Films are often used for purposes other than entertainment - to educate, to inform, to motivate, and to persuade. "The Women of Summer," a documentary depicting an historic moment when feminists, unionists, and educators came together at Bryn Mawr's Summer School for Women Workers, is one such film. Another is Jane Elliott's "A Class Divided," a documentary that chronicles an exercise in which a class of third grade children in Riceville, Iowa were grouped into "them" and "us" while the camera observed the resulting biases and stereotypes which emerged (Frontline, 2005).
"The Women of Summer" was filmed by Suzanne Bauman and Rita Heller and focuses on the activities occurring at a summer program under the aegis of an exclusive women's college. These events in which working class women were introduced to the realm of humanistic and political thought is presented through the eyes of the alumni 50 years later at a reunion ("The Women of Summer," 2008). The actual summer school program was operated from 1921 to 1938, but the retrospective was filmed in 1988 and identifies from the perspective of graduates, reactions to life in blue collar work environments and throughout the social and economic fluctuations of the Depression and the New Deal. The film illustrates the very real differences in the lived experiences of working class and more affluent women, emphasizing the very different attitudes and beliefs of these two discrete groups as well as the activism that ultimately emerged among the program's participants.
Elliott's film depicts what occurred when she divided her class into two groups of students based on blue versus brown eye color. Depending on the group assignment, Elliott either praised or criticized each group over the course of two days. Children had the opportunity to be in both groups and those in the superior group on both days adopted patronizing, critical, and biased attitudes towards who were in th...