Rob Miller | Friday October 01, 2021
Categories: OCR A Level, Genres & Case Studies, A Level, Hot Entries, Films & Case Studies, Non-Hollywood Films, Romance, Comedy, Drama, British Film, Film Analysis, Analysis
Institutional Factors | Distribution Submarine was written and directed by Richard Ayoade and released at UK cinemas in March 2011 after significant critical success at festivals including the London Film Festival (LFF) but particularly the Toronto Film Festival. Toronto success secured the film a distribution contract with the Weinstein Company (formerly Disney owned Miramax) – Bob and Harvey Weinstein’s company in essence can be described as a ‘Mini Major’ film…
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jclarke | Tuesday September 10, 2019
Categories: EDUQAS A Level, Genres & Case Studies, A Level, Films & Case Studies, Romance, Drama, Film Analysis, Analysis, Independent Film
YouTube Link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQidFlpYlDw Copyright © 2019 Edusites. All rights reserved. Permission granted to reproduce for educational use within the subscribing school only. Copying or lending of any part of this document in any form or by any means to external bodies and / or individuals is prohibited. Context In his essay The Art Cinema As A Mode of Film Practice film scholar David Bordwell explains that “we can usefully consider the ‘art cinema’ as…
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jclarke | Sunday September 08, 2019
Categories: EDUQAS A Level, Silent Era, Genres & Case Studies, A Level, Films & Case Studies, Romance, Comedy, Silent, Drama, Film Analysis, Analysis
YouTube link to trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCgbFay53BA Copyright © 2019 Edusites. All rights reserved. Permission granted to reproduce for educational use within the subscribing school only. Copying or lending of any part of this document in any form or by any means to external bodies and / or individuals is prohibited. Context There’s an idea (elegantly expressed by the novelist Italo Calvino) that’s worth engaging with and returning to quite often in relation to…
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jclarke | Friday September 07, 2018
Categories: EDUQAS A Level, Genres & Case Studies, A Level, Films & Case Studies, Romance, Drama, Film Analysis, Analysis
YouTube Link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EH3zcuRQXNo Copyright © 2017 Edusites. All rights reserved. Permission granted to reproduce for educational use within the subscribing school only. Copying or lending of any part of this document in any form or by any means to external bodies and / or individuals is prohibited. Contexts Cinema is always evolving and it’s an exciting process to witness, to explore and to understand and film such as Carol is an example of a film that has…
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jclarke | Wednesday April 18, 2018
Categories: EDUQAS A Level, Billy Wilder, Genres & Case Studies, A Level, Films & Case Studies, Hollywood Films, Romance, Comedy, Film Analysis, Analysis
YouTube Link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rI_lUHOCcbc Copyright © 2017 Edusites. All rights reserved. Permission granted to reproduce for educational use within the subscribing school only. Copying or lending of any part of this document in any form or by any means to external bodies and / or individuals is prohibited. Introduction In her book The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe, Professor Sarah Churchwell describes Monroe as “that icon of uber-femininity…? [1] This reference…
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Graham Panton | Saturday September 02, 2017
Categories: EDUQAS A Level, Genres & Case Studies, A Level, Films & Case Studies, Hollywood Films, Thriller, Romance, Alfred Hitchcock, Film Analysis, Analysis, Mystery
YouTube Link:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/UHhsEYDg8GI Copyright © 2017 Edusites. All rights reserved. Permission granted to reproduce for educational use within the subscribing school only. Copying or lending of any part of this document in any form or by any means to external bodies and / or individuals is prohibited. Contexts Context of Production Films are shaped by the contexts in which they are produced. They can therefore be understood in more depth by placing them within two…
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vikiwalden | Friday September 01, 2017
Categories: EDUQAS A Level, Adventure, Genres & Case Studies, A Level, Films & Case Studies, Romance, Casablanca, Film Noir, Drama, Film Analysis, Analysis, War
YouTube Link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQTWfGOv1JY Copyright © 2017 Edusites. All rights reserved. Permission granted to reproduce for educational use within the subscribing school only. Copying or lending of any part of this document in any form or by any means to external bodies and / or individuals is prohibited. Contexts Context of Production Films are shaped by the contexts in which they are produced. They can therefore be understood in more depth by placing them within two…
