(By Daderot (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC BY-SA 2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)
This week, as I was conducting a Google search for the words “digital storytelling” and “education”, I came across a recent article from the website Harvard Law Today. The article, “Moving Pictures”, discusses how law students are using documentary film making and digital storytelling to tell important stories about injustice. One student interviewed is Sam Koplewicz, who heads an organization called the Harvard Law Documentary Studio. He comments, “I think film moves us and interacts with us in a way that writing can’t.” Koplewicz visited a refugee camp in Greece and interviewed young children through barbed-wire fences. The Harvard Law Documentary Studio, or “Doc Studio” for short, has participants produce six films a year. Another student, Andrea Clay, is creating a documentary on the development and utilization of the Socratic method in the education of law. Other topics addressed by student filmmakers include gentrification, religion and political refugees. Near the end of the article, there is an interview with a filmmaker and Harvard Law School lecturer named Rebecca Richman Cohen, who teaches courses in digital storytelling and documentary film. She comments on how video recordings can help attorneys in arguing cases of clients that are located in remote places. “Video lets lawyers bring clients’ voices directly to policymakers, judges, and mainstream media… it can expose corruption and law violations … and enhance public understanding of the law” she says.
It’s remarkable how the power of digital storytelling can be utilized by anyone with the right amount of determination and production skill. To have young legal minds at one of the United States’ most prestigious law schools embrace that power is quite remarkable.
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