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A presentation I gave at IATEFL Brighton in March 2011.A Journey fom London to Kibera: Using The Constant Gardener to promote cineliteracy in the English language classroomPrint literacy will remain a key competence in the future, but it is probable that other kinds of competence will grow in importance. The ability to analyse moving images, to evaluate moving image texts critically and competently can be termed cineliteracy. In this session we will consider how cineliteracy can be promoted in the English language classroom through an analysis of the cinematic techniques used in the film The Constant Gardener to contrast London and Kibera, the largest shanty town in sub-Saharan Africa. We shall consider how colour and light are used to symbolise the difference between London and Kibera. We shall also how the camera acts as a narrator, leading us through the story, and how different camera shots are used for various purposes. Understanding these camera shots can help our students understand the conventions and techniques of the craft behind filmmaking, and acquire greater proficiency in the 21st century competence of cineliteracy.
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“ We live in a world of moving images. To participate fully in our society and its culture means to be as confident in the use and understanding of moving images as of the printed word. Both are essential aspects of literacy in the 21st century. ”
British Film Institute, Film Education
“Cineliteracy is long overdue in American education. The average American watches seven hours of TV per day. Yet, for the most part, we watch them uncritically, passively, allowing them to wash over us, rarely analysing how they work on us, how they can shape our values.“
Louis Giannetti (2009)
“Students who have grown up in a visual culture, absorbing the techniques of storytelling on TV and in film already have a high level of visual literacy, even though this may be unarticulated. If we are going to make use of film adaptation as an aspect of working with literature, we need to be aware of some of the basic elements of film studies; we need to familiarise ourselves – and our students – with the grammar and vocabulary of film, so that we and they can describe and respond to what we see, as well as to what we read.”
Alan Pulverness (2009)
“ Most people in the West are steeped in the conventions of Hollywood storytelling from an early age. They already understand them, and so your task is to illuminate and codify their instinctive knowledge. Teaching the technical language of film is unique in that you will almost exclusively be giving your students the vocabulary to explain things they already know, rather than providing them with new concepts. This can bean exciting and empowering experience. Students often gleefully report to us that they now ‘can’t watch a film without taking it apart.’ ”
David Wharton & Jeremy Grant (2007)
Composition
Camera
Colour
Characters
Symbolism
Sound
Story
Setting
Scene 3Scene 2Scene 1
The 4 S’sSettingStorySound
Symbolism
The 4 C’sColour & LightCharacterCameraComposition
Overexposed light
Big close-up shot
Canted/tilted angle
Establishing shot
Mid-shot
Close-up shot
Extreme close-up
Justin Tessa
Deep focus shot
“Langata graveyard stands on a lush plateau of tall grass and red mud and flowering ornamental trees, both sad and joyful, a couple of miles from the town center and just a short step from Kibera, one of Nairobi's larger slums, a vast brown smear of smoking tin houses overhung with a pall of sickly African dust, crammed into the Nairobi river valley without a hand's width between them. The population of Kibera is half a million and rising, and the valley is rich in deposits of sewage, plastic bags, colorful strands of old clothing, banana and orange peel, corncobs, and anything else the city cares to dump in it.”
Justin Tessa
“We determined that Justin’s world (England) would be in cool greens, while Tessa’s world (Africa) would be in warm reds.”
Cesár Charlone, director of photography
“But these are three people we can help.”
“This is one we can help, here.”
“You want me to come home, but I am home.”
“Its aim is the one that all reasonable men and women share: to advance the education, health and welfare of people who, through no fault of their own, might otherwise join the ever-growing pool of life’s losers.”
