Table of contents for No. 82 in Screen Education

Crafting an adaption of a classic text that feels both wedded to the source material and distinctive to the director’s vision is a difficult task and a rare feat. For centuries, stage directors have endeavoured to work their magic on William Shakespeare’s plays – and for the last century, filmmakers as well – but the gap between merely acting out the text and truly bringing it to life has remained substantial. Perhaps that’s why the latest high-profile film version of Macbeth (Justin Kurzel, 2015) to reach cinema screens feels like a fresh take not only on the narrative at hand, but on movie translations of the Bard’s prose. As helmed by Kurzel and written by Jacob Koskoff, Todd Louiso and Michael Lesslie, the feature both hews closely to the original…

To call Minecraft a successful oddity in the gaming world is an understatement. So much of our games discourse, like that surrounding film and television, places value in spectacle, immersion, big budgets and so on. Minecraft is an indie game developed by a small team, and has pixelated graphics, no cinematics, no dialogue, and is almost completely lacking in story and objectives (though some have been put in later versions of the game). Yet Minecraft is one of the top-selling games of all time, having sold over 72 million copies. To put that in context, the next-bestselling game, Grand Theft Auto V, has so far only sold 60 million copies.1 The game’s success has led to the company that developed it, Mojang, being purchased for US$2.5 billion by Microsoft, where…

In many ways, Synecdoche, New York is fundamentally about death, about how life passes and falters and stumbles and fades. About how time consumes us. CADEN: I was thinking of calling it ‘Simulacrum’. What do you think? CLAIRE: I don’t know what it means. Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is determined to find a title for his theatrical production, a sprawling, life-size re-creation of New York City with a cast of thousands and no apparent audience. His list of suggestions includes ‘Verisimilitudinous’, ‘Unknown, Unkissed and Lost’, ‘Infectious Diseases in Cattle’ and ‘The Obscure Moon Lighting an Obscure World’. Synecdoche, New York’s writer and director, Charlie Kaufman, cares as deeply about names as his protagonist. Take a look at the titles that adorn his films: the finicky Eternal Sunshine of the…

While the story in Lake Mungo is told through a psychological and dramatic form of documentary realism, the film also probes key questions regarding the relationship between visual technology, perception and truth. Australian film Lake Mungo (Joel Anderson, 2008) is, in terms of generic form, a mock documentary. In essence, this means that it is a fiction film told through conventions associated with documentary realism. The conventions Lake Mungo draws on are largely derived from television formats. For instance, many scenes in the film resemble a human-issues television documentary along the lines of Australian Story, which is a national weekly series that focuses on the stories of various Australian individuals and families. Generally speaking, each episode constructs a narrative based on a personal story that contains inspiring and/or fascinating characters.…

Despite its simple language and straightforward (albeit magic-realist) storyline, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince isn’t really a book just for children. As the novella’s narrator reminds us, adults often convince themselves that they are preoccupied with ‘matters of consequence’: jobs, status, success, money. But, in reality, these people – who gravitate towards the ‘useful’ and the ‘sensible’ – don’t, in fact, tend to possess ‘true understanding’.1 As Indiewire blogger Oliver Lyttelton has pointed out, ‘the strange, semi-allegorical nature of the book means that a truly satisfying screen translation has never been made’.2 Indeed, Kung Fu Panda (2008) co-director Mark Osborne – who helmed the 2015 adaptation of Saint-Exupéry’s text – has himself admitted that, prior to coming aboard the production, he ‘believed that there was no way you could…

In his 2003 film Los Angeles Plays Itself – a feature-length video essay investigating the depictions of its titular city across decades of film – writer/director Thom Andersen seems fascinated by the enduring appeal of Ridley Scott’s sci-fi classic Blade Runner (1982). ‘Perhaps it expresses a nostalgia for a dystopian vision of the future that has become outdated,’ muses narrator Encke King. How things change. Within a few years, the idea of a dystopian future seeming outdated would become, itself, outdated; over a decade later, popular speculative storytelling across almost every mode – from cinema to television, video games to graphic novels – has become dominated by futures teetering on the brink of destruction or, just as often, desecrated societies cobbled together in the wake of apocalyptic devastation. Cinema, in…

EVERYTHING OLD IS OLD AGAIN Have you heard about the new Star Wars movie? Or maybe even seen it? The one released during Australia’s summer of 2016? You know the one I’m referring to, don’t you – the movie that fans eagerly awaited for years? The one that has answered their calls for a return to the original fun of George Lucas’ seminal 1977 blockbuster? As a hint: it features such beloved characters as Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and presents them just as fans have wanted to see them – indeed, as they’ve been indelibly stamped in memory. Oh, and in case you think I’m describing Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens (JJ Abrams, 2015), I’m not. Rather, I’m referring to the ‘Silver Screen Edition’ of Lucas’ 1977…

