There may not be a future Academy Award winning documentary filmmaker in the class, but that’s not stopping GT Humanities students from trying their hands at making a non-fiction video revolving around the events of the past century.

“The documentary project is an opportunity for students to dive deeply into a topic of interest from this semester, and pull together primary and secondary sources,” humanities teacher Sarah Wiseman said.

The project asks students to hone in on one topic of their choosing from this past quarter and develop an argument centering on this topic with a special focus on technology.

“The skills that we’re going to be grading it for are students’ ability to analyze the historical understanding through the lens of technology, as well as the use of evidence and creation of commentary,” Wiseman said. “So, these are not simply factual documentaries. They are not reports. These are making an argument about a historical development.”

It’s not just the style of the documentaries that’s different. Students’ topics are also greatly varied, ranging from the crisis in Kashmir to the Cold War to the impact of Western culture on a globalizing world.

“I’m looking into the Kashmiri region,” sophomore Riya Sharma said. “So the Kashmiri dispute between India, Pakistan, and China, and the geopolitics in that area, and how the landscape and environment shapes what is going on, and the different sides.”

But by no means is this project only about history and research. To successfully create their documentaries, students will have to work with a variety of applications to transform their sources into short documentaries and speak publicly, both skills many students value.

“We’re gonna need this,” Sharma said. “[It] is very important in pretty much all careers and in life in general.”

To other students, creating a documentary about these topics and historical ideas presents a unique opportunity to take learning about world history beyond pen and paper and to the screen.

“I’m most excited about getting to like use editing and media for the project rather than just writing because it’s a lot different from what we normally do,” freshman Laya Mallina said.

To Wiseman, the best part of this project is getting to see the final culmination of students’ creativity and hard work in the wide array of documentaries on Screening Day.

“I always love Screening Day when we get to watch everyone’s films,” Wiseman said. “It’s always so impressive what students are able to produce and this year especially, I think, we’re gonna get a real variety of different topics. So, it should be very interesting.”