Short videos and documentaries set in Africa, suitable for kids?
January 29, 2020 12:01 PM   Subscribe

My students, grades 4-7, are interested to learn more about different African countries and people. Please recommend some short videos and documentaries (less than 50 minutes) filmed recently anywhere in Africa, that are suitable for kids and give a glimpse into everyday life.

The film need not be about a child, as long as the themes/language are appropriate. They are especially interested in Madagascar, Morocco, Uganda, and Somalia, but anywhere else is welcome too. The focus should be on everyday people and their lives rather than animals or the natural world. Examples include city life, cooking, school, religion, political discourse, music, dance, art, or families.
posted by mai to Media & Arts (6 answers total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: I enjoyed the episodes I saw of Africa with Ade Adepitan, though I wasn't watching it with an 'is it suitable for kids?' eye, so you might need to pre-watch. He visits one or two different countries in each episode. The episodes are 59 minutes, but I think would be pretty easy to divide and watch in two segments. (The link above is to BBC iPlayer, I never know how accessible these things are overseas, but the programme's worth looking for). Review here that gives you a flavour of some of the topics covered. He's originally from Lagos himself, which adds some depth to it.

(Bonus: A presenter with a disability where it's not turned into a big "Woo look we've got a disabled presenter aren't we great?" thing, he just gets on with being a good presenter. He touches from time to time on the question of "What would my life be like with my disability if I lived in this country?" which adds an interesting dimension, but it's included as a whole variety of things he covers, in a way that feels like it's driven by him and his interests rather than a "disabled people must only report on disablity-related issues" agenda).
posted by penguin pie at 1:33 PM on January 29, 2020 [4 favorites]


If you're up for assembling some material yourself, a fairly reliable way to find current videos of everyday life in almost any country is to google commonly celebrated holidays for that country and then search for that holiday + country name at Youtube, e.g. "'Easter Monday' 'Madagascar'" is evidently a beach holiday, Uganda just observed NRM Liberation Day, and so on. Holidays can raise serious questions about religion, history, politics, colonialism, etc., but at the same time the public celebrations can be engaging to see from an unpolished / on-the-ground perspective.

You might also be able to use some video walks from around the world--they're slow, but depending on the class maybe they could fit into some assignment to make independent observations.
posted by Wobbuffet at 2:44 PM on January 29, 2020


Best answer: The Michigan State African Studies Center site's materials for teachers, and especially their African Media Project, could be useful--although I was not encouraged by a couple quick sample searches looking for recent elementary-appropriate films.

You might also find good stuff through the teacher resources page at Boston University's African Studies Center. The have specific tips for elementary and middle school classrooms, including media clips and film trailers (click to expand the menus under "Multimedia Resources" to see actual examples).

This 2007 Global Lives Project entry from Malawi might be worth checking out. Although the whole point of the project to present 24 hours of fairly unmediated footage of one person's life, they do give some suggested approaches to using the footage in the classroom along with potential accompanying material in a curriculum document (pages 21 to 23).
posted by col_pogo at 4:32 PM on January 29, 2020


Best answer: You could check out My Africa Is, filmed around 2015-ish? Looks like the full Nairobi (Kenya) episode is available if you sign up under the Resources section, and there are other shorter videos available on the site for Dakar, Senegal and Lagos, Nigeria. I can't remember if they made more than the 3 episodes.

I also haven't watched the episodes with an "Is this suitable for kids?" mindset but I think the short videos will give you an idea of the style and content.
posted by tinydancer at 7:12 PM on January 29, 2020


Best answer: Binta and the Great Idea is from 2004, so 15 years old, but it's kind of timeless.
posted by ipsative at 11:09 PM on January 29, 2020


Best answer: There's a couple short documentaries that Drew Binsky did recently from Mogadishu: one on female entrepreneurs, and one on a hotel owner. I feel like some of his work is poorly researched or naive, but the interview-centric videos like these are pretty good.

Another traveler vlogger, Indigo Traveler, did a more in-depth series of videos from Somaliland, but I don't know if they'd be grade appropriate.
posted by serathen at 4:43 AM on January 30, 2020


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