Video

4wheelwarpony is a multi-screen experimental film that juxtaposes historic archive photos and modern reenactments of 19th Century White Mountain Apache Scouts. It does so with art, photography and skateboarding footage captured and created by core members of the White Mountain Apache band of skateboarders in an effort to document their culture in motion.

Skateboard culture, like Native American culture is often borrowed or stolen, then regurgitated to the public for profit in a distorted way resented by skateboarders. On the surface this film may seem to depict White American Apache youth borrowing "pop-culture" in place of their own., when it is actually ancient Apache culture of young men, manifesting itself within skateboard culture.

above: CHS photography students images of animals, architecture and landscape.

Photography and Filmmaking Develops Higher Order Thinking Skills

Turning the intangible into the tangible, putting an idea on a screen…. It is an opportunity for students to develop a vision of what they want to explore and to see how the vision changes or remains the same as they set out and make it happen. It is practice in turning the tangible into the intangible. It’s also about the process of looking at where you want to be, looking at where you are now and constructing a plan to connect the two. The skill working backwards from a goal, and translating it into a plan of action, can be transplanted for personal achievement in many fields.

It can also lead into a discussion of what “vision” itself is, as filmmakers telling stories, as teams of people following a common goals or as individuals pursuing a dream.

It’s about exploring not only what the vision is, but also what the vision does. How it moves you into action, gets you up on your feet, makes you advance in order to crystallize what you have in your mind.

It is important that students develop visioning skills for both their present and future worlds. We need students to see how ideas can be transformed into action and how if they want to reach for something. If they can dream it, they can do it. But for them to realize the dream the idea, the target, it begins with being able to articulate the vision clearly, the vision they hold in their minds to themselves and to others.

Films get made because a vision can be imagined, articulated, realized and shared. If we believed that students would benefit from the entreprenuerial approach to learning, then this is another benefit that filmmaking gives them.