Jesus Children of America

Jesus Children of America is a short film which was directed by Spike Lee in 2005. It is part of the All the Invisible Children DVD. This short film follows Blanca through her daily school life and her dealing with her drug addicted parents as she learns that she is HIV positive.

This short film is about the cruelty of children as much as it is about stereotyping and the falsehoods that obscure AIDS and cause it’s carriers to have more difficult lives.

Children have a tendency to mock or separate themselves from things which are different from their out of misplaced fear. Blanca is not only of a paler skin tone than many of the other girls, she is also HIV positive. One thing is visible, the other is not. In this way HIV could also be things like religious or sexual orientation or body dysmorphic disorder or any of the variety of things that makes people “different” but is not visible via appearance and her paler skin could be a stand in for any race or appearance of “difference” from what is perceived as normal.

Lee wants to bring these issues to the audiences attention in a way that lets them know that while policies have changed to make the country more equal, children still emulate their parents in many ways and the “disease” of stereotyping and unfair judgment is still running rampant and causing the ruining and lose of lives unnecessarily.

Likewise the lack of quality information about HIV / AIDS available in high-risk communities puts the people with those diseases at more risk as they might not be treating themselves properly or receiving other care they might need.

This short film can be watched below:

Song Song and Little Cat

Song Song and Little Cat is a short film John Woo directed in 2005 for the All the Invisible Children DVD. This short film is about the connection between abandoned children, and the different types of abandonment there are.

Song Song is abandoned by her father when he decides to leave his family to be with another women he was seeing. Song Song is also abandoned by her mother emotionally, as the scene where the mother is contemplating driving into a lake to drown herself she has completely forgotten that her child was even in the car with her. Little Cat is abandoned by her birth parents and is raised by a poor man who tries to save bits of money so that eventually Little Cat can go to school. This old man unfortunately ends up dead, leaving Little Cat to fend for herself in an orphanage type of situation where she must sell flowers to acquire food. Both girls maintain their connection and commonality between each other through the doll that Little Cat carries around, which Song Song first threw out her mother’s car when when her father left.

It is also a commentary about happiness. Song Song and Little Cat are both unhappy about the absence of their paternal figure, but Song Song seems to have more anger in her as she is emotional disconnected from herself as well as her family. Little Cat on the other hand seems to try to be happy and be nice to the other children, letting the play with her doll and giving Song Song free flowers. Little Cat was raised in a more connected, loving situation where as Song Song’s family life appears to have been more about achievement than personal growth or happiness. This short film, while showing the contrast of these two girl’s lives, also shows the viewer that people and not things are what matter keeping hold of in the world.

Lily and RA

Lily and RA is a short film which was directed by the New Zealand film maker Armagan Ballantyne for the DVD collection Stories on Human Rights produced by ART for the World.

Now this film is put in the “Gender” section of this DVD collection which seems a bit odd at first, but it does make sense. Lily (the child in the purple jacket) and RA (the child in the hoodie) are in an ally hanging out when RA hits a pigeon with a rock and it falls out of the sky. Lily recons that pigeons are not pests, while RA says that their father thinks they are pest. They then go back to RA’s house and find his parents fighting after which RA tells Lily to take the stupid bird and leave.

Now first off, I do not actually know which child is which since I cannot seem to find the credits of this film. However the fact that I assume that the child in the purple jacket is Lily says something about how culture has informed how I read gender in film as well as how people associate names with things.

As for the bird, the bird is a metaphor. Partially the bird is a metaphor for RA’s abusive home, that being hit so hard can wound a person without killing them. But there is also a shot when Lily is climbing up to get the bird that RA also points the slingshot at Lily, probably just to see if they can hit them as well. However RA never actually does this, just holds the slingshot up, gets a surprised look on their face, and puts the slingshot away. It’s like his parents probably, the father hurts the mother without necessarily realizing they are doing it. Then they leave that mother to take care of the kid, like RA leaves Lily to take the bird and leave – only that reflects RA’s hope of wanting their mother to take them and leave. This also shows how abuse is a cycle and can hurt other people in the family and not just the abused, as well as showing that if a child is raised seeing that environment they are at risk of repeating those scenes in their future relationships.

