Many teachers and researchers have found that motivation and engagement seem to decline as students enter adolescence, and one of the causing factors is limited opportunities for creative expression. Moviemaking a text undoubtedly encourages students' creative expression to a great extent. This article explores the integration of moviemaking in an…

One of the most versatile and multi-faceted films that an educator can use to illustrate urban America in the 1930s is "Great Guy," a relatively obscure film from 1936 directed by John G. Blystone and starring James Cagney and Mae Clarke. There are some simple practical considerations that make the film such a good fit for an American history or…

Since May 24, 2006 millions of people have seen the movie "An Inconvenient Truth." Several countries have even proposed using the film as an educational tool in school classrooms. However, it is not yet clear that the movie accomplishes its apparent goals of increasing knowledge and concern, and motivating people to reduce their…

This paper reports on an action research project undertaken with the primary aim of investigating the extent to which situations that evoke a sense of wonder can promote scientific inquiry. Given the intense interest, curiosity, and wonder that some students had begun to develop after seeing the film "The Prestige", a science teacher…

The 1920s was an ambivalent decade in Australia: on the one hand Australians were still reeling from the disastrous effects of the Great War and on the other they were witnessing unprecedented and exciting technological and social changes brought about by modernity. One of the most important modern technologies was the cinema, which Australians…

In 2 studies, the sensitivity of 3- and 4-year-olds to the previous accuracy of informants was assessed. Children viewed films in which 2 informants labeled familiar objects with differential accuracy (across the 2 experiments, children were exposed to the following rates of accuracy by the more and less accurate informants, respectively: 100% vs.…

In this article, the author shares the views of John Williams, Hollywood's premier composer, who has written more than 300 scores, about the future of classical and film music. A gregarious person in a field requiring monklike isolation, Williams values the "association with the soloists, and the wonderful inspiration from players." His…

Successful makers of "persuasive films"--i.e., films which attempt to incorporate the viewers' attitudes in the message in order to influence them--were surveyed for this study to determine the procedures used in the planning and production of educational films. This survey replicated a 1981 study by Simonson, but included several follow up…

To understand film as a form of political communication, movies must be regarded as an art form made both with commercial and aesthetic considerations and with cultural, industrial, and artistic traditions in mind. Filmmaking must also be viewed as a process or as a temporal activity of a culture. Through political mediation, or the process of…

This report on a conference, which brought together representatives of various humanistic disciplines to explore the cross-disciplinary appeal of film study as well as the use of film in stimulating scholarship and teaching, includes a narrative summary of the day's conversations and issues raised, as well as of reprints of articles that suggest…

"La Chute de la Maison Usher" is a film adaptation by Jean Epstein of two stories by Edgar Allan Poe, "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Oval Portrait." This film was typical of Epstein's artistic preoccupation with the ambivalence of reality as expressed in fantasy or surrealism, in qualities of movement, and…

This reference book contains an alphabetically arranged list of world film stars, producers, directors, and other filmmakers and an index of important films from 1898 to 1972. Each of the major entries notes brief biographical data, with dates of important events in the lives of the subjects, and the titles and dates of the films to which the…

Discusses two films ("Dos veces mujer" and "Intima raiz") of Patricia Howell. Demonstrates how thoroughly the feminist themes Howell's films weave together around motherhood are inflected by the specific Latin American and Costa Rican contexts in which she works. (RS)

In this dissertation I investigated how teachers interpreted intercultural differences and tensions embodied in fictional short stories and films. Participants in the study were 14 English teachers from China, South Korea, and the United States. My key research questions were: How are cultural differences understood and articulated by teachers…