Medieval Movies

Student Presentations (2018-19)

The early Midle Ages by Ana Córcoles

Feudal Europe by Marian Córcoles

The High Middle Ages by Ana Domínguez

Al-Andalus by María Navarro

Cities by Jorge Darriba

Territorial organization by Martina Quintanilla

Population by Luna Villanueva

Introduction

Around de world in eight movies

We are finishing the 2nd ESO the course and we need to have a panoramic vision of

our world, the 21st century world, so we are going to use some sequences of recent films

to try to approach it during a 55 minute class.

We started in Europe with sequences of Bourne's ultimatum, with images of Turin,

Paris, London and Madrid. We can recognize some of the features of developed countries

through the observation of the train stations of Waterloo (London), of Atocha (Madrid),

the airport of Heatrow (London), the metro of Paris. And we crossed the Strait of Gibraltar

towards the new geographical set of North Africa and we let ourselves go, with the camera

on Paul Greengrass's shoulder, for the persecutions on the roofs of Tangier.

And through a transition with maps and using the music of Bourne's ultimatum to give

continuity, we entered sub-Saharan Africa with the initial sequence of Blood Diamonds,

a full-fledged shake, in case one had fallen asleep, with the talks on trafficking of raw materials in Africa. Regarding Asia, we visualized some of the conflicts in Western Asia through the

sequence of Redacted in which a pregnant woman is machine-gunned in an American

military checkpoint, and several sequences of Kandahar, about a woman in a Koranic school. For South Asia I have chosen some fragments of Slumdog Millonaire

-persecution in the poor neighborhood of Bombay, scenes with the skyscrapers in the

background-, ending, of course, with the final Bollywood dance. And for East Asia, although

I wanted to show images of Shanghai, I finally decided on Still Life, to visualize the current

China, with the enormous transformations carried out for the construction of the Three

Gorges Dam. And for Japan I chose the sequences of Babel in which deaf girls

appear in a Tokyo plaza and a nightclub. We crossed the Pacific to South America with the beginning of the City of God. It is difficult not to fall into manichaeism but we seek resounding images and do not have much time. The chase of the rooster in the favelas seemed to me sufficiently enlightening

of the social reality. And for North America we chose the head of The wire, ending with

the Bourne denouement on the New York bridge.

Activities

1. Draw a map indicating the route ordered by the stages and cities that the characters of the different films follow.

2. Describe how the different cities in which the film is placed are, comparing them.

3. Write a brief report on the ideas suggested by this montage with different movie sequences

Unit 7. Territorial organisation