Educational Media Reviews Online

Guardians is a short documentary film that opens up a personal perspective on the risks of sexual assault confronted by young women. As a student film, the positive recommendation for this title arises from the compelling nature of its maker. There is a strong potential match for this brief film with viewing situations where classroom adoption at multiple education levels may recommend Guardians as an excellent conversation catalyst. Interest will also be present in looking at the film as an early work by an emerging filmmaker of color. Being an honest chronicle of this filmmaker’s voice, this narration having been created when the filmmaker was a student herself, offers a probable increased relatability to similarly situated student viewers. True at both high school and college levels.

Guardians, however, is not the strongest piece of visual communication, despite its compelling audio narration. That weakness is not entirely dismissive of its potential direct relevance and appeal in some educational settings. The video flow seems a bit tacked on. As the film stands, the content might have even worked equally well or better if rendered exclusively as a creative audio production.

Societal consideration apart from this film of the marginalization and abuse of women, and the dangers associated with travel, can at times be given an ignorant gloss. Modern information and communications technologies themselves have a fraught historical overlap with abuse and violence. The assumption of connection, including digital connections, as cultivating safety, itself requires ongoing interrogation. Not to be ignored in that is the matter of who owns the connections, content as well as infrastructure for the messages we send and receive. Feeling the relief our protagonist here experiences in being joined with loved ones during a periodically frightening nighttime stroll, the other abuser lurking in shadows is a surveillance culture accompanying that same connectivity, and even perhaps some of the private companies owning the devices and networks.

The candor here that takes the listener into forthright mobile phone conversations, clashes at times with a few visual choices in the filmmaking. While that cinematography in Guardians is competent, some of the visual flourishes seem unusually light, or even too random at several moments. Stronger connections between what we hear and the person or persons speaking those things, probably would be beneficial. Or alternatively, connections to the themes being discussed.

If on the other hand, the main objective on screen is to be a direct visual chronicle of the late night walk central to the film, the cinematography could have been truer to that plain-spoken goal. In Guardians, there is a wavering in the visual edits and their prevailing aesthetic, on the one hand, between realistic depictions revealing moments in time and space and a type of cinema verité, and then on the other hand, what seems to be the desire to illustrate impressionistic moments of thought. An attempt to do a little of both in a short film falls a bit flat. As presently assembled, that ambiguity works at cross purposes for this otherwise earnest and important student production. Whether intended or not, some of the confusion mirrors displacement common between digital connectivity and the literal physical environments we inhabit.

Many educators, and those supporting their resources, when working in any respect with issues of violence against women, gender or racial bias, student safety and the like, can embrace this short film as a poignant addition to coverage of those topics. Its emotional clarity, honest voice, and recorded digital conversations are highly recommended. The cinematography in Guardians will not distract, but could have been stronger in its alignment with, or counterpoint toward, the main themes being discussed by the filmmaker. Those editing choices as to what we see are less interesting than the documentation of what we hear.

Awards:
Best Documentary, BFI Future Film Festival 2024; Best Documentary Short Film, Cinefam Film Festival, Toronto 2022; Best Non-Fiction Film, Sheridan College Screen Arts Awards, Oakville, 2022

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