Stay cool in the documentary for this month called “Antarctic Edge: 70° South.” In this documentary, we will be seeing what is brewing below the surface of Antarctica’s infamous ice sheets along with oceanographers, ecologists, and biologists to learn how Global Warming trickles down from the ice above to the cities, countries, and states below. 

This was such a fascinating documentary to watch. You are instantly immersed into the world of oceanography and indoctrinated into the crew yourself. You learn the sacrifices the scientists make on their quest, the extremes they endure, and how much research they put in every day, from getting skin samples from whales to learn about their gender and diet, studying krill, noting the weight of the penguins, and so much more. 

What they do is so astronomically important, not only to understand the ocean’s biology, but also how we can balance out carbon emissions, and save the world. 

As Naderev Sano, Climate Commissioner for the Philippines said in the Climate Summit in 2013,  “If not now, when? If not us, who? If not here, then where?” 

To watch this documentary, click here.

 

Get ready to take a deep dive into the history of dolphins and the importance they have in our ecosystem in this session’s installment of Documentaries for Teens, where I review documentaries for you, the teens! Today, we will be reviewing Dolphins: Is our love too deep? So grab your fins and snorkels, and let’s jump in!

Dolphins: Is our love too deep? Serves as an essay on dolphins, how they have been revered in our human history, and how we humans are making waves in theirs by causing dysfunction in their ecosystem by  hand-feeding them at Monkey Mia.  

Monkey Mia, Shark Bay, Australia, has been a popular venue for watching dolphins hunt for centuries. Darren Capewell, Founder of Wula Gura Nyinda Eco Cultural Adventures and Aboriginal tribe member, states that his ancestors fished with dolphins off this cove for 30,000 years, and now, the Australian government is allowing troves of tourists to hand-feed dolphins, causing a domino that biologist Janet Mann and her team are trying to keep up with. 

Even though hand-feeding might seem harmless, we are actually red-handed at causing strain in the ecosystem by “helping” these mammals feast on procured fish. And the effects are starting to weigh heavily on the scales. (You thought I wouldn’t make a fish pun? It’s my porpoise!)

Overall, I really enjoyed this documentary. It was very informative, and it was very good at posing the question: is there any space for human interaction with wild animals? I also loved the cast of dolphins we met throughout this film, especially the mom-and-daughter duo; Surprise and Shock. 

If you are a fan of cats, you have found the right documentary to watch over the summer. Meet the Cats of Malta, a documentary that features the island’s cats, and the people who take care of them.

Malta is an island in Southern Europe, situated in the Mediterranean Sea, just south of Italy. Historically, it was ruled by the Romans, Turkish, English, French, the Knights of St. John, and now, cats. Yes, 500,000 people currently live in Malta, but so do 100,000 felines.

Malta loves its cats, as noted by the bronze statues of the feline companions or the ones that are being restored by artists like Matthew Pandolfino for the “Cat Park,” or, the number of “feeders” that live in the city. This documentary features vignettes of the most prolific advocates for the cats; Roza, Karmen, Nikki, Michelle, Salvu, and Isaac. Each feeder tends to their own colony and makes it their goal to make sure the sick cats are tended to, the cats they trap are neutered, and that some are housed to help with the population, all important tasks to keep generations of these Maltese felines safe.

As an animal lover myself, I really enjoyed this documentary. It is lighthearted, informative, and how can you not look at all these beautiful cats? I really commend each “feeder” for their years of dedication to helping these cats, as well as their honesty towards how much they have to do to keep up with the population of ferals as well as navigating the ever-changing infrastructure of Malta. I hope that they receive more support for years to come.

I hope you enjoy this documentary as well, and please share in the comments, or with library staff, what your favorite cat was in this documentary? Mine is named Nannu.

To watch the Cats of Malta, click here.

In honor of Juneteenth, we will be celebrating African Americans and their history by watching five documentaries on Kanopy.

Ralph Ellison: An American Journey

In Ralph Ellison: An American Journey, we follow the life and career of prolific novelist Ralph Ellison as he rises in the ranks of the writing world with his works of Invisible Man and his unfinished project, Juneteenth. 

This documentary features poets, critics, and professors alike, all speaking on the importance of Ralph Ellison in his entirety. Ellison was the child of Ida Millsap and Lewis Ellison, who both wished for him to become a poet. Growing up in segregated Oklahoma, he had to overcome prejudice and racism in order to be seen and acknowledged. After college, he managed to travel to New York, where he would stay, learning the ways of the artist world with mentors such as Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, and Alain Locke. He flourished under their experienced wing and wrote The Invisible Man, a novel that follows an unnamed protagonist and his experience living in the 20th century and navigating racism and popular ideologies while carving out his own identity. The Invisible Man is a work that aligned with the black experience in American history, especially at the time of publication. 

