Introduction
Public school students, whether black or of other races, carry a highly unbalanced impression of black people in the USA and in the world, because of what they have seen and what they have been unable to see in cinema. What they have seen are skewed images from the American film industry. What they have been unable to see are all the fabulous West African films that have been made since the 1960s. My unit will introduce film studies so that students of all races in the class can better appreciate films from Africa and be careful and suspicious viewers of films from America. This unit has been designed to increase basic knowledge and awareness of students about the American film industry and its influences on their mind and psyche through the use of cinematographic technique. Students will learn how films are marketed to reach certain targeted groups and the implications of the representations of character. This unit will pose critical questions beyond the standardized curricular literature while viewing films that sometimes correspond to the literary works. This strategy will open the framework for critical analysis strategies. In viewing and digesting literary works through text and visual techniques for depth of understanding, students will learn what producers, directors, screenplay writers and cinematographers sanction and use to form or alter our thinking, our emotions and our actions. Through this inquisitive study, the stage will be set for students to delve into the analysis by means of inquiring about uses of language, sorted order of perception, and disguised manipulative tools of propaganda all of which are projected in film.
The curriculum unit will produce a mind-opening journey so that teachers will be able to use the viewing of film in a positive way. As a result of the study, this curriculum unit will give students the foundation needed to be more attentive to attitudes and beliefs in other societies. It will give them alternate avenues of viewing that will show how Black people are viewed and/or portrayed in film. The unit will expose students to African cultures and ethnic groups and will give them a more technically savvy visual understanding of propaganda driven films, films that have altered societal perceptions. Students will see the relation between themselves and film, specifically how they are almost stagnant in their views despite an aggressively changing global world. They will learn to adopt the filmmakers' worldview through the telescopic eye of the movie camera and the editorial cut. This unit will perhaps prepare students to launch a career in the field of cinematography, but will also simply give them the ability to watch film with more insight and intelligence. While using literary terms closely associated with the industry, they will be able to intelligibly question all aspects of film. Students will begin to understand the makings of a film, specifically at its root, the story. They will be instructed to always note and keep in mind the written story (screenplay) and the use of film editing and adaptations.
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