Review: Paper Clips (** 1/2)

PAPER CLIPS
A film review by Steve Rhodes

Copyright 2005 Steve Rhodes



RATING (0 TO ****): ** 1/2



Some things you try to do in life get way out of hand, but sometimes this
can be a good a thing, even a great thing. So it was for an eighth grade
class in the small and impoverished town of Whitwell in Tennessee. A
homogenous school with no Jews, no Catholics and only five blacks, they
wanted a project for studying the effect of discrimination, so they picked
the Holocaust.



After being told that six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis, one
student asked what turned out to be the key question, "What is six million?
I've never seen six million."



In order to make that number real, the school decided through letters and a
website to attempt to collect six million paper clips, one for each human
being who perished. Paper clips, it turns out are quite apropos since the
Norwegians invented the paper clip, and, even while under Nazi occupation,
the Norwegians defiantly worn paper clips in order to show solidarity with
Jews who were in concentration camps.



After the first year of the kids' project, the rate at which the paper clips
were coming in meant that it would ten years to finish it, but, as luck
would have it, a pair of elderly German journalists picked up the story.
When the Washington Post followed suit, the letters started pouring in,
filled with paper clips. Within six weeks, the kids had received
twenty-four million paper clips and twenty-five thousand letters written to
them about the project, many from Holocaust victims' relatives.



The teachers said that they wanted to fight the stereotypes too of the "dumb
little redneck kids from the South" and show the world what these kids could
accomplish. Now, each year the new eighth grade class picks up and
continues the project from where the last one left off. PAPER CLIPS isn't
very well shot, but the kids' hearts and compassion come through quite
clearly nonetheless.



PAPER CLIPS runs 1:22. It is rated G and would be acceptable for all ages.



The film is playing in nationwide release now in the United States. In the
Silicon Valley, it is showing at the Camera Cinemas.



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