Bomeisl’s Rhetoric and Literature (Digital) Class (aka Media) Film Choice List
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The following comprises the Film List of English 12: Literature and Rhetoric (Digital) – not all will be viewed in a school year. Students are given choice of some and
others are teacher selected. Although any student over the age of 17 can buy a ticket to an R rated movie in any American movie theater since an R rating restricts ticket
sales to age 17 and above, CFSD policy requires parental permission for R rated and not rated films. Films rated G and PG do not require parental permission, but I
have included them in the list so parents are informed. If a parent has a concern about any film, please feel free to contact me to discuss any concerns. I have offered
succinct explanations of my purpose for showing the films, but sometimes a more detailed discussion of the films can offer more insight into the choices.
I teach a unit of learning rhetoric through documentary film, so students are given a large choice among documentaries, but in actuality view 3 – 5 total. I offer students
a choice between two Michael Moore films and two or three among the others. I usually select Wal-Mart or Outfoxed to show in the beginning of the year in order to
introduce common persuasive techniques and media bias. Most of the films were selected based off recommendations from a College Board AP Unit on Documentaries
and Rhetoric. Permission slips will be forthcoming as the year progresses.
Mrs. Bomeisl
Documentaries
Bowling for Columbine
Note: Students choose on of two Michael Moore films to view.
Please explain why you believe this movie/video is essential to your course/ unit of study (continue on attached sheet of paper, if necessary). Be specific
about how it reinforces and/or enhances our curriculum.
When teaching bias and logical fallacies, what better example is there than Michael Moore’s most acclaimed film? This documentary stands as an example of
how not to present an argument. Students can examine the rhetorical appeals and logical fallacies in order to understand bias and learn that the best way to
persuade is to represent both sides of an argument and bring the audience to their point of view through facts, statistics and sound reasoning.
Michael Moore’s examination of violence in America (no, this is NOT a film advocating gun control) is thought provoking, but flawed. It stands as an example
of an essay film that, although popular and successful, is exactly what students do not want to write to present an argument.
Rating & Awards
Rated R –
28 Awards Wins & 7 Nominations: Won: Best Documentary: Academy Award Best Feature Documentary; Cannes Film Festival – 55th Anniversary Prize
(Unanimous); Central Ohio Film Critics Association; Chicago Film Critics Association Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association; Florida Film Critics Circle
Awards; Golden Trailer Awards; Independent Spirit Awards; Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards; Online Film Critics Society Awards; Las Vegas Film
Critics Society Awards; National Board of review, USA; Phoenix Film Critics Society Awards; Southeastern Film Critics Association Awards; Toronto Film
Critics Association Awards; Audience Award: Amsterdam Intern’lt Documentary Film Festival; Atlantic Film Festival; Bergen International Film Festival;
Sudbury Cinéfest; São Paulo International Film Festival;
American Cinema Editors - Best Edited Documentary Film; Bodil Awards – Best American Film; Broadcast film Critics Association Awards – Critics
Choice Award; Cesar Awards, France – Best Foreign Film; Kinema Junpo Awards- Best Foreign Language Film Director; London Critics Circle Film
Awards – Film of the Year; Turia Awards – Best Foreign Film; Vancouver International Film Festival – Most Popular Film; Writers Guild of America, USA
– Best Original Screenplay; Also nominated for 7 other awards not listed here
Description of Documentary: The United States of America is notorious for its astronomical number of people killed by firearms for a developed nation
without a civil war. With his signature sense of angry humor, activist filmmaker Michael Moore sets out to explore the roots of this bloodshed. In doing so, he
learns that the conventional answers of easy availability of guns, violent national history, violent entertainment and even poverty are inadequate to explain this
violence when other cultures share those same factors without the equivalent carnage. In order to arrive at a possible explanation, Michael Moore takes on a
deeper examination of America's culture of fear, bigotry and violence in a nation with widespread gun ownership. Furthermore, he seeks to investigate and
confront the powerful elite political and corporate interests fanning this culture for their own unscrupulous gain.
Bomeisl’s Rhetoric and Literature (Digital) Class (aka Media) Film Choice List
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SICKO (This film does not require parental permission.) Note: Students choose one of two Michael Moore films to view.
MY PURPOSE: When teaching bias and logical fallacies, what better example is there than any Michael Moore film? This documentary stands as an example
of how not to present an argument. Students can examine the rhetorical appeals and logical fallacies in order to understand bias and learn that the best way to
persuade is to represent both sides of an argument and bring the audience to their point of view through facts, statistics and sound reasoning. (Notice I said
sound reasoning, not reasons that sound good.)
