REEL STORIES – A New Twist on the Friday Night Flick
REEL STORIES about Real People, Problems and Possibilities - A Summer Documentary Film Series
Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections
Friday, June 27
7 p.m.
Spilled Milk: Our Milk, Our Farmers, Our Arkansas
Friday, July 25
7 p.m.
Who Killed the Electric Car?
Friday, August 29
7 p.m.
For more information about REEL STORIES, contact Joe Foster at (501) 727-6219 or send an e-mail.
Click here to download a REEL STORIES flyer (Adobe PDF file).
Once thought to be dry and boring, documentaries have now become an influential form of film and video – frequently providing insights in a complex world. Documentaries can connect us with the human experience like no other art form. They have the potential to inspire our deepest passions, hopes, fears and ideals. When done well, they touch and inform viewers.
Recent theatrical successes are creating a growing audience for these films. Documentaries have long served as an educational tool able to inform people about different places or issues. Now, they are serving as a public forum for discussion of a wide range of social, cultural, economic, and environmental issues. They challenge us to think critically about some of the most important subjects of our time while providing an impetus for political engagement and social change.
The need for the critical viewing and discussion of these films is growing with the amount of information with which we are bombarded on a daily basis. In the 21st century, media literacy has become a critical component in the education of our citizens. Documentaries, often designed specifically to uncover propaganda, bias and censorship, provide a natural venue for exploring key questions about how information is presented and how one can determine fact from fiction.
Additionally, watching documentaries can be just pure entertainment - as entertaining, if not more so, than narrative film.
What makes documentaries so intriguing? Why is documentary film-making growing in popularity? What goes into the making of a documentary? What is the real role of a documentary film – art form, impetus, expose? All these and more are the questions we will delve into during REEL STORIES.
The purpose of REEL STORIES is to:
- Encourage civic engagement by challenging participants to think critically about important social, cultural, economic, environmental issues of our time;
- Enhance media literacy by fostering public understanding and appreciation of the documentary film genre; and
- Explore the artistic aspect of documentary film-making.
