OVERVIEW:
In this unit plan,
we will be using film, audio, and text in order to facilitate understanding of a
holocaust. While there were many holocausts throughout history, the holocaust
that took place during World War II with the attempted genocide of the Jews is
one of the better documented. In this unit we will be watching parts of
Schindler's List and Life Is Beautiful and reading and listening
to first-hand accounts. The aim of this unit is to lead to closer analysis and
understanding of the politics of genocide and understanding how media and
technology can be utilized to preserve history, while understanding how film,
audio, and text emphasis different aspects (expressions, if you will) of the
same historical story.
Each item we cover in class emphasizes different
aspects of the story; each has different considerations. As such, we will be
looking for connections between these modes of stories, especially the
relationships between text, audio, photography, and film, and how we might work
back and forth between (for example), film and photographs, or podcasts and
personal written narratives.
The reason we are focusing on different
aspects of the story is because your final project will be making your own
documentary. During class, during the next few weeks, we will be watching
excerpts of these two movies, reading testimonies, doing research, and working
in the computer lab, so that you will be able to produce your own documentary on
the Holocaust based on the information you find. I will give you a starting
point by giving you the materials or showing you where to find information
yourself that you can include. Included during class time will be at least one
class period, possibly two, devoted to learning how to use the software in the
computer lab.
In this unit, we will be:
1.) Viewing parts of Schindler's List;
2.) Viewing parts of Life Is Beautiful;
3.) Reading and viewing personal narratives and viewing photographs, available from Yad Vashem and Shoah Foundation;
4.) Reading excerpts from The Bleeding Sky - Recollections of the Shoah.