and a girl child. so hom stories have we done on child marriages? i can't count. so you can't do enough because really in the middle east they're not telling that story. it's too sensitive, it's too close to home. >> the campaign we luvend in september 2015 to encourage people in the middle east to engage and be part of the discussion over important issues in the region. including extremism, root causes of extremism. unemployment. human rights, womens rights. all issues important. >> watch tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span 2.

he talks about the award-winning documentaries his students have made including several prizewinners from c-span's student competition. ♪ mr. lamb: clifton raphael. why did you leave broadcasting to teach high school? mr. raphael: well, there are two answers to that, so i will do the first part which is why i left broadcasting. i was in local television. i will give you an example of a story from local tv. now, let me preface this by saying, i loved the people i worked with. they were some of the smartest, funniest people i have ever known. mr. lamb: where? mr. raphael: first in lynchburg, virginia and then in memphis, tennessee. one day, and i was a newscast director and directed a number of things including studio wrestling. you could have me on a totally

different show. i was in the control room about 4:00. we had a 5:00 newscast getting ready for the news and we have to do a news break-in. a small plane crashing in memphis. there is nobody famous in it, nobody terribly important, no big deal but the small plane crash. nobody else was killed, maybe two people on the plane. but we had to break and with it and i think we broke into "oprah." at 6:30 we got called up to the general managers office and he says to us, that breaking news that we had today on the small plane crash, we had a viewer call us and say, i was watching your show, but channel 13, we were channel five, channel 13 had it before you. the general manager said, this is never going to happen again. there i am sitting there and i

thought to myself, what viewer in their right mind is tuning into tv shows wondering, i see the breaking news on 13 and i wonder when five is going to get this. it sounds kind of shady but he went on. this sort of gives you an idea, this gives you an idea of the priorities in local news. to tell you the rest of the story, the following week i had a good friend, he had been my boss for a while and was now with channel 13, a competitor. we were having dinner and he says to me, we played a great joke on you guys last week. one of our salespeople, you remember the breaking news of the plane crash? one of our salespeople called up your station and said, hey, how come channel 13 had it before channel five? that is why we got in trouble. you know, again, this is just reflective.

it is sort of a metaphor for the craziness of local tv news and how, i guess, at some point i could see that the emperor had no clothes and i do not mean the general manager but local tv and i did not want to do that anymore. how did i get into teaching or why teaching? a couple things there. i went to duke university, graduated with a degree in english and psychology. for years, i would get the duke alumni magazine. if you can imagine if you know about duke, and i'm sure you do, in the back it is what all of the alumni are doing, bank vice president, all of these is very high positions and important positions, the executives, etc. people making tons of money. back to this one little blurb that says, someone so is teaching math at durham high school and i looked at all of that stuff and i said, the only

person there doing anything worth importance is that guy and he had the smallest entry. that was years before i went into teaching but that stayed in my head. i went into the classroom while i was still with channel five, newscast director doing one-man shows of the "telltale heart" by poe and i did one based on "song of myself" by walt whitman and got a dose of what it was like in the classroom in the park for me that i like is performing. mr. lamb: the reason we invited you to come here and sit for an hour and talk to us is because you teach at jenks high school in jenks, oklahoma but anyone that has watched this network closely knows that we have a thing called student cam and you are the biggest winner in the 12 year history. how much money have your students won?

mr. raphael: i think $41,500 total. mr. lamb: you have spent a couple weeks with us here at the c-span network but from your perspective, what has student cam meant for your students? mr. raphael: it is a very, very intense couple of months of work that they do. essentially the payoff for them, while there is obviously monetary payoff all the way up to our recently second grand prize winner of $5,000. there is a monetary payoff but it really enriches them in many, many ways including research, get some way more research skills. they have to go out and interview people and i have kids tell me all of the time, "i never even talked to a stranger, let alone interviewed one." the communication skills is a huge thing. as i always emphasize, these are visual essays.

it is just like a kid writing an essay for english class except for the are doing it instead of with a pen or a wordprocessing program, instead what they are doing is using a camera. mr. lamb: how many years have you been at jenks? mr. raphael: i have been at jenks for 13 years. mr. lamb: how big of a school is it? mr. raphael: i think it is about 3000. we have a separate freshman academy on the same campus and i think the total is about 3000. i am able to take freshman. mr. lamb: where is jenks in oklahoma? mr. raphael: it is right outside of tulsa. mr. lamb: one of the things you did when you came here was hand me a little thumbnail -- no not a thumbnail -- mr. raphael: a flash drive. mr. lamb: it has documentaries on it. these are not documentaries you entered. i watched all four of them.

