Approaching the Elephant (April 30th at the Akron Art Museum)

[APPROACHING THE ELEPHANT screens Thursday April 30th at 7:00 pm at the Akron Art Museum. Admission is free. The film is also available on Netflix Instant.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

As public schools become increasingly rigid with concepts like the common core and multiple standardized tests, many parents are looking for alternatives. One particularly extreme alternative is the Teddy McArdle Free School of New Jersey. Imagine a school with no formal classes and no grades, where kids get to study what they want to study, when and how they want to study it, and also participate in how the schools are run, getting an equal vote with teachers and administrators on most issues. How the heck would that work?

Amanda Rose Wilder's documentary APPROACHING THE ELEPHANT takes a fly on the wall approach to showing how the free school philosophy plays out at Teddy McArdle, covering the school's first year of operation from start to finish. It's a bumpy ride, to say the least.

American Promise (January 3rd and 5th at the Cleveland Museum of Art)

[AMERICAN PROMISE screens Friday January 3rd at 6:30 pm and Sunday January 5th at 1:30 pm at the Cleveland Museum of Art.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

*Note: a computer crash at Cleveland Movie Blog central has taken up much of my time of late, which is why this review is slightly late and a little shorter than I would have liked it to be.*

It's kind of cheap and easy to describe AMERICAN PROMISE as HOOP DREAMS for education, but it's also reasonably accurate. As in HOOP DREAMS, this documentary follows two African American kids for an extended period of time. Only instead of the focus being on sports, it's on academics. We first meet friends Idris and Seun when they are 5 years old. Their parents, wanting the best for their sons, enroll them in the prestigious Dalton school, a private institution with an excellent performance record, but only a small number of minority students.

Both boys have difficulties at the school. In some cases, race is a factor, but there are other issues as well. For instance, both boys have learning disabilities that, had they been diagnosed sooner, might have made a difference in their performance at school. And although the film never directly addresses it, having a camera follow you around for 13 years can't help but have some effect on your behavior. 

At Berkeley (December 5th and 6th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[AT BERKELEY screens Thursday December 5th at 6:45 pm and Friday December 6th at 7:30 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

I've been starting to Tweet my dreams, when they can be summarized to 180 characters (and if I remember them, and if they're at all entertaining). You can follow and psychoanalyze me at "#cassxdy" if you care. And I'll save you the trouble and bandwidth at present by telling you my most recent odd dream right here and now.

In the dream I was newly hired at some kind of TV production company, one behind a popular British CSI-crime drama. These studios were located near or in downtown Cleveland. There was no glamour; the reception-area looked like an old concrete garage or repurposed warehouse, with a few other businesses leasing space. There was a constant stream of delivery folks, of acting and crew hopefuls and my job, part-time and rudimentary, seemed to be as a doorman or something. I wasn't even certain what my working hours/days were, making it worrisome how I was to fit this in between my other minimum-wage going-nowhere part-time jobs. Oh, and for some reason as I came to work I had no pants on. I was hoping nobody would notice.