Lights, Camera, History!

How to Use Film with Purpose—and Avoid the Pitfalls—in History Class

As we head into the final stretch of the school year, especially on a sunny afternoon, I can feel my students’ attention spans waning, and even my most engaging lessons can be a tough sell.¹ In these moments, a thoughtfully selected film clip—whether from a feature film or a documentary—can be just the thing to re-energize my students, spark curiosity, and bring historical content to life in a way that sticks.

As the year goes on, I do tend to show more film—usually short clips, sometimes longer—not because I’m winding down, but because the material gets richer. Once we hit the era of actual film footage, history feels different. I remember showing a World War I clip and a student immediately said, “Hey, it’s the actual people.” That matters. We don’t have film footage of George Washington—anything before the 20th century is still images or dramatization. And while Ken Burns shows how powerful that can be, and films like Glory bring the past to life through drama, there’s something uniquely powerful about seeing real people in real moments. That’s why I keep coming back to documentaries like Eyes on the Prize and Vietnam: A Television History—they help students connect with the past in a visceral, unforgettable way.²

But the issue of actual footage vs. dramatization is just one of the first in a series of considerations I'd like to raise in this post about how, when and why to show video in class. And what kinds of videos to show.

Why use videos in the first place?

Let’s first answer this multiple choice question. Is your reason for showing a video:

While the ideal answer is “d,” answers a, b, and c can be acceptable reasons from time to time. We've all been there. The reality of teaching is that sometimes you are just overwhelmed and a great 10 minute video can give you a ten minute break, not to mention “resetting” your students’ attention.³ Films/videos can provide much needed variety in the classroom. They can reinforce something students have learned from a reading, activity or direct instruction. But still, answers a, b, and c have a decided negative air about them. Answer “d” reflects positive reasons for showing a video.

Here are two specific examples:

Reason #1 for showing videos: pictures can be worth a 1000 words

Sometimes, truly, a picture—or better yet, a moving one—is worth a thousand words. Take, for instance, this 90 second video of the Cu Chi Tunnels used by the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong. It’s catchy music, graphics and real footage provide a great overview of the tunnels. You could be the most dynamic teacher in the world and still struggle to describe the tunnels the way this video can. The point is this: when you can’t take students to a place, a good video (or sometimes even just a single image) can bring it to them.

The same principle holds true for abstract or complex topics. Videos that creatively use charts, infographics, and animations can clarify concepts in ways that are more engaging—and effective—than many texts or explanations from a teacher. One of my go-to examples is this YouTube video on wealth inequality which explains the problem in a way that is so mind blowing (and in under 7 minutes) that I forever think of a former student who, after seeing it, made a face somewhere between Macaulay Culklin in Home Alone and Edvard Munch’s The Scream.

Like the Cu Chi Tunnels video, this one does what would be difficult to accomplish with words alone. I use this film in my unit on Industrialization, 1865-1890, in order to raise questions about the income gap during the Gilded Age and whether or not our country is experiencing a similar divide today.

Another favorite is the award-winning short documentary is the award-winning short documentary, The Fallen of World War II by Neil Halloran. I use it on the first day of my World War II unit and, though it runs just 18 minutes, I typically spend about 40 minutes with it because we pause often to discuss. The visual representation of loss, supported by clear narration and data visualization, is sobering and so unforgettable, I am able to reference it with my students throughout the unit. See more details in the footnote.⁴ It should, however, be used in combination with other material that humanizes the numbers. Which leads me to a second reason to show videos.

Reason #2 for showing videos: humanizing history

You have probably had that moment in the classroom where a student brings up the name of a feature film that is related to something you are learning about in your class, and then the whole class chimes in:

Hey, Ms. Brown, we should watch that in class! Please, Ms. Brown?! It’s about history!