they are short. what would you say they are? mr. raphael: they run 10 minutes tops. i think the shortest wanted give you is 7.5 minutes. mr. lamb: who did them? mr. raphael: these were done by students of mine, students that have been with me for at least one year. by the time they made these pieces, it was their second year at least and for some of them, it could have been a third or even a fourth year. mr. lamb: we are only going to show parts of them but people can see them on your website and watch all of them. mr. raphael: that is right. it is jpscinema.com. mr. lamb: this first one is called "losing luke." is he still with you? mr. raphael: he is at the santa fe college of art studying music

film there. mr. lamb: this will be enough for people to get a little bit of what is going on. >> when they tell me, you will either accept this or i will kill myself. i knew he was serious. he would stare at the wall for hours on end just because he was that depressed. it was almost like he gave up on life already at seven years old. >> he played with mr. potato head all of the time and his thing was, he would run around the house and only have the earrings on any always had her lips in his mouth. he loved to go and play around. he just loved life, you know? he loved being out in about and seeing the beautiful sites of the world but as he grew older, he changed. >> it was not until about the age of seven when i started seeing the darkness and that is when luke became very withdrawn and quit talking and just started shutting down.

>> he did not want people seeing his arms over his legs or any part of him. >> he got to school and felt that he felt different and he started being singled out, that he was singled out as male and female. it started confusing him. at that point i thought, i better start preparing dad because i think lucas probably going to be gay. i just started looking at it that way. >> luke's dad did not accept him at all. he was an alcoholic at the time and his wife, jasmine, their relationship failed because he was alcoholic. >> then i turned around and hit him hard and said, you know what? your child is not gay. he is transgender.

what take him 10 years to accept as a gay child, you know how to start all over again with the transgender and not knowing what a transgender was. he had no clue what it was. >> when he comes to find out that his son actually wants to be a girl, he lost it and he wanted a big football loving son for his first son. he did not get that. luke went on and changed his wardrobe and then decided that he wanted to change his name to katie. that is who i am today. mr. lamb: how many people figure that out before they get there? mr. raphael: i'm not sure anybody does. let me tell you a little bit about that twist. this was produced specifically for a competition called "young arts" where if you win the top prize you get an all expense paid week in miami to study whenever art. in this case, filmmaking.

in the filmmaking category, there are 700 kids that apply with a film and seven kids get chosen every year, so a 1% chance. we have entered three times previously and have won each time, the first school to ever have three winners. michael was the fourth one trying to get that. the one thing they love is twists. everybody loves a twist in a movie, so michael and i talked about it before he started shooting. how can you do a twist on this? i said, michael, how about you have katie talking about luke, the previous name, as if he was abusing her? not physically but emotional. having to feel like you are one gender when you are really another. he said, sure, i will do that. he goes out and he does the interview with her and he comes back. i said, how did he go?

he said, i think it went well but sometimes she talked about herself as a third person and start she said "me" and "i." i told him that would not work, that he could get a decent piece but it will not have that twist that would be so compelling. i told him, he could still enter would not when the top prize maybe go back and interview her. so he did. mr. lamb: again, we are going to show another clip of this which is only one minute but it is an important other part of this. let's watch. >> i missed her for two weeks. two weeks she was gone. it was amazing to be able to finally see her as completely female she always imagined herself. >> yes. it is amazing.

>> i think my entire life i have really known that i have been male inside but i did not know how to express it. i first came out as a very masculine lesbian. then i saw a really was male. you grow up knowing you may not be able to have a relationship based on the way you are and then i meet katie and we are like the exact opposite. i am ftm and she is mtf. mr. lamb: what has been the reaction from your students? mr. raphael: my students love this piece when i show it to them. there are two things there. one, this is one of the more mature pieces that the kids can do, so usually wait until later in the year. these are from the more mature

students. we are also in a more conservative part of oklahoma and so i have to be aware of what i show the kids. she says at one point in this piece, she says, parents pulled their kids out of school because of this transgender student. this was in bixby high school. mr. lamb: i said katie holmes. her name is hill. mr. raphael: yes. as far as i know, katie holmes is not transgender. parents pulling kids out of school because there is this transgender student as if they would become transgender just

