Week Eight - Reel Works Digital Story

I picked "Home" by Nael Samara




 1.What do you like about the digital story? I like hearing views of the Palestinian and Israeli conflict from individual people who are affected by it, rather than in the general political and governmental terms I typically hear. I was also really interested in how the two women interviewed at the beginning felt so strongly about their homeland, and how that affected the next generation. Even though the young filmmaker had never been to Palestine, he still felt connected to it as his home.

 2.What did you learn from the digital story? I learned a lot about Palestinian culture - which clearly emphasizes family and ties to roots evidenced by the strong pull it has on immigrants. I also learned about how this culture permeates deeply enough that the generation born in America still refers it to as their home.

 3.What surprised you about the digital story? How strongly the young filmmaker felt about Palestine, even though he had been born in the U.S. and had never visited there. The culture came with the immigrants, and permeated their existence in New York.

 4.How did the digital story provide an example of how digital story telling can build self esteem, help young people voice an opposition to social problems, or create an alternative to stereotypes of adolescents typically portrayed in mainstream media? This digital story definitely provided this young man with the ability to portray Palestinian's in a way that counters what most of the mainstream media portrays. I really appreciated that this film took that portrayal head-on (how couldn't he have, though, because the stereotype is so prevalent, and clearly a part of his everyday life). The most telling part to me was when one woman he interviewed spoke about each side in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict not wanting to concede that they both had a claim to that land. This viewpoint - that there are people on both sides of the issue that believes the other has a claim too - is not typically deemed newsworthy by media looking to pit two sides against each other.

 5.How can digital storytelling promote critical media literacy?  Digital storytelling can promote critical media literacy by teaching students how to share their own stories, and how to recognize that their stories are not always the ones that are shown in the media. This is best done while putting digital storytelling in a larger context, examining mainstream media stories, and determining which stories are not being shown and why. Furthermore, the art of crafting a digital story allows students the opportunity to learn first hand that the art of media making means leaving certain things out for the purpose of the story. Knowing this, gives students a better framework for being able to question what and why mainstream media left out certain aspects of a story.