Message from eamador

[Anonymous]

I just finished watching "The First Emperor of China" film produced in 1989 by the National Film Board of Canada and China Xi'an Film Studio. I found it in Borders but it is also available through Amazon and razordigitalent.com. It is 42 minutes long and I also found a good lesson/media guide (www.dcmp.org/guides/3608.pdf) with a good parallel time line on world history. This is most appropriate for 6th grade history standards on China but is a good review for 7th grade history standards to review the challenges of imperial rule. The narration is in English and the actors speak Mandarin which lends authenticity. It is a little dated but is not gory or overly violent. It covers the difficulties of unification, Qin's ruthlessness and his ability to coordinate the building of the Great Wall. There are casts of thousands for battles and pageants. It covers the new reforms he put in place regarding the standardization of language, weights and measures. And although Shi Huang-di was a great believer in literacy, he burns books that do not ascribe to his legalistic beliefs. The building of his tomb and his obsession with immortality is described. The clothing and other decorative arts are beautifully displayed lending to the sense of grandeur. In the end of the film, there is a modern day portion about the discovery of his tomb and how the history of this emperor lives on. This may not be as modern as the more recent Discovery Channel program about Shi Huang-di but it covers the essentials in under an hour. Since my students have just finished studying the geography of China, I will be using this to stimulate prior knowledge about ancient China and introduction of continued imperial rule through the "middle ages".

Update: In preparing for lesson plan I went into the class CD which we were given at the end of the course and accessed dube-qin-han-dynasties.pdf and found it be a great intro for the film (with shots from the film) and overview of the period.[Edit by="eamador on Feb 3, 9:39:51 AM"][/Edit]
[Edit by="eamador on Feb 3, 4:44:28 PM"][/Edit]