being around her. some extreme actions, but in any case, i am very aware of where we are in the country. sometimes i show it and sometimes i do not. regardless, if it is one of the better pieces and mature pieces, i wait until later in the year because otherwise, they will see this new to go, i cannot do that sort of thing. i have to give up. they do not start out doing the pieces. to do good work, i have to teach them how to do it. either that, or they try to emulate it and they do not pull it off right away. mr. lamb: did you have any kickback on this from the locals? mr. raphael: i have not. but, full disclosure, it was a private link on our jps cinema website until i found out that

brian lamb, cofounder of c-span wanted to run it on their show so i just opened the link. mr. lamb: so you might. mr. raphael: i might be looking for a job next week. i will give you a call. mr. lamb: let's move onto another winner. it is called "the glass child." tell us the background. mr. raphael: the way this came about was, again, danial was looking for something to enter into "young arts" and we talked about the idea of twists and the emotional connection. he heard about this place called sib shop where siblings of people who have either developmental needs or physical needs go to this as a separate place for them to get support

because as you see, if you watch the piece, you have watched it, but as a viewer watches this piece, you will see how tough it is on the siblings themselves. if the background. danial set up with the family to go out there and found them at sib shop. they did not show up. she was sick that day or something. i cannot remember what happened that he was persistent and contacted them again and asked if he could go to their house, second time, third time. mr. lamb: everyone agreed, obviously, to do this. mr. raphael: yes, absolutely. mr. lamb: let's watch a minute of it. ♪ >> all of them? >> yes. ♪

>> me and my brother. well, it is a tough spot for me and my brother. ♪ >> life is a highway. i want to ride it all night long. ♪ >> you did it. >> i did it. >> i like my brother more than my friends because he is my brother and he is my family and i love him. mr. lamb: how long ago was this done? mr. raphael: oh, boy. 2012, i think so four years ago. i want to say one thing about this girl. in the process of making films like this, danial goes out and

shoots the interview with the girl, and he comes back and i said, how do they go? he told me it did not go very well. she did not give me very good answers, very long answers. he thought it had such potential. he is over there editing and i have a computer i edit projects at and i was very close to him at that time. i look over there and i so this really nice close-ups of the girl and how intense she is. he has a headset on. i wanted to hear some of the soundbites. i started listening and i said, these are fantastic. you know what you have here? it is an eight-year-old going on 80. she is having to be so much more mature because of the situation that her brother is in. danial was somewhat distressed about the piece because the answers were not very long but i

said, break them up. just break them up into these little chunks because in the little chunks they are perfect, wonderful little soundbites. mr. lamb: why would the parents agree to do this? mr. raphael: agreed to the interview? mr. lamb: yes. mr. raphael: i think as you hear in the piece, if you watch the whole piece, the mother at one point says, we have to feed him through a feeding tube. they were at observation deck in new york at the empire state building and somebody said, why do not all kids get fed through their stomach? i think even the boy might have asked this question. i think one reason the parents do it is to give people a general idea of not only the problems, the challenges, i should say, the challenges a boy like that goes through but also the challenges for the sister and for the family as a whole. this family is a family of great faith in you hear that, out in them when they talk.

it is a really, really deep seed of faith not just through what they may have had before this but even from the experiences they go through. i think sharing the experience in giving hope to other people, i think that is the reason they agree. mr. lamb: how old was he? mr. raphael: i want to say three or four but i do not remember. mr. lamb: if people saw this, we are going to show danial in just a second. they can watch the whole documentary. tell them again. mr. raphael: on jpscinema.com. mr. lamb: here is danial. mr. raphael: that is right. we have occasional additions on

a show behind the scenes of oklahoma's future filmmakers and one of the things i do is i interviewed the students and piece together the interview answers. you will not see me in the interview, but i just include their answers. mr. lamb: where is danial today? mr. raphael: he is at the university of oklahoma in his final year of undergrad training to be a physician. mr. lamb: a physician? let's listen. >> i was really informed about what i wanted to shoot. one thing i did differently about my piece is i did not try to do as much direct cinema as i could. it is showing what is happening as it is happening and said that having a voiceover and having somebody talk about it. this way, i could show the innocence of the children and i could show the reality in the

story and of having someone talk about it or having a scripted line, having direct cinema helps the viewer really feel they are actually there and get the same feeling that i had as i was filming them. mr. raphael: can i say one more thing about danial? who i consider a friend now. he is not only a great film maker but a great human being. danial was with me, starting with me as a junior. senior year and what does this piece, wins at "young arts," comes back from miami and i have this thing where he spoke to the class about miami. a good friend of his is in the class, michael witten and says, that you know that danial almost did not take your class a second year? i said, danial, is that true? he said it was. i asked why he did that and he said, nothing that i did was good.

