Floating Lives (Film Festival)

Stage of Schooling: Middle Secondary

Learning Focus: Reading and Viewing (Asia Scope and Sequence for English, p 26)

Students read and view imaginative texts from and about Asia, such as adolescent, contemporary and classical texts that explore personal, social, cultural and political issues of significance to the students' own lives. They:

• compare settings, characters and plots in different narrative traditional and contemporary genres from Asia
• identify references to texts and traditions within Asian texts that contribute to meaning
• identify techniques used to construct plot and create emotional responses when reading and viewing texts.

Students understand that texts are created for multiple purposes, and that interpretations are influenced by the knowledge, values and practices of the audience. They:

• analyse how an issue is represented in an Asian text and discuss implications and possible impacts
• discuss how experiences created in texts can help readers and viewers understand themselves and others, their own world and the wider world in particular ways.

Texts/Resources

Voices and Visions: Texts for the Senior English Classroom CD-ROM series: Indonesia, China, Japan, India
Film Asia (Curriculum Corporation, 2002)

Recent films from or about countries in Asia, available from video/DVD outlets or Cinemedia, for example:

• Beijing Bicycle (China, Wang Xiaoshuai, 2001)
  The trials of a Beijing bicycle delivery boy
• Spirited Away (Japan, Hayao Miyazaki, 2001)
  Magical manga about a young girl's search for her parents and one of Japan's biggest grossing films; stills from Princess Mononoke, an earlier film by this director, are available on the Voices and Visions from Japan CD-ROM.
• Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring (Korea, Kim Ki-Duk, 2004)
  An elderly Buddhist monk teaches a young boy about life.

Overview

Film is an engaging introduction to other cultures, and the Access Asia resources allow students to view and read about a whole range of films to which they would otherwise not have access. Students may be entertained, moved, intrigued and persuaded while developing an appreciation for the significant cultural achievements of film artists from various countries in Asia. This unit requires students to use the Access Asia resources to review and research films for inclusion in a mini film festival. It is important that you model your own interest in film, and include some recent or current film releases among the materials students view. A selection is included in the Texts/Resources list. By including these films, you also show students that other cultures are constantly evolving, that culture is fluid and impossible to capture permanently or define precisely on a CD-ROM or in a textbook.

Duration

The practicalities of running a mini film festival will depend on arrangements in individual schools. Some students will be able to run a series of lunchtime film sessions, others could use an assembly to provide an introduction to a range of films for the whole school or a year level. How much of each film is shown will affect the duration of the unit: Some classes may show short clips from a number of films, while others may show much longer clips, depending on the time available. At a basic level, this unit could be undertaken without any involvement beyond the class, with students showing the films to each other and adapting the promotional activity. The core activities of using the Voices and Visions CD-ROMs to view and research films, conducting further research, designing and delivering a presentation and writing a reflection would remain the same.