A Passage from Burnt Islands

9.0

|1992|48 min

In his crusade for literacy, principal Ray Brown enlisted the help of the community and broke through the cycle of illiteracy in a small Newfoundland fishing village. He turned the struggling elementary school into a place where students were eager to learn and instilled in parents a sense of hope for their children's future.

200Documentary

More Like This

Recommended for you

A Quiet Girl

0.0

2024

A Quiet Girl

0.0

2024

Adopted Montreal filmmaker Adrian Wills discovers, on camera and in real time, the startling truths of his complex beginnings in Newfoundland. Shocking details drive Wills to the core of his birth mother’s resilience, and ultimately his own. In this moving feature documentary that combines 16mm footage and contemporary images with deeply personal conversations, Wills’ voyage transforms from an urgent search for identity into a quest to give a quiet girl her voice.

Fish Story

2.0

2013

Fish Story

2.0

2013

J and Jacky are good friends who attend the same school. J is from a single-parent family, and will be taken care by Jacky’s family whenever his mother has to return to Mainland to renew her visa; such kind of story is not an isolated case. These families have been uprooted for a “better future” in Hong Kong, but is this “future” that the children really long to have? A Chinese saying: “How does one understand the joy of fish, if one is not a fish?” Will the adults really understand what the children want?

Explore Now

Rock School

6.3

2005

Rock School

6.3

2005

It is about a music school in Philadelphia, The Paul Green School of Rock Music, run by Paul Green that teaches kids ages 9 to 17 how to play rock music and be rock stars. Paul Green teaches his students how to play music such as Black Sabbath and Frank Zappa better than anyone expects them to by using a unique style of teaching that includes getting very angry and acting childish.

Explore Now

Classroom 8

0.0

2023

Classroom 8

0.0

2023

From his modest apartment in Lima, a teacher gives virtual classes, seeking to reflect with his young students with low socio-economic backgrounds on racism, politics and inequality: issues that resonate in an increasingly fractured country.

Explore Now

INSIDE: Narrative of Our Journey

9.5

2023

INSIDE: Narrative of Our Journey

9.5

2023

A series of indie filmmakers are documented over the course of a few months throughout the production of their passion projects, as they change professionally and personally; moving closer to the lives they wish to live.

Explore Now

Class of Her Own

0.0

2024

Class of Her Own

0.0

2024

A teacher in a disadvantaged community rebels against a system that neglects many of its vulnerable students. Gloria Merriex transforms into a trailblazer, using rap, dance and other innovations to enable children to thrive in school—and beyond.

Explore Now

Taking Stock

0.0

1994

Taking Stock

0.0

1994

The cod fishery off the east coast of Newfoundland was a way of life, the backbone of society -- until it collapsed. A review of the history leading up to the crisis and the subsequent call for a moratorium of the northwest Atlantic cod fishery.

Explore Now

Mudder's Hands

0.0

2022

Mudder's Hands

0.0

2022

A dash of youth, a pinch of age, and an unrecorded recipe: Mudder's Hands is a charming documentary conversation about arthritis, centered around the tradition of baking Newfoundland raisin bread.

Explore Now

Teach Me If You Can

6.6

2021

Teach Me If You Can

6.6

2021

The three teachers Svetlana, Sandrine and Taslima teach children and young people in places that are hardly accessible for “normal” lessons - in a nomad tent under the snow cover of Siberia, in a hut in the bushland of Burkina Faso and on a school boat in Bangladesh. They share a common goal: to enable their students to have a better future through education.

Explore Now

The Eye of the Storm

8.1

1970

The Eye of the Storm

8.1

1970

The very first documentary about Jane Elliott's educational experiment about discrimination, which was originally produced for ABC News, in which she conducts an unforgettable lesson with her third-grade class in Riceville, Iowa.

Explore Now

High School

7.2

1969

High School

7.2

1969

Documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman takes us inside Northeast High School as a fly on the wall to observe the teachers and how they interact with the students.

Explore Now

The Hobart Shakespeareans

6.0

2005

The Hobart Shakespeareans

6.0

2005

Rafe Esquith, 1992 American Teacher of the Year and National Medal of Arts recipient, teaches 5th-grade children whose parents don't speak English at a school in a dangerous, poor, drug-infested 100% Latino/Asian neighborhood in Los Angeles.

Explore Now