Resolved (film)

Resolved is a 2007 documentary film concerning the world of high school policy debate. The film was written and directed by Greg Whiteley of New York Doll fame. The film captured the Audience Award title at its debut on June 23, 2007 at the Los Angeles Film Festival. The film was produced by One Potato Productions. The film made its television debut on HBO in the summer of 2008 and subsequently receivedEmmy Nominations one nomination for Best Documentary the other for Editing for the 2009 Emmy Awards held in September, 2009. In July 2009 it was released on DVD by Image Entertainment.

Resolved begins by focusing on the careers of Matt Andrews, Sam Iola, one a standout rising sophomore, one a rising senior famous within the policy debate community, respectively. The team of Iola and Andrews hails from Highland Park High School, a recognized national debate power from Texas and located in one of the states wealthiest communities, where students are expected to attend college after graduation. From there, Whiteley shifts his focus to Louis Blackwell and Richard Funches of Jordan High School in Long Beach, California. By contrast to Highland Park, Jordan Highs debate team is underfunded, and the school is a public high school with only 1218 of its students going on to a fouryear college. In an underdog style victory, the team of Funches and Blackwell capture the California state championship.Once the team from Long Beach has won the state championship while playing by the conventional rules of modern policy debate, the team is introduced by their coach Dave Wiltz to Paulo Freires Pedagogy of the Oppressed. From there, the team from Jordan High changes their debate strategy, arguing against the current strategy used in high school debate, and using Freires work to show the oppressive nature of the spread and the structure of debate as a whole. Along these lines, Jordan Highs team chooses to read slowly and focus on persuasion rather than pure quick argumentation. The teams strategies of using hiphop music and arguing that policy debate is structured to disadvantage minorities were inspired by The Louisville Project. ........

Source: Wikipedia