EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES
Film Guides
From Viewing to Historical Inquiry.
Our film guides help educators, students and audiences engage more deeply with the histories presented in Gens Family Project documentaries.
Each guide provides historical context, discussion questions and connections to testimony and primary sources, encouraging viewers to examine not only what the film shows, but how that history can be understood through surviving evidence.
FEATURED FILM GUIDES
Two Films. Two Ways Into the History.
THE GIRL FROM FREEDOM AVENUE
A Life Across Occupation, War and Independence
A guide built around Ada Gens-Ustjanauskas’s testimony, helping viewers explore interwar Lithuania, Soviet and Nazi occupation, the Holocaust, displacement and the eventual restoration of Lithuanian independence.
THE COMMANDANT’S DAUGHTER
Leadership, Resistance and Impossible Choices
A guide to the Vilna Ghetto through Ada’s testimony and the history surrounding Jacob Gens, examining leadership under coercion, resistance, cultural survival and the difficult questions raised by life inside the ghetto.
INSIDE EACH GUIDE
Tools for Deeper Viewing.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Understanding the World Around the Film
Brief background helps viewers place the people, places and events on screen within the larger history surrounding them.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
From Watching to Conversation
Questions encourage viewers to examine choices, perspectives, uncertainty and the evidence used to tell the story.
PRIMARY SOURCES
Connecting Film to Evidence
Photographs, testimony, documents and maps allow viewers to compare what appears on screen with the surviving historical record.
FURTHER EXPLORATION
Continuing Beyond the Film
Suggested topics, related stories and additional resources help students and educators continue the inquiry after the screening ends.
USING THE FILM GUIDES
Before, During and After the Film.
BEFORE VIEWING
Build the Historical Context
Introduce the people, places and events students will encounter so they can recognize the larger history surrounding the film rather than meeting it without context.
DURING VIEWING
Watch the Evidence Closely
Encourage students to notice when the film is using testimony, photographs, archival footage, documents or narration—and to consider how each source contributes differently to the story.
AFTER VIEWING
Question, Compare and Discuss
Use the guide’s discussion questions and primary sources to revisit important moments, compare perspectives and explore questions the film intentionally leaves open.
HUMAN STORIES
History Becomes More Understandable Through Individual Lives.
Large historical events can become difficult to grasp when they are reduced to dates, policies and statistics. The films approach those events through the people who lived them, allowing viewers to encounter history at a human scale.
A single life can reveal how occupation changed a family, how political decisions entered everyday life, how survival depended on relationships and choices, and how the consequences of war continued long after the fighting ended.
The film guides build on that approach by asking students to connect individual experience with the larger historical record. Personal testimony is placed beside documents, photographs and broader context so that neither the individual nor the history is studied in isolation.
The goal is not to replace historical analysis with personal stories, but to show how the two deepen one another.
BRING THE FILMS INTO YOUR CLASSROOM
Use the Films as a Starting Point for Deeper Study.
The Gens Family Project’s film guides are designed to help educators turn documentary viewing into sustained historical inquiry. They can be used with classroom screenings, university courses, museum programs and community discussions.
Guides for The Girl from Freedom Avenue and The Commandant’s Daughter will connect the films to testimony, archival evidence, historical context and discussion questions that can be adapted to different learning environments.
Educators and institutions interested in using the films or accompanying materials are welcome to contact the Gens Family Project.