FRAMES OF REFERENCE

is a feature-length documentary guided by a cowgirl who brings you to a meth addict teacher, transexuality being taught to kids, and a classroom where students get guns. Shot in six countries, Frames of Reference examines how education evolves and shapes culture.

An experimental feature-length experimental film that begins with two friends in silhouette conversing while sitting down to watch a documentary called The Education Project for the first time.  The documentary they watch will explore different perspectives on education through vignettes at seven contrasting schools.  It will focus on the struggles of costs, cultural norms, and student’s personal lives.

This groundbreaking documentary offers a candid platform to the undervalued voices of those shaping education around the world through 1-on-1 interviews that will weave through the diverse actuality of learning and the formation of young individuals around the world.  The audience will hear the two friends converse about the film’s various regions and cultures.   Each interviewee will paint a picture of what it’s like being educated within each school.  Below are the schools in the documentary the friends watch in the order they appear.

Email us to learn how to become a part of the project: info@fourwindfilms.com

VOICE OF FRAMES OF REFERENCE

Director’s Statement

I was reveling in the science series Cosmos and I realized in the last 200 years through international collaboration we’ve found out that we’re just a spec in a galaxy of billions of galaxies.  In that same time we’ve discovered the neutron and proton by sharing information across continents and cultures.  Why do we not share information about how to pass down our knowledge to future generations as they do in science?  If we would, we could make significant progress by learning from each other and embracing the diversity of education on our planet.

My parents, who are teachers, went through a life-changing career change moving out West to teach the Northern Cheyenne Nation. They experienced a culture-clash of the Northern Cheyenne’s warranted mistrust for the American Education System. When hearing my parents talking about what it’s like to experience totally new cultural norms, I was simultaneously returning home from working abroad in France. I felt the need to document not only their school, but contrast it with six other international schools and express the powerful effect of diversity on education that I’d experienced through living abroad.

I set forth and accessed seven exceptional and strange places that face difficult problems in education.

As the internet drives us into smaller and smaller tribes, our society has lost the compassion for others’ points of view.  So there felt a need to tether the audience to their own perspectives during the documentary.  I considered in film and storytelling history other examples of audience self-reflexivity, such as Breathless with its pizzicato jump cuts, By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, a play that discusses the first act in the following acts, and even Mystery Science Theatre 3000 who taunt and make fun of the film while it’s playing in front of characters.  Thinking of these, I’m incorporating two silhouetted audience members reacting to the film in real time intercut with the documentary to remind the viewers of their own perspectives.  And so, I challenging the audience’s own frame of reference, starting right here in education.

Set for release in 2025, we need partners in funding, post-production, and distribution. We can’t make this movie without your help!