Vibrant with history, art, quotations, and clips of Ellison talking of his works, this documentary is for everyone who would love to learn more about our history, one invisible man at a time. 

Thank you so much for reading this blog. To watch this documentary, click the link here

If you enjoy art, history, and just a good documentary, you have come to the right place! Welcome to Documentaries for Teens, where I review documentaries for you, well, teens! In honor of Black History Month, I wanted to highlight a prolific artist of his time, Jean-Michel Basquiat, in The Radiant Child. 

Let’s begin! 

In this hour-and-a-half documentary, we learn about the rise of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s prolific career that took place within a ten-year span, starting off from graffiti to one-man art shows. The documentary is pieced together via interviews and footage of the artist by one of his friends, Tamra. 

This was such an exceptional documentary. Basquiat was a familiar name to me, and after watching this, I am in awe of him. He was only 17 when he left his parents, couch-surfed, and survived by searching for money on bar floors, eating snacks, and making friends through his work. How crazy is that? Friends, art sellers, and his agent talk about how he poised himself and made the right movies to further his career, leading him to do art shows, be part of exhibits, and collaborate with Andy Warhol. Yes. THE Andy Warhol, who was an inspiration from the beginning of Basquiat’s career, became a best friend and cohort, respectively. 

I am not an art person, but I absolutely loved watching this piece. You are so immersed in the world of art that lives in the epicenter of New York City that you feel like you yourself are looking over Basquiat’s work in his hay day, and it makes you a little jealous that you never had the chance to do so. 

I hope you enjoy this documentary as much as I did! 

To watch this documentary, click here.

The New Year is the perfect time to learn something new. Why not a deep dive into one of the most popular pieces of fantasy ever written? 

In this session of Documentaries for Teens, we will celebrate JRR Tolkein’s 132nd birthday (January 3rd) by watching The Real Middle Earth, which revisits Tolkein’s favorite places that inspired the world that we love so much. So without further ado, let’s go There and back again (get it?).

This documentary is perfect for fans of Tolkien’s work, for those who have England on their bucket list to visit, or who are learning something new, as it checks all of those boxes. The places we visit throughout the documentary, such as spots in the countryside, make you want to buy plane tickets to visit. The towns and colleges we see are pedicured, and the countryside is just so lush and green; how cool would it be to walk where Tolkien did and understand by experience what inspired him to write such cool worlds? 

The documentary does a great job breaking apart what locations inspired what scenes and passages. The most interesting one I thought was learning that the Dead Marshes, a melancholy place that Frodo, Sam, and Gollum pass through on the way to Mordor, was inspired by Tolkien’s involvement with the Battle of the Somme during WWI as well as how Tolkien was against industrialism, as it threatened human beings’ relationship with nature, which is a prolific theme throughout his works. After all, this man did create the idea of Ents! 

What will be your favorite part of this documentary? 

To watch it, click the link here, and enjoy your journey through The Real Middle Earth. 

In honor of Native American Heritage Month, I wanted to write about a very special documentary I found on Kanopy called, “Being Thunder.” It follows Sherente Harris, a two-spirited teenage member of the Narragansett tribe in Rhode Island, where they go against the status quo of what it means to be a queer indigenous person. 

“The most controversial act I have ever committed is being my true self.”  If that is not a powerful statement, I don’t know what is.This documentary teaches a powerful lesson: In the face of prejudice, just be you. 

Toward the end of the documentary, Sherente enters an eighteen-year-old female party for a dancing competition at a powwow. However, the judges decide that they will not judge Sherente, even though they have registered. 

“I just can’t be treated normal,” Sherente says, as they break down to their grandmother, which is such a heartbreaking sentiment, especially when they have to wear all this makeup for the powwow in order to be accepted and considered “normal.” 

What is normal? 

Two spirited people have been around since before the colonists came to Rhode Island, and have been revered in their tribes for just as long. 

So –  what is normal? 

At the end of this documentary, we see examples of what is normal. Friends and family of Sherente cheer them up numerous times and encourage them to dance, even without the judges’ approval, and cheer them on as they perform. 

To me, normal is accepting others, and learning through them. 

This documentary does just that. I learned so much about indigenous people, two spirit people, the crimes against the Narragansett people of Rhode Island, and Sherente, who is going to teach us how to better our future. 

I really enjoyed this documentary, and I hope you will too. If you are interested in watching this documentary, click here to check it out. 

