Making Access to Documentaries Easier for Educators
Showing documentaries in classrooms is a valuable tool. It can expose students to cultural content while teaching them important lessons. But, in reality, teachers often have a hard time finding and sourcing documentaries, making them inaccessible to students.
Reel Canada executive director Jack Blum has every right to be proud of what he and his team have done to fulfill their mission — promoting Canadian films in schools.
They amassed an inventory of 148 documentaries, created a comprehensive teaching kit, and organized 1,000 screenings at schools across Canada in 2024.
“We have achieved far better results than we had initially imagined,” says Blum. But it’s been a tough slog.
The team’s first challenge was to choose which documentaries would be included based on their educational value and the cultural context in which they would be presented.
“Films must be appropriate for schools,” Blum says. “The criteria vary across the country depending on the school’s teachers or principal. It varies between rural and urban communities, and particularly between Quebec and English Canada.”
Reel Canada’s programming team does test screenings with teachers and students to determine the right matches.
Hard to find
Another issue is discoverability, or making content easily searchable online, especially for those who don’t know exactly what they’re looking for.
Unfortunately, there’s no centralized platform in Canada where teachers can search for appropriate documentary films. Instead, they’re left to their own devices as they bumble through a half-dozen existing, unconnected educational platforms.
Alongside Reel Canada’s Education Program, there’s NFB Education, Radio-Canada’s Curio, and Télé-Québec en classe. There’s also the Hot Docs festival’s Docs For Schools, which is expected to return in 2025.
“The Canadian educational system is extremely tricky,” says Blum. “There’s no central organization whatsoever. Every school and every school board makes its own decisions. It certainly wouldn’t be a bad idea to have some kind of national education strategy, especially now, when the political climate in the U.S. is showing signs that we need to reinforce national ideas if we’re going to protect our sovereignty.”
Quebec’s homegrown solution
Until a national Canadian strategy can be put in place, Quebec is tackling the problem at the provincial level.
In 2022, the Documentary Observatory (Observatoire du documentaire) began an ongoing consultation process with all concerned stakeholders — teachers, the Quebec Ministry of Education, SODEC (Société de développement des entreprises culturelles), documentary filmmakers and producers, the major viewing platforms — in order to develop a solution for educators.
Last November, during a roundtable at the 2024 Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM), Documentary Observatory director Amélie Lambert Bouchard announced the publication of The Action Plan for the Integration of Independent Documentary Films in Quebec Schools.
“We came up with a splendid solution,” she said.
Their first project, steered by the Arrimage (anchoring) committee, is to compile a standardized educational information sheet for each documentary, also called an educational-cultural information sheet, that can be easily accessed from anywhere in the school system.
“Teachers have a lot of subjects to teach,” said Arrimage committee member and learning specialist Jade Ménard. “And so, if a film has no direct link to the content or skills they need to develop in their students, they won’t get access to show it in class.”
The educational-cultural information sheet will make it easy for teachers to determine the value of any documentary based on the subject matter and grade level. “The information sheet needs to be produced with the help of educational experts who speak the same language as the teachers and are familiar with the curriculum,” said Documentary Observatory member Denis McCready.
Libraries to the rescue
The Documentary Observatory has been working on a content discoverability system that won’t require a new viewing platform. According to the authors of the action plan, “The Ministry of Education has made it clear that it has no interest in developing or funding a new platform.”
Based on its consultations, the Observatory chose the library network for its referencing portal. “It’s not well known, but librarians are the experts in how knowledge is categorized and how it’s best presented to different audiences,” said Mathieu Thuot-Dubé, senior director of education and cultural initiatives at the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ).
The Observatory decided the BAnQ catalogue is the best choice to serve as the master database for all cultural content, including documentaries.
Finding the best place to store and host the films, on the other hand, has yet to be resolved.
“The three leading platforms in Quebec have shown great interest in collaborating to host participating independent documentaries,” said Lambert Bouchard. “However, they do not want to deal with the technical side or to include educational-cultural information sheets on their site.”
So, what’s the next step?
This year, the Documentary Observatory will continue conversations with streaming platforms about hosting docs, with the library network about a portal to catalogue titles, and with the Ministry of Education to confirm funds for the creation of educational materials and to pay copyright fees.
According to the Observatory, this extensive project is expected to take two to three years.