While they are likely saying it because they are trying to get you to show a movie for three days in class, there is a more positive way to frame that. We like stories. Movies about history often center in on a particular character. Characters and stories make us care about history. Of course, movies aren’t the only way to bring character and story into our history classrooms—but they’re certainly one of the most effective.⁵

Characters—especially real ones—are what make history come alive. They’re what turn abstract facts and figures into something students can feel and care about. That’s what gives emotional weight to the World War II footage I mentioned earlier, and what makes us care about the seemingly endless lists of names, dates, and battles. A 3½-minute excerpt like “Honorable Manhood” from Ken Burns’ The Civil War can do more to humanize the experience of Union soldiers than pages of description in a textbook. (It’s available from PBS, though you may need an account to access it.)⁶ Similarly, a short clip on F.D.R.’s disability—cut from Burns’ The Roosevelts but still available online—can deepen students’ understanding not only of F.D.R. as a person, but of the way his disability shaped his presidency and public image during the New Deal era.⁷ In just a few minutes, these clips help students connect with history through the people who lived it.⁸

Ken Burns is obviously among the greats, and I make liberal use of his work. We do, however, have to be careful not to OD on Ken Burns or videos in general.⁹

I have found with a few exceptions, any film clip longer than 20 minutes is too long for most students. Especially if you teach high schoolers during 1st period or right after lunch. If you have something that is longer, consider breaking it up and/or pausing it to discuss or have students write something about it.

So when should we use longer films?

Whether or not to use longer films depends entirely on the film and your purpose in showing it. Consider the following questions:

• Your district’s policy.

• Cost-benefit analysis: is the film worth taking up a whole period? Two or three days? That’s a big chunk of time. What other topics/lessons will you have to sacrifice in order to make time for it?

• If the film takes an entire period, or almost an entire period, is it memorable enough that you can hold off discussing the film until the next day? Are you showing the film on a Friday? If so, will students remember it until Monday?

• Would it be better to discuss it right away? If so, can you cut parts of the film out to allow more time in class to discuss it? Or would that leave out something important from the film? Should you pause the film part way through to discuss? Or does that interrupt the flow and vibe the film creates?

• How will you handle student absences? If you postpone discussion of the film until the next day, can the students who missed the film watch it on the day you discuss it? (i.e. in the library or in the back of the room on a computer with headphones?) Can students watch the film at home? Will they?

To use an example, one of the most powerful films I’ve used with students is I'm Still Here: Real Diaries of Young People Who Lived During the Holocaust.¹⁰ It’s 47 minutes. I skip a few parts in order to get it to fit in a class period, and also to cut some scenes that I don’t think are appropriate for middle schoolers, though probably would be okay to show to high schoolers if you prepare them appropriately. The film is memorable enough to have a discussion the next day, but I don’t want to show it on a Friday and have to wait until Monday. It is accessible to my students via YouTube, so I am able to make them accountable for watching it even if they are absent. The period I devote to it is worth it, because what is a study of the Holocaust if it doesn’t depict both the humanity and suffering of the victims?¹¹

How do we decide what films to show?

The first question we have to ask ourselves when choosing a film is where it falls on the continuum below:

This is why a lot of feature films don’t make the cut, not to mention the fact they are a major time commitment.¹² You can certainly use feature films, and I do, but rarely the whole film. Most of the time, I’m using 3-10 minute excerpts. Or maybe a few 3-10 minute excerpts, interspersed throughout a lesson.¹³

The second question we have to ask ourselves is whether the film is at all interesting for our students. If it is informative, but it puts them to sleep once the lights go down, there is little point.

Of course, entertainment shouldn’t be our first priority when making educational choices—but let’s be honest, it does matter. And with so many video choices out there, why wouldn't you find one that was as entertaining as it is informative?

So if you put these two questions together, you might ask yourself where a film falls in the diagram below:

Ideally we should only be choosing films in the top left corner, which shouldn’t be hard because there is so much great content out there. Check out the end of this post for a few resources to find some. And please use the comments to share with others!

Using feature films

Whether you're showing an entire film or just a few excerpts, it’s important to think critically about how and why you're using it. First, don’t forget the practical considerations mentioned above—district policies, permission requirements, and the trade-offs involved in devoting multiple class periods to a film. Beyond that, here are some key pedagogical questions to consider:

Whether you use the whole film or only excerpts, there are some important questions to consider before using a feature film with students. First, don’t forget the ones above about district policy and what you’ll have to give up if you spend 3 days showing a film in class. But in addition, consider the following:

1. How historically accurate is the film? Are the inaccuracies significant? Could addressing them before or after the film resolve potential confusion?¹⁴

2. How does the film compare to a documentary on the same topic? Is the documentary more informative—or more likely to be dismissed as “boring”? Will students see the feature film as “truth” and then distrust the documentary’s version? Keep in mind that documentaries, like history books, also offer selective versions of the past.

3. Who will students respond to more—the real historical figures or the actors portraying them? Does it matter? This question becomes especially interesting with figures from the filmed era. For instance, we may accept Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln because no moving images of Lincoln exist. But we’ve seen Martin Luther King Jr. on film—does that shape how students view David Oyelowo’s performance in Selma? What about someone like John Adams, portrayed by Paul Giamatti in the HBO miniseries, whom we haven’t even seen in photographs?

4. What is gained and what is lost when we internalize fictional accounts of history? What sticks with students after the credits roll and the bell rings —and how does that influence their historical understanding?

5. What larger questions does this raise about who “owns” history and who gets to tell the story? Whose perspectives are included or left out? How do the stories we elevate—through Hollywood or textbooks—shape our collective understanding of the past? (A rich example here is Glory, which opens up conversations about whose heroism gets remembered.¹⁵)

Used well, film can do far more than fill time. As with any resource, it’s all about what film you choose and your intentions. Choose wisely, frame it thoughtfully, combine it with appropriate discussion and other material, and you might find that a few well-chosen minutes of film stick with your students long after the year ends.

A few other resources to find those good films:

• TeachwithMovies.org - a wonderful site that I just found while writing this post. Lots of great suggestions of films as well as materials for teachers that support the learning.

• learningliftoff.com - This page has links to mostly feature films (but some documentaries and made-for-TV films) about American history organized by period. I can’t personally vouch for all of the films listed here, and a few I wouldn’t ever show, but it offers helpful advice so you can make your own call. Interestingly, the links for films about slavery and the Civil Rights movement are broken. Probably because someone realized that these are potentially touchy subjects and took down the sites. See below for help with slavery.

• Film & the History of Slavery - a podcast from Learning for Justice’s Hard History series. There’s a second part here. I highly recommend the entire series, and you can potentially get professional development credit if you listen to them.

• The short videos (3-5 minutes) produced by the History channel are quite good. At the top of this site, you can select “U.S. History” and go from there. Longer documentaries are good too.

• My other favorite is American Experience from PBS.

• Read my piece about Edpuzzle on MiddleWeb. It’s dated, because it was about using Edpuzzle during the pandemic. But Edpuzzle is still a great resource. And even if you don’t like the questions that other teachers have put into YouTube videos, you can easily make your own. And speaking of YouTube….

• There are gazillions of documentaries on YouTube. Like most teachers, that’s where I usually start!

• Share your favorite films and documentaries in the comments!

1. Of course, probably more than half the country is done with school now. If you’re one of those, you’re probably not even reading this. For my next post, I’m planning a post about what to read in summer for U.S. history teachers. In the meantime, congrats on being finished for the year!

2. Easy does it—these are multi-episode documentaries. Both are hours and hours long. I only use a few excerpts. Reach out to me via DM on Substack if you want more info about which ones are good to show and for what ages of students.

3. Just don’t think this means you can tune out. Teachers truly need to be be present and watch the film with their students. I mean, of course, you can quickly dash off an email or even record some grades, but if the students see you are not watching, that sends the message that they don’t have to either.

4. At about minute 5:40, there is an incredible minute that depicts the Soviet losses in World War II that led one of my students (on Zoom, during the pandemic!) to unmute herself and describe it as “an elevator of death.” Well, maybe she just put it in the chat, now that I think about it. But still, it is that kind of video— good enough to pull kids off Netflix or their YouTubes and watch mine. FYI, the video is available on YouTube as well, which means you could put it on Edpuzzle if you want. More on Edpuzzle here.

5. See my post on reading aloud in history class.

6. I believe it is still free to get a PBS account, but you might also consider making a small donation. Or ask your school to do it. The clip is often available on YouTube, but then is taken down. (At the moment, it is available here.) The text of the letter is available here, so you could also consider reading it aloud instead. But this is one of those times when I think the video does it better. It’s the music…just kills it.

7. You can find the clip on FDR contracting polio that did make the cut here, but I like the other one so much better. Again, it’s the music and the haunting ending. I’ve toyed with using both and asking students which they prefer and why, but I never had time, because there was so much else in the lesson that was more important.

8. Another wonderful clip that is not Ken Burns is this 12 minute clip about the Triangle Fire of 1911 in New York City. It has emotional weight and humanizes the 146 victims of the tragic Triangle Fire, typically mentioned briefly (and flatly) in textbooks as the impetus to improved safety laws. And a heads up: I do cut about 2 minutes of it (starting at minute 7:18) because I think it is too disturbing and thus inappropriate for the 8th graders I use it with.

9. Note there have been plenty of criticisms of Ken Burns’s work. For example, see historian and former history teacher Kevin M. Levin’s three posts about The Civil War: part 1, part 2 and part 3. I also suggest this article in Variety about the issue of race and Ken Burns as a white man telling stories about Black history. There are many other articles about Ken Burns, and likely, there will be many more come fall when his new documentary on the American Revolution debuts.

10. This isn’t, of course, a U.S. history topic, but part of our district’s curriculum in 8th grade, even though the course is U.S. history.

11. Indeed, the only downside to showing this film is that I have to watch it with every class— and I do have to watch it, because it sends a terrible message if I’m busy grading papers or doing something else during this film. Actually, this is true of any film (see footnote #3 above). One of the few upsides to remote learning during the pandemic: my students watched the film on their own via Edpuzzle. (Note that through Edpuzzle, you can see whether or not a student watched something. Or at least whether their computer played it. Whether or not they paid attention is obviously a different question.) Facing History and Ourselves puts out a thoughtful companion guide to this film, fyi.

12. Don’t even get me started about Forrest Gump—dated, not in a good way, inappropriate, and not even about history. And….okay, never mind. I said don’t even get me started.

13. I have done this successfully with the film Iron Jawed Angels, originally from HBO about Alice Paul, Lucy Burns and the women’s suffrage movement. It’s a great film, but I would not recommend using the whole film for a variety of reasons. I use a few clips, including the first scene and a few others to raise key questions about the women’s suffrage movement.

Another film, excellent for illustrating the problems with the assimilation of Native Americans in boarding schools of Native Americans is Into the West. This 10 minute clip resonates with students. Lots to discuss.

14. This is a point I make about Iron Jawed Angels. Starring Hilary Swank as Alice Paul, I need my students to consider why Hollywood would make the younger Alice Paul the heroine and not the elder stateswoman, Carrie Chapman Catt, played by Angelica Huston. I also discuss some of the inaccuracies in a few clips I show from John Adams.

15. I love this film, which I’ve used with high school students, but not middle students. I would use it with middle schoolers, but it is more complicated because of the violence and language. In addition to those issues, consider the questions raised here. Also see this essay in Smithsonian Magazine by Kevin M. Levin. Look for essays like these when you consider using any film that purports to portray a historic event a person.