Hello and welcome to Documentaries for Teens, where I review documentaries that I think you, the teens, would enjoy! This post is going to be a little different because I will be reviewing a few episodes from a compilation Kanopy currently offers called “The Short Films of Elizabeth Lo.” 

Elizabeth Lo is an award-winning director/cinematographer/producer, and after watching the episode in this miniseries, I can see why. Each episode covers a humanities issue, from homelessness to the pov of Native Americans on conservations, to many more. She is not afraid of sharpening her camera lens to capture the reality of it all in such eloquent shots. For this series session, I will do a short review of two of the episodes, Hotel 22 and Bisonhead.  

A play on words, Hotel 22 is not a hotel at all but rather a bus. Every night in Silicon Valley, CA, Bus 22 is a safe place for those who are experiencing homelessness or displaced. In this episode, we ride along with them, watching the passengers snooze in their seats, interact with others, and watch the drivers operate their shuttles. The episode is long enough to draw us in before we have to get off the bus and continue on with our day. It is such a simple video, but cashes in a reality check on what it is like to live on your own resources. 

***I emphasize my warning about language in regards to this video, as a passenger says slurs to passengers on Hotel 22***

Bisonhead follows the Tanners, a family of Ponderai Native Americans who are trying to reclaim the treaty hunting rights that they have had for the past 150 years by culling bison in one segment of the land, a hunting zone outside of Yellowstone. 

This was a very humbling episode to watch. As someone who does not have the rich ancestry as this family, I cannot imagine having to struggle against a world that still refuses to give you the right to land your past lives on. The Ponderai used to hunt on Yellowstone but now, they have only one area where they can hunt and even that is restricted by private land. Another moment of reflection when I was watching this episode, is the scene at 5:25-5:44, when it shows a group on a tour bus. These are people who do not have any roots in Yellowstone and honor the park as a spectacle. The tour guide then says, “I think this is a very classic Yellowstone picture we are seeing right now. You need to have three components for a classic Yellowstone winter picture, snow, buffalo, and steam right behind it. An interesting foil, when paired with the Native American family, is not shown, even though they have been with Yellowstone since the beginning. 

With beginnings comes an end, and the family successfully catches a bison and takes the head of the creature, giving the episode its name. (That is where my warning plays a part, the end shows the process, while the beginning of the documentary shows the end). 

After watching these two Elizabeth Lo episodes, I am hooked on her work. Her skillman-ship with direction and camera is insane, framing a story with minimal dialogue and so much life. She teaches the audience to look and find the story in the day, and that is what I will do. 

Thank you so much for tuning in for this edition of Documentaries for Teens. I would love to hear which was your favorite episode in the series? 

To check out Elizabeth Lo’s work, click here.

Hello and welcome to my blog series called “Documentaries for Teens,” where I review Documentaries that may be perfect for you teens! Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this blog! 

As a librarian, I help find articles, books, addresses, etc., for people throughout the workweek, and I always learn something new along with the patron. This documentary taught me so much about a subject that I have never had any experience with. It is called Feeling Wanted: A Story About Foster Care, directed by Yasmin Mistry, and it is a 14-minute documentary that glimpses into the life of a former foster kid, Charell.  

We understand that she is an independent individual when she explains the beginning of her career of being in the foster system. She wakes to find that her parents are gone. She takes her little sister to the babysitter’s house and heads off to school. When she returns, she stays with the sitter until 10pm, with no adult in sight. (She is 6 years old when this takes place).

Shortly after this, Charell and her sister moved into their great-grandmother’s house. 

Their mother was addicted to drugs, and their father was a drug dealer, and both were unable to take care of them. Charell enjoyed her time with her great-grandmother because she was sweet and loving, but when she got sick, the girls entered into the foster system and thus began their career of being foster kids. 

Charell states through her history of going from home to home, the worst one she and her sister stayed in was the first one, directly after they had to leave their great-grandmother’s. 

“A social worker came and collected me and my sister. That hurt. I don’t know why she (the social worker) wouldn’t have tried to prepare us for that. I don’t know why it had to be that way. Usually, they don’t prepare you because they believe that if you don’t know, it’s better, but it’s not, it’s not better” (3:45-4:25). 

This was a very eye-opening documentary. It was only 14 minutes, but in that amount of time, I walked away with a new perspective on those who have gone through the foster care system. I appreciate Charell sharing her story with us, and for those who may have experienced being a foster kid, I hope that listening to her story gives you comfort in knowing that you are not alone. 

The documentary also features a study guide that goes over the film and lists frequently asked questions for the director. 

I highly recommend this documentary. If you are interested in watching, click the link right here. 

Thank you for joining me for this session of Documentaries for Teens, and I will write you next time!