Teach Our Children. 1972. USA. Directed by Christine Choy, Susan Robeson for Third World Newsreel. Preserved thanks to the efforts of UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, MIAP alumna Pamela Jean Smith, and Cinemalab. DCP. 36 min.
Bernadette. 2008. UK. Directed by Duncan Campbell. DCP. 37 min.
Newsreels have been a mainstay of the Flaherty, presented over the years as both dispatches addressing timely issues and asynchronous historical documents. This double bill includes one of many productions by the activist filmmaker collective Third World Newsreel that have been featured at the seminar. Teach Our Children, an early directorial credit for TWN lead cofounders Christine Choy (Who Killed Vincent Chin?) and Susan Robeson (author, producer, and granddaughter of Paul Robeson), is a stirring account of the 1971 Attica prison rebellion told through on-the-ground reportage and subsequent interviews with inmates. Here, it is paired with video artist Duncan Campbell’s elliptical portrait of Irish Republican socialist and civil rights leader Bernadette Devlin (originally presented at the 2014 seminar organized by Caspar Stracke and Gabriela Monroy). Bernadette combines archival imagery with found and scripted material, twining a reflection on Devlin’s life and legacy with a critical assessment of the forces through which historical figures are represented and memorialized in visual culture.