he said, you have criticism and criticism of all of my work. i said, danial, that was just to make your stuff better. he said, i know that now, but i did not know it at the time. it is funny because, and this happens a lot with my kids. it is a creative process, whether you are a creative writer or a creative film maker, a lot of the work you do, you can take the criticism personally and i never say to the kids, you are a terrible film maker. i will say, this is not working. and then we talk about why it is not working and then have to rework it. mr. lamb: how many classes do you teach? mr. raphael: i teach a total of five classes. mr. lamb: a day? mr. raphael: a day of about 55 minutes each. four of those are filmmaking classes and two of them are intro and two more for advanced.

i also teach screenwriting. i just got my masters of fine arts degree in 2013 from hollins university. mr. lamb: how many students are there in each of the classes? mr. raphael: i have nine computers plus the one i use and i put two kids per computer, so maximum of 18. i have had that before, but lately they can range, i would see an average class size, and average that i like actually, anywhere between 14 to 18. mr. lamb: here is video of you in your facility with the computers and all of that. it is not very long, only a minute that he gives folks a chance to see what your environment is like. ♪

>> when i first enter the class, i was really freaked out by the equipment, the thought of operating a camera having me terrified. i have never used one before. i thought, i do not know if on the first day i will come in and everyone else is going to be technology savvy. it was not like that at all. mr. raphael really breaks it down and you get a lot of practice. mr. raphael: do you think this would be a good place to shadow what the students enjoy and get out of the class? >> the class size is really helped me as you are so much more open to criticizing of the documentaries and getting criticized so it is not embarrassing to be criticized in front of five people. mr. raphael: ok, general comments either way. things that worked in things that did not work. michael? >> i like the part where they were panning across the guy's back.

i think they could've done it a little bit better but i thought it was a good idea. mr. lamb: that last film, michael clarke was the one that did the first documentary that we showed. what is your philosophy in the classroom? mr. raphael: my philosophy? mr. lamb: how do you approach these young folks? mr. raphael: well, ok, when they start out with me, we start out i watching examples of previous work. i do not show them the best work because again, they will not be able to make the best work that i show them examples of things i think they can do that is some of the best stuff. we talk about what works in here and what does not work. this is from both a technical standpoint from all of the years in tv but mostly from a storytelling standpoint, what really makes a story work and that is a tough thing to do.

how tough is it if you go to the multiplex and there are 14 movies showing. two might be good. that is how tough it is. but, i am very intense with the kids. i am also, i developed good relationships with them. i think the important thing is to develop a good relationship based on them trusting you to be honest with, that they can trust me to be honest with them and vice versa, too. and they ultimately know when they are with me per second, third, fourth year that everything i am doing is in their best interest to make them better film makers. mr. lamb: any of them make a documentary just with an iphone? mr. raphael: not yet. olivia herd who was the $5,000 second grand prize winner, she did a few things on her digital slr and mckinley layer who won

first prize in second prize with c-span a few years back, she used a go pro for some of her shots. mr. lamb: what is a go pro? mr. raphael: you often see it on mountain climbers, getting a point of view shot attaching it. she attached it to the front of her car to go paddle boarding basically. mr. lamb: she won our grand prize this year in student cam. you have to make a five to seven minute documentary. she is how old? mr. raphael: she is 15 now. next year she will be a junior. she started with me as a freshman and then she will be in her third year. lamb: there's a lot of claymation. who teaches her how to do that?

at raphael: she called me one point to ask the easiest way to do this. i said you can just film it and chop it up to make it look that it frameou can shoot by frame. i think that's what she ended up doing. b: did she choose the topic on her own? raphael: we talked maybe four or five weeks. what she wanted to do originally was she did not feel there should be government funding for the arts. olivia you realize that if there were no government funding for the arts at all, i wouldn't be here at this because it's an arts program? and you wouldn't be in my class entering this competition?

