World Cinema

Aims: to examine the issues surrounding youth culture in urban inner cities.

To begin to understand how world cinema represents urban culture in comparison with

UK and US film.

Urban youth stories…• This topic aims to make sociological links between how youths in

urban environments around the world are represented in world cinema.

• Task: make a list of UK or US films that you have seen set that are set amongst the urban youth.

• Boyz in the Hood• Menace to Society• Dangerous Minds• Precious• Bullet Boy• Kidulthood/Adulthood• Girlfight• Kids• Fish Tank

Key themes and issues• What themes or issues do most of these films deal with?

• Opportunities• Not being understood by adults.• Unstable family backgrounds.• Social deprivation- poor housing, lack of education etc.• Peer pressure.• Teenage boredom.• Sense of belonging- often gangs replace families.• Crime- often stems from the above!

• Watch these clips from two films, one UK and one US. Make notes on the sheet.

• Clip one: ‘Clockers’ directed by Spike Lee (US)

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BwloABy1oI&feature=fvw

• Clip two: ‘Bullet Boy’ directed by Saul Dibb (UK)

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYe9asaGDdc&feature=youtube_gdata

So how do films from outside of the US and the UK represent urban youth culture?

• Feedback on the two films you have seen?

• Do you think world cinema films represent urban youth in the same way as UK and US films?

• Yes and no. why?

• Yes: Many issues concerning urban youth are universal (dealing drugs to survive is the same in Johannesburg as it is New York for example).

• No: However as we have already said you cannot label every nation outside of the US and the UK as the same. They each have their own specific social /cultural issues (In Slumdog, the caste system in India for example).

• Discuss: do urban based youth films have to be negative? So why are they often?

• What causes urban environments to supposedly malfunction?