content outweigh the need to be entertained for a small amount of time.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a comment

The Procrastination by Brian Yao

Posted on January 29, 2018 by Ziang Yao

The Procrastination is now in huge affection to our daily life and this is quite interesting as all the people in this planet are trying hard to meet the deadline. This kind of fighting has become a normal lifestyle for everyone and we need to learn how to fight.


I personally wonder how this affect us by psychology or other study of behaviors. The very impressive story is when I didn’t receive the email from my professor because the break down of my mail App. That night is like every night and I finished reading then started to look up those funny clips online. Then it comes to Saturday night and one of my classmates asked me the script and I was shocked and felt the whole world was gone and I was abandoned. I didn’t know what to do and started the whole night in front of my laptop and watched clips. I felt sorrow and depressed as time went on but I was unable to do anything until I cleaned my room and took a long shower to start everything and apologize to my professor.


The procrastination is terrible when you are afraid of it. It’s like the dark side of the Force. It you are aware of the deadline, things will probably get better.
Therefore, I want to choose this as a study topic, to show students in Syracuse fighting the deadline and by experiences and talk maybe we can find a way to control this evil and get ourselves in a better position in upcoming events.
The story will be simple as I am going to follow one typical student in SU and show how he/ she face the challenges of procrastination and we can seek some help from the professors and doctors in psychology to overcome these difficulties.
Maybe after the film, we the capstone students can find a way to avoid ourselves from the bothering of meeting deadline and be the master to all our tasks.

Hope we all can get rid of procrastination.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Leave a comment

2013 Documentary Unfortunately Still Relevant

Posted on January 29, 2018 by Jason Zaccaro

(US Special Forces officer Dan Quinn, who was relieved of his command for arguing with an Afghan commander who practiced Bacha Bazi, Picture from NY Times )

Earlier this week, the New York Times published an article titled “Afghan Pedophiles Get Free Pass From U.S. Military, Report Says”. In it, the articles talks about a heavily redacted report from the Special Inspector General for Afghan reconstruction, which reveals that on 5,753 separate occasions the US military requested a review of Afghan security forces for potential human rights violations.

These potential human rights violations refer primarily to the practice of bacha bazi, translated as “boy play”. Under this practice, commanders and soldiers in the Afghan security forces take young boys, to use as sex slaves. Reports of this as a widespread practice have appeared previously in the New York Times, dating back to 2015.

Furthermore, according to the Times, US soldiers have been repeatedly instructed to look the other way in regards to the practice, and some have even been disciplined for speaking out or trying to interfere with and stop the practice. The Leahy Law necessitates that the US cut off aid to any foreign military committing human rights violations. This creates an obvious problem for the US, as its goal is to have Afghan security forces to get to the point where they can fight the Taliban on their own without US support. Afghan security forces are unlikely to reach this point without US funding however.

(Image from This is What Winning Looks Like) 

This was the first time I had ever heard about this practice, and about this problem in general, so imagine how surprised I was to look in the comments and read about a documentary that covered this exact issue all the way back in 2013. The documentary in question, This Is What Winning Looks Like was produced by VICE and covered a lot of the issues around the US preparing to pull out of Afghanistan, and raised the uncomfortable question, of what was the point, if the people we leave in power are as bad as the Taliban.

The fact that this documentary was covering this story in detail 5 years ago, speaks to the quality of the reporting done in it, and it is possible that without this documentary and the earlier Times pieces, the investigations would not have been launched at all. This is a good example of the impact that a well-made documentary can have on the world.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ppa4a8/this-is-what-winning-looks-like-part-1

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/world/asia/us-soldiers-told-to-ignore-afghan-allies-abuse-of-boys.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/23/world/asia/afghanistan-military-abuse.html

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Something Seems Fishy

Posted on January 29, 2018 by Joanna Agwanda

I just finished watching the 2018 Grammys with a few of my friends. Although it was an elegant and fun event something was a bit off. It was interesting to see Jay-Z’s 4:44 album not win a single Grammy. Jay-Z is the same man who was inducted into the songwriters hall of fame just last year and already has 21 Grammys. His album 4:44 was number one on Billboard’s chart for two weeks and remained on the Top 100 for ten weeks. It was a highly anticipated album that delivered. For it to not win one Grammy seems fishy.

“Well maybe it just wasn’t that good”…Blasphemy.