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Rob Miller | Wednesday September 16, 2015
Categories: EDUQAS A Level, EDUQAS AS, Genres & Case Studies, A Level, Films & Case Studies, Non-Hollywood Films, Romance, Drama, Film Analysis, Analysis, Horror
Independent Film Case Study: Only Lovers Left Alive (Jarmusch, 2014) This resource focuses on one independent film, Only Lovers Left Alive. It is intended to be used as stimulus in helping to understand the definitions of independent film. For a full guide on Section A please access: WJEC AS FM2 British & American Film Producers and Audiences Resource Items. Only Lovers Left Alive (2014) was directed by Jim Jarmusch and starred Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston, John Hurt and Mia Wasikowska.…
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Rob Miller | Friday September 11, 2015
Categories: OCR A Level, OCR A2, Genres & Case Studies, World Cinema, A Level, Films & Case Studies, Goodbye Lenin, Non-Hollywood Films, Romance, Comedy, Drama, Film Analysis, Analysis, History, War
Battleship Potemkin (Russia, 1925) Good Bye, Lenin! (Germany, 2003) Battleship Potemkin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNT6xyopdBs (whole film) Historical, Socio-political and Cultural Issues incorporating Authorship Battleship Potemkin (Potemkin) is a film rooted in Russian history, a fragile peasant economy was ruled by a Tsarist autocracy until revolution and war in 1905 saw a wave of mass political and social unrest spread through the Russian Empire. This included strikes, peasant unrest…
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jclarke | Tuesday October 07, 2014
Categories: EDUQAS A Level, EDUQAS A2, Genres & Case Studies, Film Industry, World Cinema, A Level, Hot Entries, Film Distribution, Film Marketing, Films & Case Studies, Romance, Drama, Film Analysis, Analysis, Queer Theory, International/Non English Language
click on image to enlarge Introduction Happy Together is a feature film directed by Wong Kar-wai. It was released in 1997, the year that Hong Kong’s governance from Britain ended and governance from China began. The fact that Happy Together begins with passports being stamped might well resonate with Hong Kong audiences particularly with when the film was released. We might suggest that a passport is a very tangible symbol of national identity. The film is encoded throughout with images…
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jclarke | Monday August 18, 2014
Categories: EDUQAS A Level, EDUQAS A2, Genres & Case Studies, Film Industry, A Level, Hot Entries, Film Marketing, Film Publicity, Film Promotion, Films & Case Studies, Hollywood Films, Thriller, Romance, Film Analysis, Key Concepts, Analysis, Representation, Audience, Film Language, Mystery
click on image to enlarge Understanding the relationship between the micro and the macro elements of a film is an essential part of our analysis of movies. Every shot, every sound accumulates to form the expression of an idea. Thinking about movies in this way might prompt us to acknowledge that a camera move for example, can express a character’s psychology, sometimes more forcefully and memorably than a line of dialogue could ever do. In the opening scene of Vertigo (1958) as the film’s…
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jclarke | Friday May 09, 2014
Categories: EDUQAS A Level, EDUQAS A2, Genres & Case Studies, World Cinema, Talk To Her, A Level, Hot Entries, Films & Case Studies, Romance, Comedy, Drama, Film Analysis, Key Concepts, Analysis, Representation, Audience, Film Language
click on image to enlarge In this resource we will consider the film Talk To Her (2002) and explore some aspects of its film style, by which we mean the choices made by the filmmakers in their deployment of sound and visual elements in the construction of the narrative. As such, we are considering how storytelling devices express a range of meanings and values embodied within the drama. Talk To Her offers an opportunity for us to think about how film (and non Hollywood films, particularly)…
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Rob Miller | Friday March 14, 2014
Categories: OCR A Level, OCR A2, Genres & Case Studies, World Cinema, A Level, Hot Entries, Films & Case Studies, Romance, Fantasy, Drama, Film Analysis, Key Concepts, Analysis, Representation, Audience, Film Language, Action, History
OCR A2 Film Studies Unit F633: Global Cinema and Critical Perspectives Section A: Messages and Values in Global Cinema click on image to enlarge The study of “two contrasting non-English language texts that derive from different countries of origin?: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (China, Honk Kong, Taiwan) 2000 Russian Ark (Russia, Germany) 2002 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Both films, one a Wuxia martial arts/romance hybrid and the other a historical drama-documentary provide audiences…
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jclarke | Thursday March 13, 2014
Categories: EDUQAS A Level, EDUQAS A2, Genres & Case Studies, World Cinema, A Level, Hot Entries, Films & Case Studies, Romance, Drama, Film Analysis, Analysis
click on image to enlarge WJEC A2 Film Studies FM4 Section C Critical Study Les Enfants du Paradis Typically, in many of our Edusites resources we identify contexts that inform the potential meaning of a given film text. In the case of Les Enfants du Paradis this is an especially powerful and relevant aspect of how we approach the film. In this resource, we will broadly sketch out a particular political context, then move on to describe something of the production and conceptual development of…
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jclarke | Tuesday December 03, 2013
Categories: EDUQAS A Level, EDUQAS AS, Genres & Case Studies, Film Industry, A Level, Hot Entries, Censorship & Regulation, Film Marketing, Film Publicity, Film Promotion, Films & Case Studies, Hollywood Films, Non-Hollywood Films, Romance, Comedy, Drama, Film Analysis, Key Concepts, Analysis, Representation, Audience, Film Language, Sport, History
click on image to enlarge One of the key issues to be explored in our study of film is that of representation. As such, it’s fair to say that there’s an established, and largely agreed upon, understanding that film, like other media and forms of cultural expression, can reflect back to us aspects of the conditions in which we live or have lived with. Certainly, there’s scope for us to think about how British cinema has, in more or less ‘obvious’ ways, reflected back to us a point of…
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jclarke | Tuesday December 03, 2013
Categories: OCR A Level, Genres & Case Studies, Film Industry, Production Companies, A Level, Hot Entries, Film Distribution, Censorship & Regulation, Film Marketing, Film Publicity, Film Promotion, Films & Case Studies, Non-Hollywood Films, Romance, Drama, Film Analysis, Key Concepts, Analysis, Representation, Audience, Film Language, War
click on image to enlarge World War Two impacted ferociously on Great Britain: cities were attacked by German bombers, air battles were fought and daily life was severely tested over the six years of conflict. It’s understandable though, if the war seems a long, long time ago to you. Cinema, however, offers us a meaningful way to reconnect with, and reflect on the event and to develop a sense of the relationship between World War Two and British cinema. Attendance at cinemas was acutely…
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vikiwalden | Monday March 25, 2013
Categories: EDUQAS A Level, EDUQAS A2, Genres & Case Studies, World Cinema, A Level, Films & Case Studies, Hollywood Films, Non-Hollywood Films, Thriller, Romance, Comedy, Science Fiction, Drama, Film Analysis, Key Concepts, Analysis, Representation, Audience, Film Language, Action, Crime, History
click on image to enlarge Students can find studying spectatorship challenging. There are many theories of spectatorship, but starting with the theory can lead students to list theoretical ideas rather than engage with the texts. Let’s not forget this A2 Film Studies unit is about “emotional responses? more than critical ones. This is a good place to start with students. What is “emotion?? What is “popular film?? And what elements of the film experience trigger emotional…
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Rob Miller | Thursday November 10, 2011
Categories: Genres & Case Studies, A Level, Hot Entries, Films & Case Studies, Hollywood Films, Romance, Film Research, British Film, Research, Film Analysis, Analysis, War, Period Drama, Heritage, Costume Drama
British and American Film Case Study Associated Resources Atonement Pupil Research Questions.doc Use your bibliography of British Film resources to research the following questions: Who directed Atonement? What other projects has the director been involved in and what does this say about his reputation and key specialist areas? Who wrote the novel that Atonement is based on, what do you know about him? What was the name of the Production Company and Theatrical Distributor? How would you describe…
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vikiwalden | Tuesday November 08, 2011
Categories: CCEA, Genres & Case Studies, Hot Entries, Films & Case Studies, Hollywood Films, Romance, Drama, Film Analysis, Analysis, Crime
