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Remotely Learning

LOGLINE: Remotely Learning offers an intimate look at family dynamics and the extraordinary demands placed on women during the pandemic. Filmed almost entirely on mobile phones by moms in Texas, North Carolina and Massachusetts, the film captures who succeeds and who doesn’t when families “do school” from home.

SUMMARY: We meet our three families in late winter 2020, when it’s still unclear whether or not brick and mortar schools will re-open after spring break. The fatigue of being confined indoors around the clock is testing everyone’s nerves. The challenge of transitioning to remote learning manifests differently with each child, as does the subsequent news that classrooms will remain closed for the rest of the semester.
By spring, our moms - two of them contending with unemployment - adjust their expectations about what their kids should be learning. They focus more on having them learn skills like getting along with each other, being patient and trying to understand, but not be anxious about what’s happening in the world.
Spring gives way to summer, along with opportunities to venture outside, exhale and hope that life and school might revert to “normal” by fall. When it becomes apparent that this isn’t going to happen, each family responds very differently to the prospect that fall will feel very much like last spring.
Our families to return to school in the fall and scramble once again to adjust to new COVID rules and more isolation. We then catch up with them a final time almost a year to the day when they first started filming themselves. One child has truly prospered through the pandemic, now getting straight A’s, another wants to attend a brick-and-mortar school after years of homeschooling and a third emerges from a year of depression to newfound freedoms.

  • Jody Hassett Sanchez
    Director
    More Art Upstairs, SOLD: Fighting the New Global Slave Trade, CNN Cold War Postscripts
  • Jody Hassett Sanchez
    Writer
    More Art Upstairs, SOLD: Fighting the New Global Slave Trade, CNN Cold War Postscripts
  • Jody Hassett Sanchez
    Producer
    More Art Upstairs, SOLD: Fighting the New Global Slave Trade, CNN's Cold War Postscript
  • Francine Cavanaugh, DP
    Key Cast
    On Coal River, Boom–The Sound of Eviction,
  • Alyssa Kjendal, DP
    Key Cast
  • Joshua Woltermann, Editor
    Key Cast
    Welcome to Leith, More Art Upstairs, Now on PBS, Brick City
  • Thalia Micah, DP
    Key Cast
  • Project Type:
    Documentary
  • Runtime:
    15 minutes 48 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    March 15, 2021
  • Production Budget:
    18,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    mobile phones, Skype, video cam
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Mom Film Festival
    remote
    top ten downloaded films in festival
Director Biography - Jody Hassett Sanchez

Jody Hassett Sanchez is president of Pointy Shoe Productions, a documentary film and TV production company. Her documentary, More Art Upstairs, premiered at Hot Docs, enjoyed a strong festival run and screenings at art museums and campuses across the US. The film continues to screen internationally through the American Film Showcase and on iTunes and Amazon.

Her documentary SOLD: Fighting the New Global Slave Trade, filmed in India, Pakistan and West Africa, has been broadcast in more than 60 countries, screened on more than a thousand campuses.

In 2009, Jody created the Africa Film Project, which supports the next generation of African storytellers who are sparking social change through short documentary films.

Hassett Sanchez previously covered religion, culture, and education for ABC’s World News Tonight and Nightline. Prior to joining ABC News, she traveled the globe as CNN’s State Department producer and was a senior producer of CNN’s Cold War Postscript series.

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Director Statement

“Remotely Learning” represents the kind of documentary filmmaking we will all have to do in the immediate future - smaller stories filmed creatively, remotely; stories that illuminate something essential or provocative about the times we live in.

The audience for this film is enormous – parents. I haven’t met a parent in the past six months who isn’t discouraged, angry and anxious about their children’s education. “Remotely Learning” tees up what promises to be a fruitful and newsworthy discussion with local representatives from teachers unions, charter schools and homeschooling groups, to explore HOW to make remotely learning work for everyone, not just those who can afford to hire a private tutor.

I learned while covering education for ABC News that these groups aren’t always inclined to work together but I believe this too must change, in light of the bigger challenges we face.

I started thinking about this film during the early days of COVID, when the headlines were rightly focused on the country’s horrendous health crisis and financial free fall. As the mother of an 11-year-old boy and a former education producer, I could almost predict what was coming if schools didn’t re-open after spring break and it was daunting.

While the big picture of this season without school will likely be measured by student test scores and analyzed by teachers, mental health and education experts, I wanted to create a short film that captures the less tangible effects playing out in families.

There’s a compelling intimacy because the families in "Remotely Learning" did so much of the filming themselves. I asked each mom to “interview” her own children on camera, to capture their rapport. I was curious whether they would only give me footage and sound of their kids behaving well or that it might feel performative, but everyone was remarkably real. We would talk each week about their lives (we still do), what they would be filming and how they might try different shots and scenes. I interviewed the mums on camera via Skype, to give those sections a different feel.

“Remotely Learning” is a portrait of this lamentable season that will spark conversations today and still be relevant in the future, when we’ve begun to forget what this year was like, if that’s possible.