she said she understood that so we talked more about it. finally she broadened the subject to the debt in general and government spending. mr. lamb: let's watch a minute and a half. >> every year a budget is formed. the first is discretionary spending which in 2015 received $1.1 trillion. the second section is mandatory spending which received $2.45 trillion in the year 2015. lastly there is the interest on the federal debt which received $229 billion. in order to pay for these things

, the government has to taken money somehow. this is how the but it works. you have the revenue and expenses. in other words, money taken and doesn't equales the money put out, we have a deficit. the case of the u.s. government, revenues greeted with taxation. when the amount of money is taken through taxes does not equal the amount of money put out the spending, we have what is called a deficit. in order to make up for this, the government sells treasury bonds, essentially a loan from a third party. this seems like a good deal until you realize that we actually have to pay these people back at some point. but it is the cause of a greater problem. the national debt is the sum total of all past deficits in all the money to future generations, my generation, are going to have to pay back. mr. lamb: how did she learned that? mr. rafael: about the debt? doing research on it. i'm not sure exactly what her sources of research were. if you watch this piece in its entirety, she does all kinds of ways of being creative with the presentation of the information.

one thing that i did, starting this past year, was to show them some episodes of a program that aired on pbs called "how we got to now, with stephen johnson who is a historian who also happens to be really good on camera and he does some very creative things in presenting the information. i required my kids this year , or very strongly suggested, that they include these how we got to now moments in the piece . and before they even started working on them, i turn to olivia and she is a very creative kid i turned to her, i think this is the person who's going to go crazy with this. sure enough, she did. she put a tremendous amount of work into this. all my kids but in a tremendous amount of work into this. did a story about olivia when she finished it big she comes into class and the deadline is january 20. i make my deadline the 18th in order for any problems with the upload. my deadline is the 18th.

she comes in that day after uploading it and she is exhausted. but not looking good. not looking well. i walk over to her and i said, olivia, are you ok? she says yes. i said, you didn't sleep much. she says i did not sleep at all. she had not slept at all. i said, i hate to hear that. you know what? 20,deadline is not january it is february 4. i had to get in that little dig. 20, iactually january just wanted to see her reaction. if there was more time, kids was still wait until the last couple of days. mr. lamb: let's watch a little bit more of her. she is the big winner in our contest. we had 2800 plus entries.

mr. rafael: 2887. mr. lamb: and they keep growing every year. and there is $100,000 in prizes. let's watch olivia one more time. >> growth. this very serious debt crisis has got to be solved . >> we have tremendous cutting to do. >> the only way gets fixed is if there is growth. >> wealthiest people and largest corporations in this country have also got to play a role in deficit reduction. >> hundreds of billions of dollars is going to be saved just in terms of running government. >> as you can see, there no shortage of ideas for a potential solution but if ideas are dime a dozen, why do we still have this problem? nancy pelosi claims there are no more cuts to make. in the cupboard is bare. i don't think the cupboard is

quite rare. i see even in amounts of waste in discretionary spending away. take the arts. the national endowment for the millioneives over $100 of federal money per year. budget request for 2016 totaled at $149.949 million. that is $149 million we don't have to spare. i'm an art kid and is my life . i own just about every color of beret imaginable. but i do think this is one area where we can safely cut down on federal spending. mr. lamb: they are allowed to give their views. this next particular one, we asked them to have something from each sides. what you teach them? do they have to be balanced? mr. rafael: i don't think they have to be balanced. i don't think -- correct me if i'm wrong.

i do tell them as is included in the c-span rules, you want to get the other side and i think it's important to get the other side of the issue, because then it demonstrates that the student has explored this in-depth and hasn't just looked at their side. one particular student did a piece on reproductive rights and she was not sure where she fell on it when she started in the research and it was through the research that she ended up having her own personal beliefs about it. mr. lamb: we go back to 2008 on this one. jenks high school 2008-2009. leaving religion at the door. grand prize winner. is that your first grand prize? where are they today? mr. rafael: they have graduated from college and nick is still doing some work in film and

music composition. i had lunch with him recently at a film festival. he is married and about to have his first child. not sure where scott mitchell is what he is going into. mr. lamb: let's watch one minute and 13 seconds of this documentary. >> sadly, there are many politicians and voters who leave the religion at the door. and that has not been good for the country. >> i'm a firm believer that religion and politics don't mix very well. every time it does, we get into trouble. >> for example, as a christian i can express my view, but imposing it on the country is not the thing to do. >> people in politics need to vote when it comes time for election. many times they will pander to