Michael Moore’s examination of healthcare in America is thought provoking, but flawed. It stands as an example of an essay film that, although popular and
successful, is exactly what students do not want to utilize to present an argument.
RATINGS AND AWARDS: PG 13
7 Awards Won: American Cinema Editors, USA – Best Edited Documentary; Best Documentary: Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards; Chicago Film
Critics Association Awards; Las Vegas Film Critics Society Awards; Phoenix Film Critics Society Awards; PGA Awards - Motion Picture Producer of the Year
Award (Documentary Theatrical Motion Pictures); Satellite Awards – Best Motion Picture, Documentary; 7 other Nominations including for Oscar
SUMMARY OF FILM: SICKO is a 2007 documentary film by American filmmaker Michael Moore. The film investigates the American health care system,
focusing on its health insurance and pharmaceutical industry. The film compares the for-profit, non-universal U.S. system with the non-profit universal health
care systems of Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Cuba.
The Boys of Baraka
MY PURPOSE: This highly acclaimed film has a cinema verite feel while also incorporating a strong message. The language that caused the R rating is
common in most high school locker rooms and, alas, even sometimes in our hallways.
RATINGS AND AWARDS: Rated R for some language
Won: NAACP Image Award o Outstanding Independent or Foreign Film;
Won: Best Documentary: Newport International Film Festival; Silverdocs Film Festival;
Nominated for Emmy for Outstanding Informational Programming - Long Form; Nominated - International Documentary Association – Best Feature
Documentary
SUMMARY OF FILM: Four 12-year-old black boys from one of the most violent ghettos in Baltimore, Maryland, are taken 10,000 miles away to an
experimental boarding school in rural Kenya, to try to take advantage of the educational opportunities they can't get in their own country.
Born Into Brothels
MY PURPOSE: This film is really more the children’s film than the directors. It is a fine and moving example of how the subject of a film can be the best
storyteller.
The R rating of this film results from the examination of the lives of children of prostitutes. By a student’s senior year in high school, nothing in the film is
shocking, and there is no graphic exposure to the mother’s occupational duties. Also, the language that gained it an R rating is not in English, but in the
children’s native tongue.
RATINGS AND AWARDS: Rated R
13 wins: Best Documentary:
Academy Award; Bangkok International Film Festival; International Documentary Association; National Board of Review, USA; Seattle International Film
Festival
Bend Film Festival – Audience Award; Bermuda International Film Festival (2 Awards) – Audience Choice and Documentary Prize; Los Angeles Film Critics
Association Awards: Cleveland International Film Festival – Best Film; Full Frame Documentary Film Festival – Audience Award; High Falls Film Festival –
Audience Award; Independent Spirit Awards - Truer Than Fiction Award; Sundance Film Festival – Audience Award - Documentary
3 nominations
Bomeisl’s Rhetoric and Literature (Digital) Class (aka Media) Film Choice List
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SUMMARY OF FILM: Amidst the apparent growing prosperity of India, there is a dark underbelly of poverty of another side of the nation that is little known.
This film is a chronicle of filmmakers Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman's efforts to show that world of Calcutta's red light district. To do that, they inspired a
special group of children of the prostitutes of the area to photograph the most reluctant subjects of it. As the kids excel in their newfound art, the filmmakers
struggle to help them have a chance for a better life away from the miserable poverty that threatens to crush their dreams.
Devil’s Playground
MY PURPOSE: Students readily choose this film, which is a look not only into Amish society, but serves as an example of what can happen when teens are
allowed to make their own choices without any parental input or authority.
This film has been shown on NatGeo, so it has been on network television. There is some rough language, although nothing a senior in high school does not
encounter on a regular basis. The scenes dealing with parties and drugs serve the purpose to show the audience just how out of control teenagers become when
allowed total freedom, and the results of this are shown in a negative light.
This is a good example of one of the 3 schools of thought in documentary films: cinema verite, in which the director takes a more active role, but allows the
viewer to come to their own conclusion. There is little bias, yet the choice of subject, shots, and editing formulate the director’s thesis.
