In studying the film Belfast, we are considering a film that’s regarded as a contemporary ‘classic’. Upon its original cinema release the film enjoyed a largely enthusiastic response and it also served to remind us of how a film / popular culture can engage audiences in, at least, the fundamentals of complicated political and social conflict and its tensions. The film takes a politically nuanced moment in place and time and focuses it through a personal story.
Belfast is a film that prompts a range of discourse about the way that it represents a specific place and time. Discourse is a term that refers to the conversations and debates around a film, or indeed any particular subject. The perspectives of such conversations can engage us in a range of valuable ideas.
Belfast offers up a rich experience for us as viewers of film and as students with an interest in thinking our way around a film and how it affects our thoughts and our feelings and how we bring certain kinds of interest to a film because of what ‘meanings’ it creates in our responses. As a film viewer, we can bring recognise various kinds of significance, relevance and resonance they may be present in a film and these qualities and points of interest can be very separate (and, indeed, different) to whatever it might be that its ‘author’ intends.
EDUQAS: Films are shaped by the contexts in which they are produced. They can therefore be understood in more depth by placing them within two important contextual frames. The first involves considering the broader contexts of a film at the time when it was produced – its social,…
