Table of contents for No. 85 in Screen Education

In Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Waititi builds on his preceding work as unlikely bonds are formed and relationships are tested when a boy and a man are forced to live in close proximity. Ever since Dorothy was spirited over the rainbow, discovering her affection for the seemingly ordinary life she was living in the process, the importance of family has sat at the heart of features designed for all-ages viewing. And, just as The Wizard of Oz’s (Victor Fleming et al., 1939) ruby-slipper-wearing protagonist (Judy Garland) gravitates towards a gathering of offbeat characters that share more than a passing resemblance with people she knows, family-focused entertainment has stressed that a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t apply to family ties, regardless of whether the group in question is linked by blood, choice or…

Over the weekend of 4–6 November 2016, several thousand gamers gathered in Melbourne for PAX, an annual gaming expo, where the latest in AAA games (those with blockbuster budgets) were on display alongside scores of independent titles. Among the developers showcased, a group of young people were welcomed with great acclaim into the geek community: announced at the event were the winners of the third annual STEM Video Game Challenge, run by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER). As part of this initiative, thousands of young people from Years 5 to 12 produced games related to the STEM fields, with the dual purpose of educating and entertaining. In producing these ‘serious games’ – the term used for games whose value isn’t purely entertainment – the young entrants demonstrated many…

It seems like a lot of teaching (or even teaching administration) involves presenting ideas in a way that keeps people’s attention long enough to consume said ideas. There are a lot of different ways to process a concept like this, and it can be the line in the sand that people draw in their teaching. Some believe ‘you need to know this’ – that the information itself is important enough in its own right to warrant the attention. For others it’s ‘you need to know this’ – it’s about building in positive expectations and using them to give the information a pedestal to stand on to change the perception of its importance and thus its retention.1 And, as is often the case in teaching, there is the ‘you need to…

Carl Foreman’s script and Zinnemann’s direction imbue this classic set-up with a realistic treatment that probes the mental state of the characters, takes a cynical stance towards the familiar western themes of duty and justice, and creates a state of heightened suspense throughout the film. High Noon (Fred Zinnemann, 1952) is an iconic western, yet its place within the genre is contested. The film is cited by critics as exemplary of the way that westerns can successfully explore the political and social issues of the moment, and praised for the enduring, universal relevance of its themes. It is held by some to be one of the best western films ever made, but others criticise it as a betrayal of the genre.1 These mixed evaluations of High Noon stem from an…

If we’re thinking about nostalgia, we can see the past as not so much a foreign country as a panic room. It’s understandable that we should want to retreat there when the present looks frightening. A strange thing happened during the run-up to the recent US presidential election. I noticed a few of my left-leaning Facebook friends linking to the same article – a rather sweet little anecdote about former president George W Bush. This was odd because, for those on the left, Dubya has long been the devil. Until the events of 8 November 2016, he looked destined to go down in history as the most disastrous of all American presidents. Yet here was a bunch of progressives getting nostalgic for an eight-year reign that saw civil liberties curtailed,…

THE APPEAL OF THE REPULSIVE If you don’t read this issue’s column, or don’t read all of it, please know that you’re forgiven in advance. It’s just the nature of the beast – in more ways than one. Because that’s the thing about horror: if it does its job well, there’s a reason we shy away from it, and more so in what are ostensibly settings of order and light, such as schools. At its best, horror stubbornly continues to deal with topics that are taboo, or nearly so, as well as images that are disturbing, and content that is ‘objectionable’. It’s an area where the in loco parentis social function of educators and the (somewhat outdated) ‘protectionist’ mode of media literacy education join forces to fuel our hesitancy. At…

As a screenwriting tool, the three-act structure has often been criticised for being arbitrary. Some critics suggest that the idea of the structure exists only because people force it to.1 The narrative of a film is a complex entity. For such an elaborate organisation of characters and events to fit so neatly into this basic paradigm surely undermines the intricacies so carefully constructed by the screenwriter. However, as an educational tool for teaching the basics of film narrative, this efficient method of streamlining complexities is just what we need. In the classroom, the three-act structure can be used as a guide to direct students to various story elements in a film, including cause-and-effect, and character establishment, motivation and development. Although some films fit into this structure much more easily than…

