Offered once a year, the class "Producing Films for Social Change" gives students the opportunity to create original films on important and timely topics. At the end of the course, students showcase these films at a public screening that is open to the entire Tufts community and the general public. Sponsored by CMS and the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service, Producing Films for Social Change is a class that enables students to learn how to use film powerfully to tell a story about a social issue and to inspire advocacy.

We tried an experiment for this year's class. For the first time, instead of having students pitch their own topics, we pitched topics to them. CMS Director Julie Dobrow solicited topics from colleagues, and proposed 25 topics to students, from which they selected four. And because we are trying to launch a new program of Environmental Communication along with the Environmental Studies Program, the pitched topics were all about environmental issues.

The result: four outstanding films on important environmental subjects, which you can view below.

Sprawl: The Story of Our Vanishing Natural Spaces highlighted the tensions between wetlands
preservation and development. The student film team traveled to New Hampshire, where they followed award
winning author/illustrator and Tufts alum David Carroll (A65) into the marshes to track spotted turtles and listen to his eloquent pleas about the importance of environmental preservation.

Ever wonder that happens when you put a piece of paper into that blue recycling container? Reduce, Reuse
followed the paper trail, as student producers examined the environmental ethics and economics of paper recycling.

 

 

Highway to Health tracked the “Tufts Pollutionmobile,” a retrofitted RV staffed by Tufts Engineering grad students that travels around measuring ultrafine particulate levels. A joint undertaking of the School of Engineering and the School of Medicine, the CAFEH project (Community Assessment of Freeway Exposure and Health) has found that highways tend to be located disproportionately near low-income communities, which then tend to have disproportionately higher levels of certain health problems.

 

A tip from Dr. Mark Pokras at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine led our students to produce Fatal
Flight, the story of bald eagles that are dying from lead poisoning. The majestic birds ingest lead in the bloodstream
of deer and other animals shot by hunters using lead bullets. Tufts vets are among those doing research into this
vexing problem, and our students caught it on film in very compelling ways.

 

 

To see the films from prior years of the class, click here.