Stories around the World in Film

CONTENTS OF CURRICULUM UNIT 06.01.12

  1. Unit Guide
  1. Overview
  2. Objectives
  3. Strategies and Activities
  4. Introductory Film (Sweden)
  5. Notes
  6. Bibliography
  7. Filmography

Back to the Future: How Earlier Art Forms Have Influenced Contemporary Cinema in Ireland, Iran, and Africa

Laura Viviana Sturgeon

Published September 2006

Tools for this Unit:

Strategies and Activities

Film Genres

Lesson Plan

To ease the transition from the comfortable and familiar American films to the potentially discomfiting and certainly unfamiliar foreign-language films, I will start my unit with two western European movies that look similar to the kinds of films to which my students are accustomed but which will present the challenges of adjusting their ears to English spoken in unfamiliar accents, in one case, and to reading sub-titles, in the other. Before watching anything, though, I will get my students thinking about the films they watch and why they watch them. This will start as an in-class journal-writing exercise wherein I will ask the students to list the titles of movies they have seen recently and then think their way back to other movies they have seen over the course of their lives. Usually a time-limit of 2 minutes is sufficient to give the students some sense of urgency so that they start writing, but is also enough time to get down the names of the movies that have made the biggest, most lasting impression.

In the interest of incorporating cooperative learning strategies (this is the latest trend among education researchers and our district is pushing teachers hard to employ it as much as possible), in the next phase of this activity, I will have students stand and circulate until they find another person who has at least one movie in common with them on his or her own list. Once all the students are paired, they will be asked to take turns reading titles from their lists back and forth, without repeating a title once it has been mentioned aloud by themselves or their partners. However, if they hear a title that they too have on their own lists, they can say "yes" or "me too" before going on to give a new title. This activity will last another 2-3 minutes after which they will be asked to return to their desks. At that point, I will tell the students they can add, if they wish, any additional movies to their lists that they heard from their partners or overheard from others in the room.

At this point, I will have a volunteer come to the blackboard and with chalk in hand, record the movie titles that the class will be encouraged to start calling out from their lists. This can be done in a totally free-form fashion with students calling out titles as the spirit moves them, or the volunteer can be asked to call on students who raise their hands and record those responses before calling on the next. Either way, the board should fairly rapidly become covered with a plethora of titles, hopefully of movies representing a variety of genres. I will then ask students to look over the titles on the board and to think about ways to categorize the movies. Do any of the movies fit together because of some common element? Which ones? How? Can we agree upon any over-arching categories that these movies could fit into? It might be fun to put the chosen categories on large chart paper, tape these around the room, and have students walk around and write titles from the board on the chart people bearing the appropriate category. If some titles appear on more than one piece of chart paper, it will serve to stimulate further discussion—are our categories broad enough? If we decide they are, can a single movie fit under more than one category? These are questions I will ask the students to keep in mind as they watch all the films in the unit.

Other issues related to the question of genre are those of audience expectations and filmmaker's purpose. To start I would ask, "Why do people go the movies?" and I would try to elicit several reasons in response. Then, we shall think about why different kinds of movies are made. What is the filmmaker's purpose in writing a comedy, a documentary, an action film, a passion film? How do our expectations of the type of film we are going to see affect our enjoyment of it? Is it fair to judge films from different genres on the same set of criteria? And oh, by the way, how do we decide if a film is worthwhile or not and how is this tied to purpose and expectations? These additional questions will give the students even more to think about as they watch. Creating a graphic organizer of some sort where they can jot down their ideas under appropriate headings might help students not to forget the questions as they get caught up in the story and images of the film.

Film Terminology

The students will need one more lesson before viewing the first film, and that will be a brief lesson introducing them to the vocabulary of film-making techniques. This is important to give us a common language to use while viewing and analyzing all the films in the unit. Corrigan and White's The Film Experience will be my teacher's guide for this part of the unit and I highly recommend it for other teachers who have not taught or studied film before. Part I of The Film Experience is broken down into four sections covering mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing and sound. The glossary is an invaluable reference tool for quick definitions of the different kinds of shots, camera angles, takes, frames, sounds, and lighting techniques. While viewing the first film of the unit, the teacher should point out examples of the various techniques in action and eventually have the students start to identify them for themselves.

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