Synopsis A television news report provides the prologue / chorus for Romeo and Juliet, introducing the tale of the “star-crossed lovers?. The city of Verona is divided by a feud between the two wealthiest businessmen - Lord Capulet and Lord Montague. As the Montagues arrive in a petrol station, they are met by the Capulets. Whilst Benvolio (leader of the Montagues) tries to maintain peace, Tybalt (leader of the Capulets and “King of Cats?) cannot be persuaded and leads them into battle.…
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vikiwalden | Tuesday November 08, 2011
Categories: EDUQAS A Level, EDUQAS AS, Genres & Case Studies, A Level, Films & Case Studies, Romance, Drama, Film Analysis, Analysis, Social Realism
Section C: American Comparative Study Synopsis Kym awaits the arrival of her father and step mother, Carol to pick her up from rehab. When she arrives home the house is chaotic amidst her sister’s wedding arrangements. Kym and her sister, Rachel reminisces about their childhood and appear to have a close relationship. Paul, Kym’s dad, will not let her borrow a car because of a past incident, so Kym has to cycle to attend her addicts’ meeting and drugs test. When she returns and is…
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nicoleponsford | Thursday November 03, 2011
Categories: Genres & Case Studies, Film Industry, Production Companies, A Level, Hot Entries, Films & Case Studies, Non-Hollywood Films, Romance, Comedy, British Film, Film Analysis, Analysis, Horror
Paper 2 | Non-Hollywood Films Case Study | Shaun of the Dead Synopsis The Winchester, a typical London pub. Shaun (Simon Pegg), his girlfriend Liz (kate Ashfield), her two friends David (Dylan Moran) and Diane (Lucy David) are in the pub. Shaun’s best friend, the foul mouthed (and minded) overweight layabout, Ed (Nick Frost) plays the slot machines. Shaun is getting a hard time from this girlfriend; she wants to spend more time with him, be more exciting and do more than sit in The Winchester…
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Rob Miller | Thursday November 03, 2011
Categories: Genres & Case Studies, A Level, Hot Entries, Films & Case Studies, Hollywood Films, Non-Hollywood Films, Romance, British Film, Film Analysis, Analysis, War, Period Drama, Heritage, Costume Drama
Overview Director – Joe Wright (Pride and Prejudice): experience of big budgets, high production values and of the genre Costume Melodrama. Novel written by Ian McKewan (critically successful author) Genre Costume Melodrama – critically and commercially successful (‘safe’ genre). Arguably Atonement is a hybrid genre – Romance/War Film (built sets, contextual background). Gosford Park, Room with a View Produced and Distributed by Working Title (UK) and Universal Studios (US) – BFI…
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Rob Miller | Monday October 31, 2011
Categories: EDUQAS A Level, EDUQAS A2, Genres & Case Studies, A Level, Films & Case Studies, Hollywood Films, Thriller, Romance, Comedy, Film Noir, Fight Club, Drama, Film Analysis, Analysis
A2 Film Studies Section C: Close Critical Study Synopsis and Character Profiles Fight Club is based on a surprisingly short novel by Chuck Palahniuk, where it is suggested the desire for meaning drives civilisation. The film takes this as it essence, but offers a broader range of more complex representations. In terms of narrative, the film is initially about the life of a disillusioned office worker - played by the narrator, Edward Norton – he works for a car insurance company, who appraise…
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Rob Miller | Monday October 31, 2011
Categories: EDUQAS A Level, EDUQAS A2, Genres & Case Studies, Amores Perros, Gangster, World Cinema, A Level, Films & Case Studies, Thriller, Romance, Drama, Film Analysis, Analysis
Urban Stories: Power, Poverty and Conflict Synopsis and Character Profiles Amores Perros is a film about a three interconnected stories in Mexico City that borrow from, or arguably make, intertextual references to Pulp Fiction in terms of the non linear narrative. A car crash is the pivotal scene that involves, and effects, all three narratives and serves as a narrative arc – in Story 1 (like Pulp Fiction chapter headings are used) Octavio and Susana fall for each other, but not before Susana…
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vikiwalden | Monday October 31, 2011
Categories: Genres & Case Studies, World Cinema, GCSE, Hot Entries, Amelie, Films & Case Studies, Non-Hollywood Films, Romance, Fantasy, Comedy, Film Analysis, Analysis
Paper 2 | Non-Hollywood Films Case Study | Amélie Synopsis Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain is the story of Amélie, a young girl brought up by a strict, nervous schoolteacher and an emotionally cold doctor. The awkwardness and nervous deposition of her parents means Amélie does not meet other children; instead she is left to her own imagination. After her mother dies, her father becomes gradually more reclusive and Amélie decides she will leave as soon as she can. Once she is working…
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