Documentary Projects
Documentaries are a way of understanding the world, of asking questions, getting answers, and weaving those answers into a new narrative that makes sense of a complicated reality. The topics can be as big as the future of the planet or as small as a child’s party. The documentaries that people create in this program should grow out of their own curiosity and passion, so there is no way to say in advance what people will do.
For some students, documentary topics may grow out of their unique experiences at their community service work and/or internship:
- Working on constructing a home in New Orleans may lead to a documentary about the family that is moving in.
- Working in a women’s shelter may lead to a documentary about abuse.
- Working at a local elementary school in El Paso may lead to a documentary on Mexican students studying in the US.
On the other hand, one might choose to make a documentary about something that intrigues her about the town that she is living in. Maybe it is something that already interests you about the area or possibly an event or person you meet while living in the city:
- Meeting a trumpet player might inspire you to profile a band trying to make it big in the Big Easy.
- Tutoring a Mexican-American teenage girl might put you behind the scenes of her family’s preparations for her quinceañera, or fifteenth birthday.
Every city has a million stories, but El Paso is particularly rich in those that have to do with migration, immigration, Mexican culture and the global economy. New Orleans has Mardi Gras, funereal marching bands, and the striking contrasts between a hedonistic tourist culture and a poor, struggling city trying to get back on its feet. And since Katrina, everyone in New Orleans has a story.
Each medium—video, audio, photography—has its unique strengths, and each will bring out different aspects of the same story. Just as the documentary subjects are a matter of individual choice, so too is the medium. We encourage people to explore and combine different media, but the ultimate choice is theirs.
A few of the infinite number of documentary ideas:
- Portraits of people in their post-Katrina houses, along with their stories
- The struggles of Mexican factory workers in Juarez
- The life of a New Orleans street performer
- Life in the Ysleta del sur Pueblo Nation (the only urban Native American reservation in the United States, located in El Paso)
- The battle over rebuilding neighborhoods in New Orleans
- Soldiers shipping off to Iraq (Fort Bliss, the largest military base in the U.S. is located in El Paso)
- Being the only person on your block in post-Katrina New Orleans
- Mexican students who cross the border daily to go to American public schools
- Second line marching bands in New Orleans
- Immigrant detention centers in El Paso
- An intergenerational family of musicians in New Orleans
- Day of the Dead in Juarez and El Paso
- Preparing for the next hurricane