MediaEd

Media Studies, Film Studies, Moving Image Arts, History, Maths, Art

Key Stage 1, 2, 3, 4 and post-16

1929 film depicting a day in the life of a Russian city, great use of dramatic compositions and ‘Soviet montage’ editing techniques. You can use this film with Key Stage 2 and upwards (though there is one birth scene in graphic detail). Lots of different themes – it covers industry, sport, transport, dance, birth, death and more. You can use parts of the early scenes at Key Stage 1 for looking at numbers, shapes and patterns.

Warning: rapidly flashing editing in the final sequence.

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The BFI version with Michael Nyman’s music is cheaper, but the French version has a much more exciting score by the Alloy Orchestra based on director Dziga Vertov’s original directions.

Media Studies, Film Studies, Moving Image Arts, Modern Foreign Languages (German)

Key Stage 3 (though 15 cert), Key Stage 4, post-15

Berlin punk Lola has 20 minutes to get 100 000 marks to save her boyfriend’s life. The film shows three alternative versions of the action. Exciting music and editing, dramatic camera angles. Try playing just the audio from the title sequence and getting students to guess what the themes are, before you show the video. Good for inspiring student filmmaking.

It’s a 15 certificate mainly because of one violent scene, and there’s quite a lot of swearing (in German).

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