Documentary Analysis: Bending The Arc

670 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Japan 2011 & Haiti 2010 earthquake

Recommended by Jennifer, I went to go see the documentary, Bending the Arc, presented by UGA division of Partners in Health. Before the movie started, we the audience got an honor to talk (via SKype) to Dr. Joia Mukherjee about her field of work, her passion, her membership with Partners in Health, and just her life in general. The incredible yet heartbreaking story of Dr. Paul Farmer, Ophelia Dahl, and Jim Yong Kim and their journey with Partners in Health begins with the snap shots of Haiti in ruins and the terrible conditions the natives were facing due to lack of basic healthcare. It all begin with the Alma-Ata Declaration of 1978 where the world leaders came together and decided to have health care for all, starting with the poorest. Of course, that agenda was never accomplished with rich, powerful nations and their corrupt government having the upper hand. With most of the healthcare going to the wealthy nations, there was simply no way for citizens of underdeveloped countries like Haiti to receive proper healthcare. When development projects from Haitian government …show more content…

Farmer and his team’s work reached further out and into South America. Specifically, Lima, Peru. They were in relatively better situation than Haiti. They even had Tuberculosis treatment programs in major hospitals. However, casualty from TB was inevitable despite having such program because some of the patients had drug-resistance TB, meaning that the drugs and treatments they had been using were useless. What was more depressing was that World Health Organization recognized the drug-resistance TB as luxury, therefore, it should not be treated as one of the basic healthcare rights in underdeveloped countries. According to the documentary, Peruvian government actually imposed the law forbidding drug-resistance TB to be treated at all, almost causing Dr. Farmer and his team to get kicked out of the country. But they were able to make it through giving decent medical care to the

Show More
Related

  • Documentary Analysis: Bridge To Freedom

    262 Words  | 1 Pages

    Bridge to Freedom provides the historical documentary behind the events that served as the narrative for Selma. Instead of a drama, the viewers receive an actual documentary that shows the confrontations between the marchers and the government. Like Selma, it highlights the violence, the deaths, and the beatings, but also goes further back in time to show society’s treatment of African Americans.

    Read More

  • Documentary Analysis: Ten Trillion And Counting

    553 Words  | 2 Pages

    One thing that I have learned about college is that you have to sometimes talk about things that make you uncomfortable or scared in order to learn. I do not think I am alone in saying that the United States’ current debt situation is terrifying. Ten trillion dollars alone is an expansive and unimaginable amount of money, and since PBS produced Ten Trillion and Counting in 2009, the national debt has grown to twenty-one trillion. As stated, the documentary was produced during the first months of former President Barack Obama’s first term and focused on former President George W. Bush’s relationship with national debt during his eight year tenure. Ten Trillion and Counting explains some of the questionable decisions that former President Bush made, especially regarding fiscal policy.

    Read More

  • Paul Farmer, Partners in Health and Tuberculosis

    1535 Words  | 4 Pages

    Paul Farmer was born in Massachusetts in 1959, went to Harvard Medical School, became a doctor, and ended up living and working in Haiti. He co-founded an organization in 1987 called Partners in Health (PIH). The philosophy behind the organization is that everyone, no matter who or where has a right to health care. Paul Farmer and PIH have already made amazing progress in Haiti, Peru, and several other countries, helping people get the care they need. PIH’s website lists a detailed history of they and Farmer’s work in Haiti. When Paul Farmer first came to Cange, Haiti as a medical student in 1983, the place was in shambles. In 1956, a dam was built on the Artibonite River, flooding the village and forcing the residents to move up into the hills. Many of these displaced villagers were still essentially homeless after nearly thirty years, and had little access to quality health care. With the founding of the Zanmi Lasante clinic later in 1983, Farmer and his friend Ophelia Dahl set the people of Cange on the road to recovery by providing access to doctors, medicine, and emergency care, all completely free. (“Partners”) One of Farmer’s focuses was on tuberculosis (TB) and has had much success on this front. Through new studies and methods such as active case finding and community health workers, as well as his work with multidrug-resistant TB, Paul Farmer has revolutionized treatment of tuberculosis in Haiti and around the world.