Now what makes this fishy? It’s fishy because this past year Jay-Z has been more vocal than usual about the issues surrounding blacks in America. He’s been an advocate for the support, equality and success of people of color more loudly than usual. In an interview he did yesterday at Times Square, he comes after Trump and his presidency by explaining how Trump has done nothing for black employment and calls him a “superbug.” Twitter Thug President Trump responds to Jay-Z claiming black employment has increased since he’s been in office… all jokes. The increase of black people in minimum wage jobs is not progression. Also, how come Trump has the time to respond to Jay-Z but didn’t respond to Eminem, negativity, after he performed a whole rap cypher insulting him last year at the B.E.T. awards? Hmmm

I’m not that into conspiracy theories and I definitely do not have the proof but I don’t think it’s out of the realm of “possible” that Trump may have something to do with Jay-Z not getting awarded tonight.

I have no further comments.

Congratulations to Kendrick Lamar and Bruno Mars on dominating the 2018 Grammys.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

“Life in a Day”: A review for a documentary that I watched this week

Posted on January 29, 2018 by Chunzi Shi

Life in a Day: Real and powerful, Filmmakers’ arrangement in storytelling

One day in the whole life is as common as a water drop, but what if putting together what people have done around the world during this day, which must be substantial and powerful. Comprising an arranged series of video clips selected from 4,500 hours of footage in 80,000 submissions, from 192 nations, that submitted to YouTube. The documentary film, Life in a day, showing respective occurrences from around the world on a single day, 24 July 2010.

The documentary Life in a Day raises three questions: What’s in your pocket? What do you love? and What do you fear? These are simple questions, but they made me think for a while. The filmmakers classified and re-edited the numerous clips together, making the seemingly boring life a wonderful one.

The first ten minutes of the film edited different clips of human and animals’ awaking, cooperated with sunrise on deck and grand symphony, showing the day in the whole life is normal but vigorous. The film also put together the birth of a new life; a Japanese boy Tae Sung awakened by his father to offer incense to her mother; The first time for a 15-year-old boy to shave his face and bled; a Vietnamese servant with a large basket on her head, to celebrate the Vishnu ceremony; and a grandfather expresses deep gratitude to those who take care of him after a surgery…etc.

This documentary makes me in awe of life and learn to cherish every day. One clip recorded by a father: his wife in the bed with cancer recurrence. Dad said to his inexplicable boy that this family project (shooting a family video) was a happy film and has a happy ending. In answering his wife’s question, what does he fear most, he said, “I am fearless now.” “It was my fear that you get cancer, and then I’m afraid of your cancer recurs. Now, I just hope you alive.” The health of the whole family is the greatest happiness. This film is true, in our daily life, so, it is powerful.

In the Documentary Storytelling: Creative Nonfiction on Screen, the author Sheila Curran Bernard said, “…factuality alone does not define documentary films; it’s what the filmmaker does with those factual elements, artfully weaving them into an overall narrative that is often greater than the sum of its parts.” In Life in a Day, I felt such selection and arrangement in finding and expressing a main goal of a day in the life, and I felt the filmmakers’ thoughts.

Director Macdonald said that the film focused on a single day “because a day is the basic temporal building block of human life—wherever you are.” The editor, Joe Walker, said that, “We always wanted to have a number of structures, so it’s not just midnight to midnight, but it’s also from light to dark and from birth to death.”

At the end of the film, a girl who started recording at 4 minutes left in this day. She said, although nothing special happened today, she felt like she had experienced a wonderful night. Thunder and lightning flashed in the sky, heavy downpour outside her window. This is the end of this day, 24 July 2010 in the world, a person’s “life in a day” will start again, in another day, before sunrise.

 

Reference:

Watercutter, Angela, “Life in a Day Distills 4,500 Hours of Intimate Video Into Urgent Documentary” (WebCite archive), Wired magazine, 29 July 2011

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Jing Long’s idea

Posted on January 28, 2018 by Jing Long

My project idea is about the cat, I named it: “Where am I going ?” My documentary is an activism and impact film about how international students treat their pets after they graduate. Adopting a pet is a kind behavior, however, for international students maybe not. International students are a group of people who are always homesick and feel alone. More and more of them choose to buy or adopt a pet to accompany them during their study year, however, how will they treat their pet after they graduate? My point is if you do not have enough ability to own a pet, do not make them have a “hard moment.” If you love them, you can go to shelter to be a volunteer to help take care of the animals. They are the responsibility, not the toy.

I got this idea because I adopted a kitten in my junior year, and after my graduation, for some reasons, I lost my cat. I feel bad about that and my cat. So, I do not want this kind of situation to happen on more pet’s lives. I thought the hardest thing to do the nonfiction film is access. Real people, real life, and real image. Access to interview the shelter and relate people is important. But I want to give my cat a good result in my film.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment