Join the conversation

Jasmine Britton is one of a small but growing group of talented teen documentary filmmakers whose work is winning accolades from educators and critics alike. I recently had the chance to chat with her about her documentary work and its impact on her education and life. Jasmine, who attends high school in Brooklyn, is quite outspoken in her opinion that more schools should offer students opportunities similar to those she has enjoyed.

Together with her peers at Reel Works Teen Filmmaking, Jasmine is working on a new documentary about U.S. national parks that will serve as a companion piece to Ken Burns's forthcoming documentary on the same subject. Reel Works is a Brooklyn-based non-profit organization that helps over 150 teens each year conceive, plan, film, edit and promote original documentaries. Last year, Over Here--a Reel Works documentary about the World War II homefront--aired on New York public television station Channel Thirteen.

In our interview, Jasmine describes her first documentary, a tribute to her mother entitled A Message to Marlene. She also credits her experience at Reel Works with motivating her to think much more earnestly about college. Finally, she urges educators to make the Reel Works experience much more accessible in schools.

Listen to highlights from our interview (5 minutes):

Read a transcript of these highlights below, and stay tuned next week for an interview with Reel Works filmmaker Isaac Shrem.

Interview Highlights:
PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: Tell me about your film.

JASMINE: My film was called "A Message to Marlene," and it was basically a tribute [to] my mother. At the time, me and my mom, and basically my whole family…We weren't living together. We were buying a house, but it was being renovated and we couldn't move in immediately. I just saw how much pressure [my mother] was under with school and work, so I thought [this] would be a good [first] documentary for me to make.

[I made this film because] I just wanted single mothers and kids to understand that people can balance out family and work and just life in general, and just enjoy it.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: Have you been able to show this movie to different audiences?

JASMINE: Yes. I actually showed it to my school, and it was in a festival for urban visionaries.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: Why did you want to get involved in making a film in the first place?

JASMINE: The first semester of my 9th grade year [I took] a film course. I liked it so I interviewed for Reel Works and got in. I just had an interest in film and media.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: Have you been making movies since, or is that the last one you've made?

JASMINE: No, I’ve worked in narrative, and I'm now working on another documentary with Reel Works. The narrative project was a class that I took in my school. They taught us how to write a script and how to create a shot list, and we made the film in a semester.

The documentary that we're working on now is on national parks. The idea was each of us has a different section to talk about. My whole portion of it is explaining “what is a national park?” and how [these parks] relate to teenagers today.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: When you do this work, either in your previous film or in the new film, what kinds of work do you actually do to put this kind of film together?

JASMINE: We create interview questions. We shoot the interviews, [and we do] the edits, so basically it's an all-around job.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: When you move from "A Message to Marlene" to the documentary on national parks, is there a lot of research involved?

JASMINE: Yes. We actually have to go out or Google, or talk to different people about national parks. We actually had to go to different monuments around New York City, like Federal Hall and Grant's Tomb, and talk to the rangers there to find out information about that site.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: Do you think that this work that you're doing, both "A Message to Marlene" and the work on national parks, is having an impact on other aspects of your life? Say, the work you're doing at school?

JASMINE: Yeah, I think it helps me be more organized with school, and kind of pushes me more to get my grades up to go to college. It helps me with that whole thing--just planning the future.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: You mentioned college. Do you have plans for college or what you might want to do at college?

JASMINE: I want to go to college for film, and I kind of want to go to college for business, too. So I'm kind of torn between those two right now.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: Do you have a sense of the kind of impact that this work in film-making has had on your life? Do you think your life would be different if you hadn't done it?

JASMINE: I think if I [hadn't done] the Reel Works program, I probably wouldn't have any direction of what I wanted to do after high school.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: You of course [have done] work now in various communities. You've gone out and you've talked to your family, but you're also going out and visiting all these different kinds of community monuments and other kinds of places in the community. Do you think this has created any kind of stronger connection between you and the community in which you live?

JASMINE: I think it has a positive effect. I think it builds a strong connection with me and New York City. I just think that me going out to Manhattan or up in the Bronx or Queens has opened up a whole new world. I probably learn more about New York and cultures around New York every day when I do film or when I go out for interviews and stuff.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: Given that the people who will be hearing this interview are in the education world--they represent teachers, principals, superintendents…all these different education people, and parents, too--do you think there are any big lessons that they should take from your experience at Reel Works?

JASMINE: I think that the environment--they should probably pay more attention to [school environment]. The environment at Reel Works is open, but it has structure. We can get work done, but also have [a] relationship with each teacher or mentor here. But I think in school we don't have that. We just have someone there, and we're being taught this stuff that's really…Sometimes it's interesting, but we kind of lose focus of that, or it's boring or the way that they teach at school is totally different from how we learn here. I think learning at Reel Works is better than learning in school.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: You did say, though, that a lot of your interest in film started in school.

JASMINE: Yes.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: So you think that schools could maybe do a bit more of the work that you've been doing through Reel Works?

JASMINE: Yeah. I think there should be a lot more arts programs in schools.