Valerio, thank you for posting all the responses to your inquiry regarding
how to help people understand how their outlook impacts their perceptions.
You asked for "videos or movie clips". I myself prefer, when there is an
opportunity, to use entire feature films for this and other learning
purposes. This has become much easier to do since the advent of the
videocassette and the relatively inexpensive distribution of movies by
this method.
The classic film on this topic is Rashomon, a film by Akira Kurosawa. In
this film, a complex event is described from the point of view of the
three participants: a wealthy man, his wife, and a bandit. The entire
episode is observed by a woodcutter, who is so disturbed by the way in
which each person "colors" the story to suit their own purposes, that he
despairs of the entire human race. This film has many layers - it's also
about power, class distinctions, desire, and hope - and it will yield lots
of insights in a facilitated conversation.
Actually, almost any feature film that is really about something can serve
your purpose, but it would take some experience with this kind of work to
achieve it. The thing to bear in mind is that regardless of the purpose
of the filmmakers, an audience can be focused on other meanings by a
skilled facilitator.
Some time ago, I recommended to readers of this list the film The
Commitments, a wonderful Irish film about the forming and dissolution of a
soul band in Dublin. I have used this film to explore the phases of group
development (and was responding to query on that topic). I was surprised
that so few people had heard of the film, and that many thought I was
referring to a "business video".
Many years ago, my wife attended a gathering of radical feminists in
Edwards, Mississippi. At that meeting, Truffaut's film La Peau Douce (The
Soft Skin) was screened. This is the story of a man's infidelity and his
wife's revenge. Those who are familiar with the film will have no trouble
recognizing why a conference of radical feminist would rise to their feet
and cheer when this man gets the bullet hole he deserves. But... this
group saw a different film than most people do. If you watch this film
closely, you can see how carefully Truffaut sets this professor up by
showing only his relationships with women, which are uniformly dastardly.
These include his wife, his daughter, his maid, and the airline flight
attendant he seduces. You actually see how each is exploited in her own
way, a point which was not lost in the debrief by feminists for feminists.
Years before that, I was engaged in political work using documentary films
as an organizing tool. Among the films we showed in this work were films
we made with and for the Black Panther Party. They were probably the most
radical films I have ever seen. Imagine my horror and surprise to learn
that one of these films (which had been confiscated by Florida police from
an itinerant working in a different organization) was shown at a
convention of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. The
basic theme, of course, was "Know Your Enemy." Here we thought we had a
powerful propaganda piece, and discovered that its power was shaped by the
audience and the debrief. This was an important lesson for me, and it
helped to shape all my work after that.
-- Jack Hirschfeld When two hearts become one, jack@his.com who could ask for anything more?