Sawyer Bowman, a ninth-grader at Woodlawn School, won a $1,000 prize and earned a visit from the C-SPAN bus (at right) for his recent documentary on Flint, Mich.
Sawyer, the son of Dwayne and Karen Bowman, spends time most summers in Flint, visiting his mother’s relatives. Watching the town slowly decline due to the shuttering of factories in the auto industry led to a class project on politics and history.
“I’d really seen Flint go down and I got curious,” Sawyer told DavidsonNews.net.
 Rodee Schneider of C-SPAN interviewed student contest winner Sawyer Bowman after presenting him with an oversized $1,000 check Thursday at Woodlawn School. |
Last winter, Sawyer spent a week filming in Flint, resulting in the documentary, “Tough Luck for Flint: The consequence of shipping American jobs overseas.” He entered the film in the C-SPAN Classroom’s StudentCam video documentary contest, a national competition in which students produce a documentary for the cable news network exploring a current political topic using C-SPAN footage and covering multiple viewpoints.
Sawyer used C-SPAN clips of several presidential candidates talking about the impact of the global economy on places like Flint. He found that Republicans like John McCain stress job retraining and compensation, while Democrats like Barack Obama want to bring jobs back home.
“Neither side has ideas that will work,” Sawyer concluded, calling the Republicans unrealistic and the Democrats naive.
His documentary includes footage of boarded up buildings and houses and interviews with relatives who spent decades working for General Motors, only to see their jobs moved to China and Mexico.
“Merchandise may be cheaper but at the cost of condemning a successful city to ruin,” Sawyer concludes at the end of the 10-minute documentary. “In other words, we’re selling out America.”
Sawyer was one of eight to win a second-place award in the StudentCam competition. Videos were judged by a panel of C-SPAN representatives and evaluated based on the contest theme, quality of expression and the balance of views. The top 27 videos, including his, aired in April. “Tough Luck for Flint” will be replayed throughout May on cable television, on the MI-Connection Community Channel 4.
The visit by the C-SPAN bus gave Woodlawn students a chance to watch the video (see photo below). Sawyer said work on the documentary gave him an appreciation for the medium of film.
“A documentary is different from writing an essay because you can really connect with the viewer and help them feel what it was like,” he explained.
Sawyer has shown his film to his family in Flint.
“They loved it,” he said.
