Monday, July 2, 2012

Day 3

I live in Charlotte, however, I feel like I've traveled so far away from home to be here on Wake Forest's campus.

After a mad scramble to wake up this morning and go to breakfast, today was mainly a long day of classes. My class today was called "Documentary Film and Media in Society", led by Chris Zaluski. (http://blogs.bftf.org/classes/documentary-theory-practice/) The lesson was quite long--we spent almost 7 hours total in class, and we discussed a variety of topics concerning the role of the media and the role of the audience.

We watched quite a few TEDTalks (love them; they're so interesting) about the subject as well as various clips of documentaries from different genres and famous producers. (One of them is linked here: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/joe_sabia_the_technology_of_storytelling.html).  We also talked about the role of print media like magazines and newspapers, and how evolving technology seems to have changed the role of the audience in terms of news. A prime example discussed was the idea of the Arab Spring.



A scene from "Jesus Camp"


We also talked about the idea of propaganda, which I thought was quite interesting. In fact, in my Theory of Knowledge course at school, we had discussed something quite similar--at what point was "advertising" considered "propaganda", and can "propaganda" be justified if used for an ethical cause? In any case, that ensued to a lively conversation. Cristina, my suitemate who was also in my group, talked about GonziPN as an international example, which was a propagandistic slogan created by the Nationalist Party in Malta that was parodied by the Labor Party, which was the opposing sector.

After the course, we also watched a documentary called "Ink From My Soul", which was produced and directed by one of our own mentors, Vanessa. https://www.facebook.com/InkFromMySoul It was about a program called Authoring Action set in Winston-Salem, where teens could come to write and speak about events that they struggle with or have struggled with throughout their lives. I thought it was very well pieced together, and also had a few very interesting cinematographic choices I would use if I ever put together a documentary.



Afterward, a few of my friends and I went to watch a documentary called "Tabloid". The key word to describe the main subject of the documentary: she crazy.

I've also been able to make some new friends through running. See, my cross country coach told me to run on my own and follow the workout that he gave us. Fortunately, I've met some running lovers from all over the world who have been willing to keep me company. Today, I ran with Ludwig from Germany and Tom from
Luxembourg all over Wake Forest campus--we found waterfalls, and ran on the state of the art track and whatnot. What an adventure.

Anyways, it's been a long night, and I'm getting up early tomorrow to yet another day. Good night, or should I say... Ciao?

1 comment:

  1. Hi Sara!

    It sounds like you are having fun! Keep up the good work and nice blog post. I thought that the INk from my Soul documentary was cool. Wow, there are also many international people!

    ReplyDelete