certain religious groups so that they will then come out and vote for them. but what is good and correct for one religious group is not necessarily good or great for -- or correct for another religious group. >> governments has to deal with the nation as a whole. to support or favor one particular faith over another one provides an opportunity for discrimination and potential abuse of power. mr. lamb: how do you get such good quality videos? mr. rafael: i highly emphasize production values. this is a huge thing. for me coming from tv, i had a , great mentor in television, he is now working in the video department at george washington university. i have not seen him in 30 years before i came here to d.c. to be with you folks and we got together for dinner and it was amazing. a great mentor in terms of him

and i, in turn, have learned a little bit more since then. and passed on all of this to the kids. i'm not the kind of teacher who will look at something that is not very good and say that is nice and you did a nice job. i will say what is not working. eventually every single one of my kids makes a better piece than they did in the beginning. eventually the kids who do really well internalized all of the stuff so i no longer have to say to them, their own brain is saying these things to them. one thing about nick -- mr. lamb: tell us who he is. mr. rafael: one of the coproducers of the film and then went to the music composition program. he got his masters working for film. when my wife and i went to dinner with him, he said that there were two people that he wanted to impress.

i don't know if this is his entire life or for the time he was in high school and he said was his dad and the other was me. i had him for four years if he did end up impressing me. sometimes we had a have a talk ethics, but work eventually, nick is one of my favorite former students. mr. lamb: where would you put the feeling of the work you're doing with 13 years as a teacher at jenks high school and compare that to your work in memphis? and the feeling you have at the end of the day. mr. rafael: the one downside of what i do, because i'm the film program at jenks high school, i'm the only person doing it. while i have colleagues in the sense of other teachers, i don't -- talklts i talked to to on a regular basis so that is

the one thing i miss from television. other than that, it is such a cliche, brian, but the emotional rewards of teaching are extraordinary. to see what you are able to do with a kid in the way you can touch a life and you can see in screenwriting, there's that thing called a character art. -- a character arc. the character has to change in the course of the two-hour movie, and i'm seeing these kids character arcs. mr. lamb: this was a first prize winner. mckinley layer. who is this person? mr. rafael: extraordinary student and human being. this girl she came to me as a 10th grader. first piece was not all that great. i swear, she does not say this to this day, she does not

remember this. for a good maybe even day she was resistant to my advice. a lot of kids are. they are kids. then she bought into it. once she bought into it, and started on her work she was making work that by the time she finished, it was stuff i cannot do. she was using the things that i was doing, the same way t.s. eliot's wasteland would not have been had it not been for as her pound. that same kind of thing. pound could not have wind -- written the wasteland, but it would not have been the same. she went on to be my third student to get a full scholarship to ithaca college's school of communications raised largely on the work she did for my class. this is tuition, room and board, $2500 for a new computer, two

semesters overseas, and a thousand dollars a semester in spending money. it is the best scholarship out there if you are not a quarterback for football team. mr. lamb: we will see a minute and a half of it. it is called dammit. tulsa, fixed the river. this is her family. they are involved in it. this is 2015. there is a little of the documentary. >> the first bill i will sign today is the water resources reform and develop the act. -- development act. it will put americans to work modernizing the water infrastructure and restoring some of our most vital ecosystems. >> water resources the dominant gives thement act corps of engineers the authority to look out for flood control and further things having to do with the waterways. i'm an advocate because i look and see the opportunities we have in tulsa that we are not doing. ofthe current determiner

water levels throughout the tulsa community, is the dams. the corps of engineers must carefully consider how must they let out to insure people safety and well-being. they must schedule the release s carefully to account for the wildlife of the area, prevent flooding and ensure optimal hydropower production. the releases are often minimal fails to fill up the tulsa stretch of the river. when the downstream portions of the river don't receive water, dams become visible. in the early 1980's, this dam was built to contain the water. it is becoming increasingly ineffective. in addition to necessary repairs, the tulsa community is proposing a series of low water dams to promote more dependable water levels. >> the development of dams is essential to getting people on the water and make better use of it. mr. lamb: how often do they get turned down? how often do they get turned down? mr. rafael: you know, your government.