Imagine your students have the opportunity to collaborate with artists from all over the world, any time, any place, and share their creative collaborations with Hollywood actors and directors, who then turn those creations into marketplace-ready commercial films, art, media and games. Does that sound like every young filmmaker’s dream? Welcome to the very real and disruptive world of HitRecord, an online production company based on open collaboration, which was founded by Hollywood star Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who remains director of the company, and which has spawned an Emmy-winning TV series, HitRecord on TV. This global company allows anyone to contribute to projects and ‘creative challenges’ that either Gordon-Levitt, his team or the HitRecord community have set. Those who do not want to contribute their own creative work can engage by…

These campfire moments not only unite the lesson, but also encourage discussion and debate after the game has finished. KAHOOT! https: getkahoot.com  (to create ) https://kahoot.it (to play) Cost: free With taglines like ‘Making Learning Awesome’ and ‘Learn Happy, Learn Loud’, Kahoot! screams ‘fun’; the bright colours and bold fonts instantly catch your attention. A ‘kahoot’ is a learning game made up of multiple-choice questions that can be ‘accessorised’ with images, diagrams and videos. Users have the opportunity to create and/or answer quizzes, discussions or surveys. With these three formats on offer, there are so many interesting ways to use Kahoot!, a number of which are already offered on the website. Teachers can transform a presentation, assessment or general classroom activity into a game-based learning experience that encourages what Kahoot!’s creators…

In Sarah Gavron’s Suffragette (2015), radical instances of activism are transformed into an engaging narrative about a British working-class woman and her growing political consciousness. Through the film’s main character, Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan), we see that the battle for human rights – in this case, the rights of women to be treated equally to men, and to vote – is complex and demands great sacrifices from those who challenge the status quo. We also see what not having the right to vote (and thus not having access to power and to legislative representation) means, and how being denied this democratic right directly contributes to abuse, degradation and intergenerational poverty. THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Suffragette presents a specifically British version of the Votes for Women movement.1 From 1912, British suffragettes used…

The beginning of this new millennium has heralded a golden age of dramatic television production. No longer the ugly stepsister of Hollywood films, television has introduced us to complex characters operating in often dystopic and otherworldly environments. We invited monsters into our homes where previously we’d only glimpsed them in the shadows of sitcoms. The Soprano family served us betrayal, intrigue and extreme violence with notes of introspection and a side dish of postmodern struggles with masculinity. The inmates of Oz allowed us to serve time in a landscape filled with horrors that we could never imagine behind our picket fences; shankings, dastardly dealings and the cruelties of minds left to rot made for stomach-churning viewing. Miniseries like the acclaimed Band of Brothers provided new perspectives on war and its…

Amid the heated controversy over the lack of diversity in the 2016 Academy Award nominations, it would seem that the time is ripe to reassess the career of Kathryn Bigelow, who remains the only woman to have won a Best Director Oscar. Indeed, no woman has been nominated in that category since Bigelow’s win. While most of the criticism of the 2016 awards has been rightfully levelled at the lack of non-white nominees, it is also worth noting that Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker (2008) is still the only film directed by a woman to win the coveted Best Picture award. The Hurt Locker represents the culmination of the kind of relentless, fast-paced action cinema that Bigelow has honed for much of her directorial career, but she began her life on…

2016 is the year of the Chromebook – for McKinnon Secondary College, at least. As Victoria’s first school to deploy a 1:1 Chromebook program, McKinnon now offers all of its 1900 students equal access to computer technology – a significant feat considering the use of a non-traditional operating system. McKinnon’s Chromebook journey began three years ago when the school’s IT department and leadership team made the decision to commit to Google’s education offerings. Like many other schools, McKinnon had already embraced the Google Apps for Education (GAFE) suite.1 Through a staggered rollout to students over the course of three years, the introduction of these Chromebooks proved successful in increasing the effectiveness of technology use in the classroom, as well as general efficiency. Student learning was enhanced through the reduction of…

Good Night, and Good Luck. is as much about the climate in which it was released as the one it depicts on screen. At the 78th Academy Awards in 2006, Good Night, and Good Luck. (George Clooney, 2005) received six nominations. The film was among the five nominees in the running for Best Picture. Clooney – the only person to ever be nominated in six different Oscar categories1 – was nominated both for Best Director and, alongside co-writer Grant Heslov, for Best Original Screenplay (he also won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his turn in Stephen Gaghan’s Syriana, making for a busy night). David Strathairn, in his leading turn as Edward R Murrow, received a nomination for Best Actor. And the film’s evocation of a 1950s newsroom – a…