    Read More

  • Common Themes In Mountains Beyond Mountains By Tracy Kidder

    1167 Words  | 3 Pages

    Farmer is dedicated to his work and would do anything in his power to help. Belinda Luscombe, from Time Magazine, describes during the interview how Farmer helped a man who was having an asthmatic attack. He only had his inhaler with him, but it was enough to save the man’s life. The next day he came to Farmer and praised on him for saving his life. This is just one example of many how Farmer would do anything to help someone in need. Farmer gives each of his patient’s individual care, letting them all know he cares. Kidder tells, “Farmer lingers beside the crib of a little girl with wasted arms and a torso bloated by pleural effusion—caused by extrapulmonary TB. She lies on her side. He reaches in and strokes her shoulder, saying softly, almost singing, in English, ‘Michela wants to give up, but we’re not going to let her, are we? No, we’re not going to let her.’” (31). The way Farmer gives each patient individual care, it lets them know that there is hope they will get better, and that he cares and will do anything he can to help them. Farmer also had hope that Haiti would finally change one day. Kidder

    Read More

  • An Investigation into the Portrayal or Truth Within the Documentary Genre

    1888 Words  | 4 Pages

    As documentary by its very nature introduces itself as factual, concerns exist as to where the boundary between the truth of subject and the fiction produced by its creator emerges. As anything that has been edited has by definition removed certain aspects and enhanced others, there must be at best an innocent naturally occurring bias formed from individual perception, and at worst purposefully manipulated misinformation. Through researching various sources, I intend to discover the difference (if any) between these two methods making factually based programmes, to determine any variables that lie in the ‘grey area’ between the two extremes, and to ascertain the diverse forms of conduct in which truth (and in turn documentary) can be presented to an audience, and to what effect?

    Read More

  • Precious Knowledge Documentary Analysis

    1335 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout the US, millions of POC students exposed to the traditional, rather outdated version of US History. Never do the textbooks explicitly mention and/ or explain the terrorizing, constant stripping down of others’ cultures and appropriating it into the dominant group of predominantly white, Anglo-Saxon and protestant. For many Mexican American students, they can’t relate to anything in the text, nor do they share an interest in the coursework provided. The way US history sets up doesn't teach and somehow excludes Indigenous backgrounds or for the most part was never taught in the classroom but, rather briefly mentioned in one or two paragraphs. Immigrants from diverse groups built this country yet their culture is consistently shown

    Read More

  • Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains

    1957 Words  | 4 Pages

    In conclusion, the ultimate significance to this type of work is to improve the quality of healthcare in these extremely impoverished nations. This argument is represented in Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains, Monte Leach’s “Ensuring Health Care as a Global Human Right”, and Darshark Sanghavi’s “Is it Cost Effective to Treat the World’s Poor.” The idea that universal healthcare is a human right is argued against in Michael F. Cannon’s “A “Right” to health care?” Cannon claims that it would not work, and fills the holes that the other authors leave in their arguments. All of these articles share the same ultimate goal, and that is to provide every individual with adequate health care, and to not let so many people die from things that could easily have been prevented or treated.

    Read More

  • Generation Like Documentary Analysis

    350 Words  | 1 Pages

    One word: neediness. The entire Generation Like documentary can be easily summarized with that unique word. People striving for approval, fame, and the monotonous exacerbation of what one likes and what not; they believe that they are doing something empowering with their lives, without realizing that they are being exploited. Does social media truly empowers individuals to strive for better? I do not think so, for what I saw, is that people will almost do anything to get a “like”, or getting comments on their feeds. Values and principles seem to be forgotten for the likes of fame and small advancements; so much work for little gain. In the video, there is a girl who has millions of followers and many sponsors, and the girl’s mom was asked

    Read More

  • The Duck In Documentary Analysis

    1436 Words  | 3 Pages

    You are starving and your family is starving, but the law told you that you could not feed your family, would you obey the law or do you decide to feed your family anyway despite what the law says? To Tommy Pikok Sr., “When I am hungry, I can protest the law. I can use my stomach as a reason to protest the law” (Edwardsen, Duck-In). In the documentary, The Duck-In, the Iñupiat people of Barrow, Alaska fought against the law by coming together as a whole community to get what should be their right as native people. The Iñupiat people would rather hunt for their food than consume white people food on a daily basis. It is our culture, tradition, and duty to hunt for food and no one or anything could change our way of thinking. The citizens of Barrow, Alaska should watch the Duck-In because the documentary informs the citizens

    Read More

  • Tuberculosis and Typhus Fever: Diseases of Class in 19th-Century England

    901 Words  | 2 Pages

    Tuberculosis is marked by symptoms such as a hollow cough, an emaciated body, nightly weats and daily intermittent fevers. Tuberculosis was common amongst working classes because it was contracted through pestilent, infected air, manifesting itself in places surrounded by swampy land. Geography plays an important role in the transmission of tuberculosis. The working classes could not afford to live in areas that were free of the epidemic. The upper classes did contract consumption, although they sought the medicine of the day which often brought them to health. The most popular remedy was a sea voyage in a warm climate, but also pure air and the most nutritious food were encouraged. Accordi...

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Two Documentaries

    841 Words  | 2 Pages

    Analysis Of Two Documentaries I will be analysing two very different types of documentary, 'Dogtown and the Z-Boys', which takes the role of being a full length movie type documentary, and 'Teenage Transsexuals' which was recently shown on Channel 4. 'Dogtown and the Z-Boys' is a documentary which takes a look at the transformation of surfing into skateboarding. The film follows the evolution of skating through it's heyday in the 70's, to it's decline in the 80's, and then back upto it's popular return in the 90's. It also follows the Zephyr team, a high profile surf/skate club which revolutionised the skating industry right upto the present day.

    Read More

  • The Power Of An Illusion The House We Live In Documentary Analysis

    771 Words  | 2 Pages

    I watched the documentary called, “The Power of an Illusion: The House We Live In”. The documentary talked about how the laws and policies in America create a racial divide; in addition, the documentary talks about how our federal housing policy has oppressed people of color throughout our culture. This was an interesting documentary that certainly talks about how our policies and laws in America have always been to benefit the whites and to exclude people who are non-whites.

    Read More

  • A Place At The Table Documentary Analysis

    1105 Words  | 3 Pages

    The documentary A Place at the Table reveals some very startling facts about food insecurity in the United States. The directors, Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush, relate the stories of three people to present the struggles common to people who are faced with food insecurity. Barbie is a young single mother who struggles to provide for her two young children. Rosie is a young student who has trouble focusing in class because she is hungry. Trmonica is another young student who has health problems, which are worsened by the unhealthy diet that her mother is able to afford. Through the stories of these three people and the testimonies of some experts, the directors present an argument dealing with food

    Read More

  • Objectivity of Documentary Film: Cinema Vérité

    1557 Words  | 4 Pages

    The ideation of objectivity remains a highly debatable subject among philosophical elites. Some philosophers may argue that human’s understanding of objectivity is subject to the scope of understanding of the term and exposure (Livingstone & Plantinga 10). When the term objectivity is entwined with realism, it yields a complex ideation that remains highly debatable and less agreeable among erudite authors (Livingstone & Plantinga 23). However, to understand and appreciate the concept of realism and objectivity in film, it becomes critical to adopt a definite definition. First, the term reality in film is used to describe concepts that are visible in nature as experienced on a daily life by one or more individuals (Livingstone & Plantinga 24). The term objectivity in this case is used to define a set of ideations or perspectives that are incorporated in the film (Livingstone & Plantinga 24). Documentaries are used to create a form of reality, an experience or ideation of the person or group of person experiencing an event or phenomenon. The argument in this analysis is that it is impossible for documentary films to objectively capture reality.

    Read More

  • Documentary Critique

    959 Words  | 2 Pages

    This is a critique of" Roger And Me", a documentary by Michael Moore. This is a film about a city that at one time had a great economy. The working class people lived the American dream. The majority of people in this town worked at the large GM factory. The factory is what gave these people security in their middle working class home life. Life in the city of Flint was good until Roger Smith the CEO of GM decided to close the factory. This destroyed the city. Violent crime became the highest in the nation, businesses went bankrupt, people were evicted from their rented homes. There were no jobs and no opportunity. Life was so bad that Money magazine named Flint the worst place to live in the entire nation. When news of the factory closing first broke, Michael Moore a native of flint decided to search for Roger Smith and bring him to Flint.

    Read More

More about Documentary Analysis: Bending The Arc

Open Document