Introduction

Why use films to teach citizenship?

Films are a great source of enjoyment for many of us; they can also give us insights into the world beyond our direct experience and can inspire us, shock us or make us rethink our assumptions about the world. As such they are potentially an invaluable resource to use with young people to develop their awareness and understanding in order for them to become active thinking participants in society.

A major theme in citizenship education is the role of the media in society. While most citizenship teaching tends to focus very much on the news and how the news is produced, films provide a rich source of material with which to deepen and extend students understanding of issue that are raised in the news. Furthermore, examining the way films represent the world to us can enhance young people's understanding of the role of the media in society more broadly. The section on Film and the curriculum outlines some of the citizenship themes you can explore with films. The ideas are presented within the framework of the National Curriculum for Citizenship for England, but could be easily adapted to other curricula.

Since 2002, Citizenship has been a required subject in the National Curriculum for England and schemes of work have been developed by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) for the Department for Education and Skills (DfES). This guide has been developed with reference to the National Curriculum, but the information and ideas provided are easily applicable to other curricula.

In this teaching guide we have identified 16 films which can be used to stimulate discussion and activity around a range of citizenship issues. We have chosen these films with difficulty because there are so many which would be appropriate. In making our choices we have kept in mind a number of criteria, including their suitability for and potential ability to engage 12- to 16-year-olds, the range of issues they cover, and their qualities as films. Perhaps inevitably, most of the films were made in America, though not all of these are products of Hollywood. We have also selected films from the UK and there is one from another European country - France. There are some obvious omissions. Some films, including Kes (UK 1969, Ken Loach) and To Kill a Mockingbird (US, 1962, Robert Mulligan), have already featured in bfi Education resources. Others may have been excluded for a variety of reasons. However, overall the films featured in this guide reflect our world in some of its diversity, and they are likely to provoke a reaction from viewers. For each film we recommend, there is a set of notes in the second half of this guide, which tells you something about the film and provides ideas for using it effectively.

In using these films, you can simply screen them, or extracts from them, followed by discussion of the issues they raise. However, we would argue that you will get so much more from the films if you encourage your students to take a critical view of them as films, in other words, if you engage in some film analysis. It is easy to watch a film and just react to it, going off at all kinds of tangents as a result of the issues it may raise. However, a more systematic approach could be much more fruitful. By looking carefully and critically at how the filmmakers have represented an issue in their film, and how they as viewers respond to it, students can learn to consider the issues in greater depth.

In Thinking about films and Using films in the classroom, we outline approaches to teaching with moving image media, and introduce the main concepts you need for film analysis. It may be worth setting aside one or two lessons to introduce your students to these concepts so that they can use them as tools in developing their thinking about the issues addressed in the Citizenship curriculum. An understanding of how films are constructed will also enable students to create their own films as a means of expressing their ideas about the issues and about their own role in society. Video productions can provide evidence of the required skills of citizenship as well as of students' knowledge and understanding of the citizenship themes.