[laughter] it is a hit and miss thing. i've seen maybe 50-50. in this case is what happened, we had won some prices the previous year in c-span's competition and we had a nice article about it. i get this e-mail from a student my first year student i started in 2004, whom i had not heard from since then but he does a pretty good work and said, hey coach, my first year they called me coach for some reason. i don't coach anything except until making. he says, hey coach, i want to congratulate you on a great article and see if you remember me and i did. he said, if there's anything i can do for you, let me know. i thought i don't know if there will be. i saw his signature line and he was press secretary.

for jim in half. i think there might be something he could do for us. i e-mail him back and said next c-span season, i may be using your connection to see if we can get the senator and that is how can about. mr. lamb: what is the direction -- what is their reaction when they get turned down? mr. rafael: i think kids generally sort of expect to be turned down by people they don't know so it is not as disappointing for them. the good kids go out and find somebody else. mckinley interviewed 9-10 people for that piece if you watch the whole thing. the family connection, which we don't see in that, is that her parents both own a business called stand up paddling and if there's not enough water they can't do it. mr. lamb: are the winners on the website?

mr. rafael: i'm sorry, they are only on your website. we have them on the website. one more documentary in this one is 2011. all that remains. the background? mr. rafael: she came to me in 10th grade and was with me for three years. she made this towards the end of for second year. extraordinary human being. again, not just a great student, one of my favorite people on the face of the earth now. i consider her a good friend and she considers me to be a friend of hers, too. we entered the regional emmy awards and i decided we do not want a student certificate if we entered, we wanted to enter in the professional division. you can do that if there is a professional attached. they consider me a professional, i am the executive producer on all of my kids pieces. we entered and won.

in regional emmy that year short documentary, historical or cultural. tying with the denver post and -- two out to tend denver tv stations. this is about a historically black town which i did not know. i'm not from oklahoma originally. i think she found the subject. mr. lamb: here is one minute and a half. >> during my childhood days, there were people everywhere. all in the countries, all over this neighborhood. all the broken houses and homes no longer in use. filled with live bodies. >> black town came out of necessity. african-americans were not treated fairly in mixed communities. men, women, with their families headed west to carve out a space for themselves.

oklahoma has more all black towns than any state. >> a gentleman from red river county, he served as a manager to establish the town. he sent out a massive advertisement asking for people to come and make this an all-black town. people came by the droves. >> i liken it to the black towns as being the ellis island of the west. it is where african americans went to to carve out a piece of life for themselves. >> people who looked just like me were there to encourage me and motivate me and inspired me. to support me. we do not feel like we have to play basketball to get out of the village. we had what was real. mr. lamb: where did they learn framing?

mr. rafael: from me. we do it constantly. every time the kids do a round of pieces, i show them on the 15 inch plasma screen, i show them on that and we talked about -- how is the headroom, how is the technical stuff? what is working? we don't just talk about what doesn't work and what does work. speaking of which, an idea of what i do, my favorite part of the job -- i have four kids entering that year and she did not become one of the miami people, and yet later one the -- won the emmy but you got second prize in the competition. they will be adding it -- editing it to the evenings. and they will put extra work in. i'm there for them when they are doing the extra work. it is the evening and therefore kids, and i four

bouncing from computer to am computer giving advice. kristol calls me and i look at her piece. it is not working. what do you think of this? it is not working. what do you think? it is not working. what you think is wrong and she says she has no idea. i'm not sure either. we start talking about it to , and i had longer hair, i was running my hands through my hair, trying to figure it was going on. and finally, it was a no-brainer, i made the connection. i said, why does this matter to anybody else? why does it matter to somebody who is not there or oklahoma? she said how are we going to get that? i said i don't know. i talked to my wife and my wife said i know women in the library system, she is a library and now she's a supervisor, in any case, she says she knows a woman in the library system who used to lead tours of historically black

towns. do you want me to talk to her? i said sure. that is where that part came from that added so much to the piece and made it work. mr. lamb: where did you meet your wife? mr. rafael: i met her on an online dating site called people to people. mr. lamb: i was in memphis and the time and she was in pittsburg, kansas. mr. rafael: as much as four hours out. we would meet like halfway and eventually -- i propose to her at roanoak oxford, mississippi. i proposed to her, and she moved to memphis and we came back to the tulsa area. mr. lamb: another piece. >> biggest challenge was how to figure what direction my story

was going, and creating the most honest peace is possible and interpreting the people that i had spoke to in the town's atmosphere in the most accurate way. time, not lying for the town. when someone is put in front of a camera, it is almost like their optimism turns on and they try to the situation they are in , with the issues surrounding their lives in the most optimistic light, regardless of what the truth is. mr. rafael: at the end of the school year i have a debriefing with my students. one of the questions i ask is what could i do differently? what would you have me do differently? her last year with me, crystal says, don't be so mean first year. i said, that is not happening. when they say mean, they mean don't be so intense. don't ask us to work so much.