This short film can be watched below, and feel free to skip the first 0:50 seconds to get to the actual start:

A Boy, A Wall, and A Donkey

A Boy, A Wall, and A Donkey is a short film which was directed by Hany Abu-Assad for the DVD collection Stories on Human Rights, which was produced by ART for the World.

This short film is found in the “Participation” section of the DVD. The children art trying to participate with the culture in which they have grown up on, one of war and violence, through the emulation of this culture in the medium of film. However, they cannot find themselves a video camera and decide to play out their script in front of the Gaza Strip Barrier that divides Gaza from Egypt. The downfall of this action is the cameras on the defense walls have no audio, so a truck comes down from the road to confront the children and their game.

The point of this short film is to show that people, children especially, emulate what they see happening in culture and around them; it is an act of reinforcement of norms. It also show that people have a desire to interact with and comment on their culture and to share that interaction. This children want to film their script based around what they have seen in their culture and to share it, however they are not yet old enough to see some of the consequences of this kind of participation in their political situation. It is then also a commentary about how free “free speech” is. For example people have the ability to scream “fire” in a building any time they want, but no one expects someone to do so unless the building is actually on fire. Likewise, people on border patrol do not expect children to be playing with guns unless they are intending harm on someone else, and these children do live in an are where child soldiers would not be completely abnormal. The children’s sense of innocence that this is all just a game is put to the test and removed as they are literally confronted with the real life consequences of the situations they were playing at.

This short film can be watched below, starting at 0:47 :

Leftovers

Leftovers is a short film which was directed by Pablo Trapero for the 2008 DVD collection Stories on Human Rights as presented by ART for the World.

This short film appears on the “Dignity and Justice” part of the DVD. This short film shows a grapefruit going from sitting in a large warehouse of food to being moldy in a landfill. It also shows people picking through that landfill for the food leftovers.

The title “leftovers” is as much to do with that food as the people who go looking for it. This short film is a commentary about how those with the ability to purchase goods do not use them efficiently, letting their food go to waist before they can consume it as those people are already at a maximum point of consumption. The food then becomes “leftover”. However there are the “leftover” people who cannot for whatever reason purchase food on their own and as such go looking for it in landfills. This is a story about dignity in the form of how people treat the plant, the wasting of resources, and how people treat each other, the situation of letting people get their food out of the garbage rather than while it is still good.

This short film can be watched below:

Dignity

Dignity is a short film directed in 2008 by Abderrahmane Sissako for the DVD collection Stories on Human Rights, which was produced by ART for the World.

As could be guessed by the title of this short film, it can be found in the “Dignity and Justice” part of the DVD. This short film aims to make the audience think about what dignity is and what it means to have dignity.

Many people in this film are asked about dignity and what they think it means, but no one has a response to give. This is to mimic the idea that the United Nations holds human dignity in high regards but has no real outline or meaning for the concept of dignity, and as such makes upholding this ideal rather difficult to manage.

This short film can be watched below:

Mobile Men

Mobile Men is a short film directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul for the 2008 DVD collection Stories on Human Rights as produced by ART for the World.

This short film is under the “Culture” subcategory of this DVD. It depicts several Asian males filming each other on the back of a truck bed as they travel through an agricultural landscape.

This short film is about culture in that culture informs our idea of identity and who people are from what they look like. The first male shown reflects more of a “female” aura as his body is shown and objectified before the camera, he does not speak, seems to have an interest in the appearance of his shoes as the camera lingers on them, and he wears a necklace. The second male is more “male” in that he shows off his tattoos, is very proud of his body but appears to have little interest in what he is wearing, and yells a lot to assert dominance. However both of these ideas challenges the stereotyped concept of Asian males being constantly at work, and are generally a non-offensive “model minority”.

This short film can be watched below: