Exploiting films

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Monna, Danièle, Frances and I were there! We were really impressed with Mark Reid's presentation .. he works for the British Film institute and gave a very gentle yet inspiring session on possible techniques for using films in the classroom .... not necessarily the first time I had heard some of the ideas, but somehow by putting them into practice there in the session, I'm feeling inspired to try them out soon! We have asked him to consider doing a Saturday morning session for us some time for one of the Jan/June London ALL events. The difference now as he said is that films are so much more accessible (e.g. by ripping DVDs / capturing streaming .. and BTW he reassured us that as long as DVDs / films had been bought and are being used in the classroom, and not shared, it's OK to rip and use in class ..) and you can do things like mute / separate visuals from audio (rather than as he said having to resort to hanging your jacket over the TV!!). I especially liked his idea about using short films / courts métrages ... having something which is only meant to be,say, 8 mins long being on the whole much more satisfying as part of a lesson than having to break up a long film.(and often in terms of content, more intense cf poetry) Of-course, there needs to be a fair amount of preparation for the class, and this is where we wondered whether we could contribute as an active, collaborative group. 

I wonder whether those who are interested in this on the forum, using this thread could: 

1) Recommend short films / specific sections of longer films (e.g. from sources like the institut . BFI / iTunes / websites etc) 

2) Share ideas for how the films could be exploited (e.g. themes / transcripts of sections / activities for before / during / after viewing (including exploiting language / culture / springboard for creative work) 

Just to say that, oddly enough, I did exactly what you'd been thinking of doing with the more satisfactory/satisfying format of a short film as part of a lesson. Inspired by the film suggestions of this MAGNIFICENT forum, I went trawling on amazon.fr to earth up stuff and naturally went for the animation side of things for the younger-ish classes (S1 and S2 here in blustery Scotland). However, without subtitles as standard, the impact - apart from the beauty of the tale, the voices, sounds and music which invariably also provide a DIFFERENT cultural context, it meant having to prepare a synopsis and still break things up. Not having subtitles made it difficult for those with short attention spans and poor language abilities... So the result was still a bit so-so. But that's alright as exposure to anything that rolls back the tide of anglophilia is fine by me... What really worked for me was when I spotted this fabulous children's book by Gregoire Solotareff, entitled LOULOU in a film entitled Dans Paris (itself rather excellent) which we watched at home of an evening. We liked it so much as a device in the film that I ordered it (the book) and was directed to the DVD that goes with it (Loulou et autres loups). Came with subtitles - hooray... As we 'd been doing animals and festivities (Encore Tricolore units 4 and 5 for S1) and food/eating/hobbies (units 8 and 9 for S2) these could be used (if you really wanted to be teacherly about the whole experience), this DVD with 5 animated shorts with wolves as a starting point (the longest of which is the LOULOU) is absolutely BRILLIANT! At ay rate the animation styles are SO different to the usual fare that in itself they're interesting - in a way that art for art's sake and culture for culture's sake is education in itself. If you don't offer it to them there's a great likelihood that they'll never get it. And we'll all be the poorer for it in the end. I really recommend both the books (for circulating amongst your pupils) and the DVD - you'll have fun! Have a lovely Easter weekend! As they've been writing on their Joyeuses Paques cards: Je te/vous souhaite beaucoup de chocolat! (unless you're diabetic in which case that would be both unfortunate and cruel...) Grosses bises feriees! (apologies, no accents available) Eric

That's really helpful Eric. As a result of your email I have thought more about using film, investigated buying Loulou, and found my DVD of Dans Paris which is still 'sous blister / cello' .. will watch tonight! This is a wonderful forum! I'm going to set up a page on the ALL London website for collecting people's ideas in a systematic way if that's OK with people .. What I particularly liked about Mark's presentation was that he was 'exploring' ideas, rather than 'telling' us what we should be doing, and I'm sure that our experiences could help to put together some sort of checklist about what REALLY works, or one which warns people about what to expect. So perhaps drawing attention to the distinction between how you may use films according to 'types' e.g. (a) with subtitles - dialogue strong (b) without subtitles - dialogue not important .... etc etc ... would be useful. So .. for the example Mark showed us .... Type of film: No subtitles: dialogue NOT essential for understanding the film (i.e. visual e.g. comedy / horror) Objectives: (1) use language to predict character, setting, story, mood; (i.e. exploiting the language you can use 'around' the film) (2) observe cultural similarities / differences in what you see in the film (3) increase (film) literacy (4) engage the students SEQUENCE * listen to the audio of the first short scenes * Pairs / groups discuss one of four elements (drawing on their existing experience / literacy]: discuss/ predict each of character / setting / story / mood - [nb the four categories presented as a grid to avoid hierarchy] then plenary feedback * listen to the second short scene and do same * look at four opening still shots from the first four scenes - pupil predict which one in the first one * play the scene * look at four opening still shots from the first four scenes - pupil predict which one in the second one (and say why) * play the scene etc In fact, the film he used could be understood 'visually' without understanding any French .. but since it was a French fim, there were French 'background' noises and French text displayed. I hesitate from telling you what the film is in case Mark wants to use it in his talk to us in January, (it was a superb example!) ..but I think it will probably 'emerge'... and if we carry on this thread an come up with lots of examples, he can use them! Perhaps not giving too much away to say that the strength of the film was that it was all visual and cleverly had a black humour 'twist' at the end which countered your expectations of what type of film it was going to be! 2) Re: Loulou et les loups .. I did a search and will do what you have recommended Eric! Found this site too .. reminded me of the vulture centre I visited in the Dordogne last summer which aimed to reverse the bad press vultures get!!! (and succeeded in doing en ce qui me concerne .. now I have a vautour en peluche hanging in our back room!) http://www.loup.org/spip/Loulou-et-autres-loups,170.html The DVD is available from Amazon fr ... but it doesn't say it has subtitles .. did you get it from the UK site (I tried, but couldn't find a reference to the DVD on the UK site ...) Amazon Fr:  Helen

I bought the Pixar Shorts in France and they are in French and in English. I have done a lesson on "Bounding" (the one with the lamb who loves dancing) as it uses the imperfect a lot. The year 9s loved it. Let me know if you want it. You can get hold of the DVD on the FNAC website.

Also, I spent loads of time on youtube (becoming a favourite pastime at the weekend), found my favourite kid programme from when I was little - Saturnin. The Year 9s had a lesson around the topic of television, so I will show it to them anyway, saying it was my favourite program. I could get them to write some of the dialogues by just watching the characters (all little animals - how can you resist this little duckling with his fireman's helmet climbing the ladder of a toy fire engine??). I might also show it to Year 5 and 7 as we have done animals, and they could guess the story and enjoy watching all the animals without getting tooo much into the language.