this girl, i could see her work ethic when she was partnered with somebody. and i could see what she was doing. even though first year she may have said three sentences worth of stuff and i pulled her into my office second semester and i said, crystal, i want you to know i'm watching you and i think you're the next star of our filmmaking program here. and she told me later that meant the world to her. but she had not said anything to me. second-year she could not shut up. i love that kid. mr. lamb: how is it that you can get high school kids to make documentaries that look like the big-time stuff? be careful not to give to much advice, you are still competing out there. mr. rafael: i want to thank you

for acknowledging that it competes with the big-time stuff. obviously to win the professional emmy, some judges at some point felt that and the c-span judges also. i think it is like a perfect storm of things. kind of congealing, to where my work in television, but that was not my passion. my passion has always been stories, reading and literature. that is the single most important element to filmmaking. i've always enjoyed films. when they hired me they wanted me to do one of these shows that you would see on cable access where there's a couple of students and we are the jenks trojans just like usc.

but a couple of kids sitting at a table saying welcome to trojan tv and i knew i did not what you do that. that is not something i would want to see. i got into this documentary filmmaking and fell into it. and then everything, the first three years i had no idea what i was doing. mr. lamb: last question -- again, the website, people can see it. mr. rafael: jpfcinema.com. we are not monetized at this point, so you will not have to look at any commercials. mr. lamb: right outside of oklahoma city. excuse me, right outside of tulsa. if you look at your name, you would think it is -- what is the origin of your name? mr. rafael: it is from the italian part of switzerland and has been anglicized.

they used to be a football player with the same pronunciation. when i make dinner reservations, it is rafael. mr. lamb: thank you so much for joining us and letting us see some of your students work. mr. rafael: thank you, brian. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> for free transcripts or to comment on the program, go to q&a.org. ony are also available c-span podcasts.

>> if you enjoyed this week's "q&a" interview with clifton rafael, here are other programs you might like. documentary filmmaker rory ,ennedy talks about her work "last days in vietnam." as well as her life as the youngest kennedy daughter. heidi ewing discusses her documentary on the deterioration of detroit michigan. and shola lynch talks about her film free angela and all political prisoners. you can watch these anytime or search our entire video library at c-span.org. next, your calls and comments on "washington journal." nominee hillary clinton speaks in scranton, pennsylvania.

>> tonight, "the communicators," little middle eastern broadcasting networks, along with other u.s. sponsored broadcasts of news. we speak with the president of the middle east broadcasting and aks, the producer, digital managing editor of "raise your voice," about how they shared immigrant values with an audience that would not otherwise be exposed to a broader spectrum of opinions. >> we've been on the air for 12 years now. over that time, i think the audience has come to learn that it is not propaganda. balanced, buto be , we coverovide topics topics and provide information that is not readily available. >> their aren't enough people telling the stories of how difficult it is to be a woman, and a girl child. how many stories have we done on child marriages, get even count.

becauset do enough, they are not telling that story. it's too sensitive, too close to home. ina campaign we launched september 2015, to encourage people in the middle east to engage and be part of the discussion of these issues in the region, including extremism, root causes of extremism, unemployment, human rights, women's rights, all these issues that are important to our streets. caters,""the committee -- the communicators," on c-span2. >> donald mcneil talks about his ," and read real sleep d- and read wilson -- rei

wilson. james green discusses the cost of the jupiter space probe. "washington journal," is next. ♪ two foreign-policy speech is expected by donald trump and hillary clinton today. joined byon will be vice president biden and will speak at 12:45 this afternoon. see it on c-span and listen for it on c-span radio. donald trump give a speech at 2:00 this afternoon. you can see that on c-span two. you can find out more information about both of these .vents by visiting c-span.org a recent bloomberg news poll shows hillary clinton has the advantage within college-educated white voters and donald trump succeeds most among those without a college de