Yuck - A 4th Grader's Short Documentary About School Lunch
Heh -- from the About page for
Yuck - A 4th Grader's Short Documentary About School Lunch:
In the fall of 2011, fourth grader Zachary Maxwell began asking his parents if he could start packing and bringing his own lunch to school. Unfortunately, they kept insisting that he take advantage of the hot lunch being served at the school. After all, the online menu sounded delicious and the NYC Department of Education (DOE) website assured parents that the meals were nutritious. Zachary wanted to convince his parents that the online menu did not accurately represent what was really being served at his school.
In an effort to prove his point, Zachary started sneaking a small HD camera into the lunchroom to show his parents the truth. Over the next six months, Zachary would continue to gather "inside" footage and research the claims being made by the DOE and the media about the City's public school lunch program.
The New York Times
did a nice write-up:
The Michael Moore of the Grade-School Lunchroom
Guerrilla filmmakers often face crackdowns by the powers that be, and Zachary Maxwell is no exception.
His hidden-camera documentary was almost derailed last year when he was caught filming without permission by a fearsome enforcer � the lunchroom monitor in his school cafeteria.
�She sent me to my teacher, and my teacher told me to delete everything,� said Zachary, who is now 11.
Zachary pretended to delete the day�s shots. After that lapse in production security, he said, �I fired my lookouts.�
What his teacher didn�t know, though, was that Zachary had six months of footage shot surreptitiously in the cafeteria, forming the spine of his 20-minute movie �Yuck: A 4th Grader�s Short Documentary About School Lunch.�
The kid has a career in film ahead of him. I wonder where the school lunch money went to - such a disconnect between what is listed and what is served...
Posted by DaveH at May 18, 2013 12:47 PM