The 1960s Civil Rights movement makes up a huge part of U.S. history curriculum, but like so many fact-based lectures, much of the humanity and connection to the present gets lost in translation. Sure, the education system officially made huge strides in racial inclusiveness thanks to a series of student-led protests on college campuses, but is that the whole story? Perhaps more importantly, are today’s students feeling the effects of that progress?
Agents of Change, a documentary co-directed by filmmaker Abby Ginzberg and educator Frank Dawson, sought to answer these questions. The movie was screened at University of Oregon’s Straub Hall on Thursday. Using a combination of archival images, interviews with student protestors and footage from recent Black Lives Matter marches, the film looks back on student-led demonstrations at San Francisco State in 1968 and Cornell University in 1969.
Agents of Change explores the conditions for students of color on college campuses nationwide and follows a group of student activists who successfully advocated for the creation of ethnic studies programs. Later, Ginzberg and Dawson use modern footage to suggest that today’s students face many of the same issues that plagued past generations.
The film is powerful, in part because movements like BLM have brought civil rights to the forefront of national dialogue. UO’s own racial imbalance mirrors the issues in the documentary. Seeing this film on a campus in which less than 2 percent of the student body is black increased its importance and urgency. Racial representation in higher education is a real issue, in need of real solutions. Agents of Change is successful in at least starting a conversation.
While powerful, the film isn’t perfect; it is inherently limited in its scope and aesthetic value. Like so many documentaries, it uses cliched techniques to enhance photographs, often expanding or cropping them in an attempt to make the past feel more alive. This is only partially effective, mostly because it is endlessly derivative of other films in the genre. There is little to suggest this film is trying to break new ground from a visual standpoint.
Other questionable choices hamper the film’s effectiveness. Ginzburg and Dawson reportedly took seven years to make Agents of Change, and their emphasis on factual accuracy appears expectedly sound as a result.
The attempts to lighten the mood with humorous anecdotes from the film’s interviewees are at once unnecessary and miscalculated. The few attempts at humor get only crickets, mostly due to their unnatural placement in the film’s sequence of events and the filmmakers’ inclusion of a light swing beat (presumably to let people know they should be laughing) overlaying the action.
More troubling is the way the filmmakers vilify the administrators and educators who stood in the students’ way during the San Francisco State protest. Then-president S.I. Hayakawa made headlines when he yanked wires out from the loud speakers of a protester’s van during a rally. It was already a needlessly aggressive act, but Ginzburg and Dawson take it one step further, inserting low, ominous music in a ploy to insist upon its aggressiveness. Is it necessary? Debatable. But it is excessively manipulative and distracting.
Documentaries built around social issues walk a fine line. When that line is walked correctly, they are endlessly relevant; if not, the films are usually toothless. Agents of Change falls somewhere in the middle. Despite its formal flaws, the questions it raises remain important to our campus and community. For that alone, it’s worth a watch.
Watch the trailer for Agents of Change here: