4/14 - Ye - Using Film to Teach About China

I nearly forgot...last year, I saw a great film (albeit very long), Mongol. If you have not seen this film, I would recommend it. Same deal, you won't be able to show the entire film, but you could possibly show Genghis Khan's youth and the nomadic lifestyle the Mongol culture was. I know 7th grade curriculum covers this time period....

I enjoyed Professor Ye's presentation very much. I always want to bring in film clips to highlight certain areas of the content we are studying, but I also want to inform students of the art form of filmmaking. One of my favorite assignments from high-school was to take a scene from a book we were reading and turn it into a screenplay. I still have that assignment and want to incorporate that type of assignment into my class but cannot find a simple handout to use listing the film lingo/techniques they would need to complete it. Any suggestions?

I have tried to use film in the classroom but what needs to be focus is the commentary that goes along with movie. Too often teachers simply show a film as filler versus course content. I have seen plenty of time wasted in the classroom and enjoyed the format used by Prof. Ye where he used scenes versus entire films. What was also key was the introduction and review that followed.

Just finished watching "Ashes of Time Redux" directed by Wong Kar Kai. It was a beautiful, surreal experience. Wong's film is a magnificent collection of images of the Gobi desert, and the story takes place in the Gobi desert where an assassin lives out of reach of authority. He has frequent visitors who all desire his expertise, but more often than not he finds others to do the dirty work. Meanwhile he never recovers from a loss of his first true love, so he lives a lonely, isolated life occasionally interrupted by intense violence. I really enjoyed the music, mostly cello solos by Yo Yo Ma, and a strange fit. One would have expected more authentic music, but since this film was created for a cross-over market western music was necessary.

This film has a slow ethereal build of tension interspersed with short bursts of violence which exemplifies to me the eastern approach to life. To use this film in teaching you would have to select sections to counter point the constant meditative attitude toward life with the acrobatic violence to demonstrate the approach. I will find this useful to show 7th grade history students the similarities between the warrior cultures in China and Japan.

[Edit by="mseeger on Jun 23, 11:15:26 AM"][/Edit]

Normally, when I watch movies, I do not pay attention of how they film the movies, the techniques that they used. I have learned quite a bit from Professor Ye from this lecture. I now will try to learn how to appreciate more behind the scenes...

As much as I enjoyed it, I felt that Professor Ye would show more movies which particularly related to certain period of China, so that we can use it in the classroom along with the textbook.

In a section called, "The Extra Mile," from Rafe Esquith's book entitled, Teach Like Your Hair's On Fire Rafe explains the many ways the filfms can be powerful tools in helping students understand various subject matter. I think a short passage from this book does a good job of bringing to light some of the pros and cons related to the use of film in schools:

Upper-grade teachers have more trouble showing films. There is not enough time during a class period to view a full-length film. Some teachers do a great job of using film to supplement their lessons during class time, but these sessions often suffer because the viewing is broken up over a number of days. I have a suggestion: Although it will not make your life easier, it's more effective to show films after school. This allows students to watch an entire movie in one sitting. It also allows for more discussion, both during and after the film. (89)

I know this won't work for many teachers. Many of my students take the bus and there is no way I could get the majority of students to stay after school to watch film for class, but I found it interesting that a teacher in Los Angeles has had such success with this method.

For those of you with students like mine, many of whom would consider such an idea a form of detention, I think tonight's session could be extremely useful. I show excerpts of films as prompts for journal writing, to set up a basis for compare and contrast essays, and for use as a transition between various classroom activities.

I enjoyed Dr. Ye's comments during Hero and Farewell My Concubine because it made me pay closer attention to how film should be discussed. He served as an excellent model as he interspersed comments during the film and reviewed main points after. He gave us a good idea what to look for before the film clip was used and reinforced his points throughout the presentation.