ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how youth and adults collaborated to create films about social justice issues in schools and communities. It highlights the transformative potential of using filmmaking to address current issues that are rooted in areas of the past and difficult to incorporate into the dominant curriculum and culture. The chapter describes action-oriented pedagogical approaches where youth and adults create their own documentary films about timely and relevant issues grounded in difficult historical contexts. The concept of difficult knowledge invites educators to reflect on the pedagogical challenges posed by students' painful encounters with difficult history. Epstein describes three key phases in the process of engaging students in civic literacy projects: problem identification; problem exploration; and action. The chapter describes the Youth Films Collaborative (YFC) initiative through these three phases. As community-engagement initiatives, Rochester Participatory Educational Research Collaborative (RPERC) and YFC sought to cultivate reflective, change-centered processes and intercultural dialogue with peers and adults in and outside of school.
