LaLee's Kin: The Legacy of Cotton (2001)

Directors:
Deborah Dickson. Susan Frömke, Albert Maysles

IMDB

Synopsis:
The cotton-growing industry has long had a tight hold on the political and economic lives of many people in the Mississippi Delta, and this documentary -- directed in part by Albert Maysles -- explores the toll King Cotton has taken on one woman and her family. Laura Lee Wallace, known to friends and family as LaLee, has spent all her life in Mississippi's Tallahatchie County. The product of a long line of cotton farmers, LaLee has grown up in dire poverty, and her children and grandchildren are poor prospects for a better life, given the region's failing school systems. At the urging of the major cotton firms, Tallahatchie County's schools used to routinely shut down during the harvest season so children could join their parents in the fields, and conditions have gotten only marginally better, with the county's ill-funded school system facing a possible takeover by the state government unless scores improve on the next round of standardized aptitude tests. With both money and job opportunities scarce, LaLee faces an uphill struggle to support her extended family, which now includes several grandchildren left to her care by sons and daughters unable to care for their offspring themselves. LeLee's Kin: The Legacy of Cotton was produced for the premium cable television network HBO; prior to it's HBO debut, the film was presented at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival.

To Be and to Have (2002)

Director:
Nicolas Philibert

IMDB

Synopsis:
The one-room schoolhouse, where one teacher instructs several grades at once, is generally regarded a quaint thing of the past and a symbol of obsolete and ineffective teaching methods. However, the documentary To Be and to Have offers an in-depth look at a small school in rural France where one remarkable man has been doing the job of a small teaching staff for 20 years, and has taught several generations of bright and capable children along the way. Georges Lopez is an educator at a small school in France's Auvergne region, where between December 2000 and June 2001 he taught 12 students between the ages of four and ten. Employing a curriculum that embraces both academics and practical skills, Lopez and his school represent a surprising mix of the old and the new, where computer technology and old-fashioned memorization of the multiplication tables sit side by side. To Be and to Have captured Georges Lopez near the end of his career in education -- shortly after the film was completed, he retired after 35 years as a teacher.

The Boys of Baraka (2005)

Directors:
Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady

IMDB

Synopsis:
Baltimore, MD, is a city where crime, drugs, and juvenile delinquency have crippled the African-American community, and it has been estimated that as many as 75 percent of African-American males in Baltimore drop out of high school each year. With this in mind, in the '90s a program was created to help at-risk students from Baltimore with academic promise achieve their potential -- 20 young men each year were sent to the Baraka School, a special institution in Kenya. There, students experience a simpler, more rural lifestyle than they would in the city, while at school they are subject to a degree of discipline and academic rigor unknown at home. Filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady followed a group of students to the Baraka School, and Boys of Baraka offers a look at the impoverished circumstances the young men left behind, and the ups and downs of their new lives on another continent. Produced in cooperation with PBS, Boys of Baraka received its world premier at the 2005 South by Southwest Film Festival.

The Education of Shelby Knox (2005)

Directors:
Marion Lipschutz, Rose Rosenblatt

IMDB

Synopsis:
A simple look at the debates regarding sex education in public schools becomes a dramatic journey of self-discovery for a teenage girl in this documentary from directors Marion Lipschutz and Rose Rosenblatt. Shelby Knox is a young woman who at first sees eye-to-eye with the strict, traditional Christians in her community regarding sexuality's place in her high school. But as she explores the issue as the subject of this film, Shelby begins to question the longheld beliefs that she was brought up with, leading to a drastic difference of opinion with her parents that threatens the fabric of their family.