RATINGS AND AWARDS: Not rated
Shown on Nat Geo - 2 film festival wins: Karlovy Vary International Film Festival – Best Documentary Film – Special Mention; Sarasota Film Festival –
Audience Award
4 other nominations
SUMMARY OF FILM: The Devil's Playground is a fascinating and moving documentary about a little-known aspect of Amish life. Amish are not permitted
to join the church until their late teens, and have to do so of their own volition. The film explores rumspringa, wherein young Amish are given the opportunity to
explore the "English" way of life. Filmmaker Lucy Walker tracked a few of these young people over the course of their experience. The film shows how
difficult it is for them to break away from the church. Many of them "act out," exploring not just Nintendo and rock music, but alcohol, drugs, and sex. But
almost all of them return to the church, and this fairly balanced documentary makes it clear that despite the church's stance, there is tremendous pressure, both
economic and emotional, on these kids to return to the fold. The film focuses on a young man, Faron, who develops a serious drug problem and decides not to
get baptized, and a young woman, Velda, who was baptized, and then later, suffering from acute depression, made the difficult decision to leave the church.
Walker successfully captures the compelling details of this formerly closed and forbidding world, and the essentially ordinary kids who inhabit it.
King Corn
MY PURPOSE: This film is a good example of how a topic that might seem to be stagnant and not interesting can become an interesting and informative
documentary. Since it is not rated, school policy demands permission, but it is a PBS film that has been viewed on network television.
RATINGS AND AWARDS: Not Rated –PBS film
SUMMARY OF FILM: King Corn is a feature documentary about two friends, one acre of corn, and the subsidized crop that drives our fast-food nation. In
King Corn, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from college on the east coast, move to the heartland to learn where their food comes from. With the help of
friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America's most-productive, most-subsidized
grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eatand how we farm
The Laramie Project
MY PURPOSE: This film is a good example of direct cinema. Making a documentary about the play created from Theater troupe’s visit to Laramie offers the
opportunity to discuss the similarities and difference between theater and film while also examining the rhetoric used for both.
RATINGS AND AWARDS: Not Rated
Wins: Berlin International Film Festival - First Movie Award - Special Mention; GLAAD Media Awards – Outstanding Television Movie; Humanitas Prize - 90
Bomeisl’s Rhetoric and Literature (Digital) Class (aka Media) Film Choice List
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Minute or Longer Network Category; L.A. Outfest – Outstanding Artistic Achievement; National Board of Review, USA – Best Film Made for Cable TV; 7
nominations including 4 primetime Emmy
SUMMARY OF FILM: Moisés Kaufman and members of New York's Tectonic Theater Project went to Laramie, Wyoming after the murder of Matthew
Shepard. This is a film version of the play they wrote based on more than 200 interviews they conducted in Laramie. It follows and in some cases re-enacts the
chronology of Shepherd's visit to a local bar, his kidnap and beating, the discovery of him tied to a fence, the vigil at the hospital, his death and funeral, and the
trial of his killers. It mixes real news reports with actors portraying friends, family, cops, killers, and other Laramie residents in their own words. It concludes
with a Laramie staging of "Angels in America" a year after Shephard's death.
March of the Penguins (This film does not require parental permission.)
MY PURPOSE: This film is a perfect example of direct cinema. It contains facts, statistics, emotional appeal, etc., yet remains the “fly on the wall approach”
without bias. It also illustrates the beginning of documentaries as feature films, meant to be shown as first run movies.
RATINGS AND AWARDS: Rated G
Won Oscar. Another 11 wins & 12 nominations
Won: Best Documentary: Motion Picture Academy; American Cinema Editors, USA, Best Documentary; Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards; – Golden
Trailer Awards; Las Vegas Film Critics Society Awards; Character and Morality in Entertainment Awards; National Board of Review, USA; Southeastern Film
Critics Association Awards;
Other wins: César Awards, France – Best Sound; Golden Trailer Awards – Best Voice Over; BMI Film & TV Awards – Music Award; Writers Guild of
America, USA – Documentary Screenplay Award; Young Artist Awards – Jackie Coogan Award
SUMMARY OF FILM: The cycle of life the Emperor's penguins is disclosed in this wonderful documentary. Every autumn, these animals leave the safety of
the ocean and march along twenty days to a place called "Oamack". Once there, they select their mates, they procreate, protect and feed their offspring and after
months they return to the sea. Later, their progeny go to the ocean, where they stay for four years, and when they reach their adult life, they follow the same
pattern of their parents. Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
The Murder of Emmett Till
MY PURPOSE: This film is a good example of direct cinema that still can make an argument. Since it is not rated, school policy demands permission, but it is
a PBS film that has been viewed on network television.
RATINGS AND AWARDS: Not Rated - PBS film
SUMMARY OF FILM: In August 1955, a fourteen-year-old black boy whistled at a white woman in a grocery store in Money, Mississippi. Emmett Till, a
teen from Chicago, didn't understand that he had broken the unwritten laws of the Jim Crow South until three days later, when two white men dragged him from
his bed in the dead of night, beat him brutally and then shot him in the head. Although his killers were arrested and charged with murder, they were both
acquitted quickly by an all-white, all-male jury. Shortly afterwards, the defendants sold their story, including a detailed account of how they murdered Till, to a
journalist. The murder and the trial horrified the nation and the world. Till's death was a spark that helped mobilize the civil rights movement. Three months
after his body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River, the Montgomery bus boycott began.
Ghosts of Rwanda
MY PURPOSE: This film is more of a news-style documentary, which fits well for examining rhetorical style.
Since it is not rated, school policy demands permission, but it is a PBS film that has been viewed on network television.
RATINGS AND AWARDS: Frontline DVD – not rated
SUMMARY OF FILM: Ghosts of Rwanda marks the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide with a documentary chronicling one of the worst atrocities of
the 20th century. In addition to interviews with key government officials and diplomats, this documentary offers eyewitness accounts of the genocide from those
who experienced it firsthand. FRONTLINE illustrates the failures that enabled the slaughter of 800,000 people to occur unchallenged by the global community.
Bomeisl’s Rhetoric and Literature (Digital) Class (aka Media) Film Choice List
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Wal-Mart: The High Price of Low Cost
MY PURPOSE: I usually show this film in the beginning of the year when we study persuasive techniques. It was recommended in a College Board AP unit as
an example of rhetoric, especially logical fallacies. Students readily buy into its attack on Wal-Mart. When the overplayed use of rhetorical appeals, logical
fallacies, and blatant bias are exposed, students have an eye-opening experience, realizing how easy it is to be swayed when you agree with the topic.
RATINGS AND AWARDS: Not Rated USA: all others – PG
SUMMARY OF FILM: This documentary takes the viewer on a deeply personal journey into the everyday lives of families struggling to fight Goliath. From a
family business owner in the Midwest to a preacher in California, from workers in Florida to a poet in Mexico, dozens of film crews on three continents bring
the intensely personal stories of an assault on families and American values.
FICTION FILMS: THESE FILMS MIGHT BE COMBINED WITH AN EXISTING NOVEL, OR COULD SERVE AS A FICTIONAL REPRESENTATION OF A MEDIA TOPIC.
Fahrenheit 451
MY PURPOSE: This film was made in 1966, before the MPAA assigned ratings. It does not contain objectionable material, but since it is not rated it requires
parental permission. Many students read the novel in Middle School, and it is a great reminder that books (novels, literature) are an important part of our
society. It also is valuable in our discussion of print media.
RATINGS AND AWARDS: Not Rated
3 Awards Nominations: BAFTA – best actress (Julie Christie); Hugo – Best Dramatic Presentation; Golden Lion – Francois Truffaut, Director/Writer
SUMMARY OF FILM: The classic science fiction novel by Ray Bradbury was a curious choice for one of the leading directors of the French New Wave,
François Truffaut. But from the opening credits onward (spoken, not written on screen), Truffaut takes Bradbury's fascinating premise and makes it his own.
The futuristic society depicted in Fahrenheit 451 is a culture without books. Firemen still race around in red trucks and wear helmets, but their job is to start
fires: they ferret out forbidden stashes of books, douse them with gasoline, and make public bonfires. Oskar Werner, the star of Truffaut's Jules and Jim, plays a
fireman named Montag, whose exposure to David Copperfield wakens an instinct toward reading and individual thought. (That's why books are banned--they
give people too many ideas.) In an intriguing casting flourish, Julie Christie plays two roles: Montag's bored, drugged-up wife and the woman who helps kindle
the spark of rebellion. --Robert Horton
Shattered Glass (This film does not require parental permission.)
MY PURPOSE: This film offers the opportunity to discuss many topics about media. Students learn the day-to-day working of a magazine staff and how
stories are decided on, researched, developed, written, and edited. It is also an examination of ethics in journalism, and lends itself to a discussion of plagiarism
as well.
RATINGS AND AWARDS: Rated PG
Nominated for Golden Globe. Another 10 wins & 17 nominations
SUMMARY OF FILM: This film tells the true story of fraudulent Washington, D.C. journalist Stephen Glass (Christensen), who rose to meteoric heights as a
young writer in his 20s, becoming a staff writer at "The New Republic" for three years (1995-1998), where 27 of his 41 published stories were either partially or
completely made up. Looking for a short cut to fame, Glass concocted sources, quotes and even entire stories, but his deception did not go unnoticed forever,
and eventually, his world came crumbling down... Written by Kaliya Warner
Network
MY PURPOSE: The R rating resulted from a brief nude scene with Faye Dunaway (we mostly see her nude back for a few seconds). Little is actually seen,
and what gained an R rating in the 1970’s is common on network television today.
Although some people see this film as dated, it opens the discussion of just how far television will go for ratings. Howard Beal is not so far removed from many
Bomeisl’s Rhetoric and Literature (Digital) Class (aka Media) Film Choice List
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of the pundits on television today.
RATINGS AND AWARDS: Rated R
Won 4 Oscars. Another 14 wins & 19 nominations
SUMMARY OF FILM: Media madness reigns supreme in screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky's scathing satire about the uses and abuses of network television. But
while Chayefsky's and director Sidney Lumet's take on television may seem quaint in the age of "reality TV" and Jerry Springer's talk-show fisticuffs, it's every
bit as potent now as it was when the film was released in 1976. And because Chayefsky was one of the greatest of all dramatists, his Oscar-winning script about
the ratings frenzy at the cost of cultural integrity is a showcase for powerhouse acting by Peter Finch, Faye Dunaway and Beatrice Straight (who each won
Oscars), and Oscar nominee William Holden in one of his finest roles. Finch plays a veteran network anchorman who's been fired because of low ratings. His
character's response is to announce he'll kill himself on live television two weeks hence. What follows, along with skyrocketing ratings, is the anchorman's
descent into insanity, during which he fervently rages against the medium that made him a celebrity. Dunaway plays the frigid, ratings-obsessed producer who
pursues success with cold-blooded zeal; Holden is the married executive who tries to thaw her out during his own seething midlife crisis. Through it all,
Chayefsky (via Finch) urges the viewer to repeat the now-famous mantra "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore!" to reclaim our humanity from
the medium that threatens to steal it away. --Jeff Shannon
Being There (This film does not require parental permission.)
MY PURPOSE: After reading the novel, we view the film and discuss the differences between the two. Kosinsky wrote the screenplay as well, yet there is a
major difference in the endings. We discuss our experience of watching novels turned into film and how each medium restricts or enhances the experience.
RATINGS AND AWARDS: Rated PG
Won Oscar. Another 10 wins & 10 nominations
SUMMARY OF FILM: A simple-minded gardener named Chance has spent all his life in the Washington D.C. house of an old man. When the man dies,
Chance is put out on the street with no knowledge of the world except what he has learned from television. After a run in with a limousine, he ends up a guest of
a woman (Eve) and her husband Ben, an influential but sickly businessman. Now called Chauncey Gardner, Chance becomes friend and confidante to Ben, and
an unlikely political insider. Written by Scott Renshaw <as.idc@forsythe.stanford.edu>
Persepolis: (This film does not require parental permission.)
MY PURPOSE: Graphic novels are emerging as a popular literary genre. Viewing the film would be in juxtaposition with reading the graphic novel in order to
discuss the effects the medium has on the work.
RATINGS AND AWARDS: Rated: PG
Nominated for Oscar. Another 17 wins & 24 nominations
SUMMARY OF FILM: In 1970s Iran, Marjane 'Marji' Statrapi watches events through her young eyes and her idealistic family of a long dream being fulfilled
of the hated Shah's defeat in the Iranian Revolution of 1979. However as Marji grows up, she witnesses first hand how the new Iran, now ruled by Islamic
fundamentalists, has become a repressive tyranny on its own. With Marji dangerously refusing to remain silent at this injustice, her parents send her abroad to
Vienna to study for a better life. However, this change proves an equally difficult trial with the young woman finding herself in a different culture loaded with
abrasive characters and profound disappointments that deeply trouble her. Even when she returns home, Marji finds that both she and homeland have changed
too much and the young woman and her loving family must decide where she truly belongs. Written by Kenneth Chisholm (kchishol@rogers.com)