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School District
TYPE: Documentary Feature
GENRE: Documentary
STATUS: Post-Production
LOGLINE
Filmed fly-on-the-wall throughout the 2020-2021 academic year, School District chronicles Connecticut’s Stamford Public Schools working in the shadow of Covid-19.
SYNOPSIS
On September 8, 2020, in-the-midst of the global pandemic, Connecticut’s Stamford Public Schools opened its twenty-one elementary, middle and high schools to 17,000+ students for hybrid, in-person learning. This observational documentary follows the superintendent, her Cabinet and their staff, building administrators, teachers and students on their educational odyssey through the 2020-2021 school year.
ARTISTIC STATEMENT
School District is a detailed historical documentation of pandemic education. This probably makes it a little different from nearly every other film about education, but we believe the more powerful differentiator is that the way the material was captured and is being communicated attempts to eschew conflict in the favor of prioritizing clarification. Clarification of what education really looks like in order to identify strengths, weaknesses, and remind us of how integral it is to our chosen system of sociopolitical organization.
KEY CREW
Leigh Morfoot - Director and Producer
Leigh directs and produces films for Kinobserver. She started out at Maysles Films and then spent nearly a decade at the American Museum of Natural History production managing its documentary division. Leigh earned a B.A. in African-American Studies and English Literature at the University of Virginia and an M.A. in Media Studies at the New School University. She is a 2021 LEF/CIFF Fellow and a 2022 Flaherty Fellow.
Leigh & Jason co-founded Kinobserver. Their narrative short, In-between Worlds, premiered at the San Francisco International Film Festival and their feature documentary. Citizen 3.0, is distributed by Filmakers Library.
Jason Mofoot - Director and Producer
For the past thirteen years, Jason has been on staff at the American Museum of Natural History where he is a senior producer and editor making documentaries about scientific research and field work. Prior, Jason was a freelance DP and editor in New York City. He spent two years, 2001-02, filming with a preeminent ethnographer for a documentary chronicling the relocation of tenants during the months leading up to the demolition of one of the buildings in the Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago. He holds a B.A. in History from Trinity College and a J.D. from Emory University School of Law.
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The Gotham Film & Media Institute is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to finding, developing and celebrating the people and projects that shape the future of story.