Film Education -

Sharing ideas

As well as providing excellent stimulus to concepts of human rights, film content can offer students easily accessible material to inform display and presentation work. Displays can be mounted around the school or in classrooms whilst presentations can work in the context of the classroom or larger group assemblies.

Activities in which students share their understanding of human rights and how these are breached and upheld in different parts of the world are ideal for project work during the week of Human Rights Day. Here are some suggestions:

• Students choose a sequence from a film to play to others followed by a talk about how human rights issues are represented and the extent to which this feels authentic
• Students research images related to a particular film including the film’s official publicity poster and press photos of the film’s stars. Using this research, they compile a presentation about how human rights issues are represented in the film and the key messages that are communicated
• Students choose a character whose rights are shown to be breached in a film and write a letter to this character showing empathy for them and making suggestions about what they might do to fight for their rights
• Using techniques learned in their reading of certain film texts, students construct a short, filmed sequence (no longer than 2 minutes) to show an aspect of human rights that they have learned about