The documentary filmmaker of Academy-Award winning "An Inconvenient Truth” shared clips and details from his upcoming film, “Waiting for Superman,” during the first evening of the Education Writers Association conference in San Francisco.
Davis Guggenheim is not a journalist, but he uses many of the same techniques in capturing and telling his stories. But unlike many journalists, he lets his passion and ideas show. Guggenheim says his goal in making this film, which follows the lives of a handful of urban public school children as their families try to get them a better education, is to energize regular people to become more passionate about improving our nation’s public schools.
The filmmaker admits toward the beginning of the documentary that he carries around a haunted feeling because of the three public schools he drives past each day on the way to drop his own children off at a private school.
Gugghenheim says the public is disconnected from the debate over public schools and most parents don’t know what to do to get their children a better education. Because the movie aims to explain current education reform ideas and research in a way that everyone will be able to understand, the filmmaker expects some education insiders will find something not to like in his movie. But his goal is to get a conversation going and if the questions asked by education reporters are any indication, this movie will likely be a talker.
Waiting for Superman isn’t scheduled for general release until next fall, but it’s going to be shown at the Seattle International Film Festival in a few weeks, so I will get to see it then. If you want to come to Seattle to see it with me, call and we’ll go out afterward to start the conversation.
Donna Gordon Blankinship
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