In the years following its restoration and re-release in 2009, Wake in Fright (Ted Kotcheff, 1971) has become firmly ensconced as a classic work of Australian cinema. Faithfully adapted from Kenneth Cook’s 1961 novel, Wake in Fright opened to positive reviews both in Australia and internationally, but local audiences were discomfited by its ugly depiction of Australian culture. The film fell into obscurity after its initial release, and became unavailable for several decades, while its legacy grew in stature. After being rescued and restored through the timely intervention of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, Wake in Fright is now once again widely available, and undiminished in its power to shock and appal with its confronting vision of Australian masculinity. The film begins with schoolteacher John Grant (Gary…

With episodes titled ‘Terra Nullius’ and ‘First Contact’, it is clear that Griffen is evoking traumatic memories from Australia’s past to provoke discussion about present-day relations and policies concerning Indigenous Australians. Cleverman was created by Ryan Griffen and is based on the Dreaming figure of the ‘Clever Man’ who appears interchangeably in Indigenous narratives as Mann’gur (Medicine Man), Kgun’diri (Forecaster), and Kgai’dai’chi (Spirit Man).1 Griffen’s series follows a traditional monomythic structure and puts forward Koen West (Hunter Page-Lochard) as the reluctant and imperfect hero at the centre of this contemporary reimagining of the Dreaming story. Cleverman is set in a dystopian world in which ‘Hairies’, hairy superhumans with extraordinary strength, are marked as a threat to society and forcibly sectioned off into a compound known as ‘The Zone’. Koen runs…

In 2012, scientist and entrepreneur Dr Alan Finkel decided to build an online platform to deliver the Science curriculum in schools. Right when all the money was being flushed into schools through Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard’s Digital Education Revolution to provide computers for every high school student from Year 9 up,1 Finkel was wondering how he could use this to deliver content from Cosmos, a popular science magazine published by him and his wife, Elizabeth. Finkel had met a promising young PhD student, Byron Scaf, some years earlier at Melbourne University when the pair collaborated on a start-up enterprise to develop infrastructure for electric cars. ‘I was starting a PhD in neuroscience when I got roped into a completely separate start-up that Alan was involved in called Better Place,’…

Studies on internet advertising and children tend to focus on children’s websites. However, children don’t just access websites designed specifically for young people in advertising-free environments. A focus on online advertising to children is timely given rising rates of internet usage by children, and more companies globally employing web-based marketing strategies. The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported in 2012 that 90 per cent of Australian children aged five to fourteen had access to the internet.1 Children are increasingly accessing different forms of online media in a multitude of settings, including their homes, schools and community spaces (such as libraries). The media plays a central role in communicating ideas and shaping people’s beliefs and attitudes, and the ability to read media texts critically is an essential skill for twenty-first century learners.2…

The ‘byte’-size activities are designed for use with children as young as three or four, and should help support their transition to primary school by inspiring a love of learning and offering a range of opportunities to utilise a variety of technologies while developing literacy, numeracy and citizenship skills. Taking Small BYTES  http://fuse.education.vic.gov.au/?ZY2GMP Cost: free Launched by the Minister for Families and Children in early September last year, the Taking Small BYTES card deck aims to support early childhood educators in using technology effectively as part of play-based learning programs. The 100 cards are free to download and include 370 ideas geared towards developing children’s literacy and numeracy skills as well as their communication, collaboration, curiosity and critical thinking. There are so many great ideas packaged into this resource, including going…

The golden hues of the grain fields, the dappled shade of a forest, the slow-motion shots of water glistening in the sun, the play of shadows in a campfire, the wide cloud-filled skies and the picture-postcard sunsets are a paean to the joy of experience untrammelled by the social pressures he is escaping. Into the Wild (Sean Penn, 2007) is based on the real-life story of Christopher McCandless, who perished alone in the Alaskan wilderness. Driven by a Romantic determination to test himself and his resources, McCandless abandoned the comforts, expectations and strictures that came with his privileged middle-class life. With its combination of optimistic idealism and self-inflicted tragedy, McCandless’ story initially captured the imagination of writer Jon Krakauer, whose bestselling 1996 book Into the Wild, about the events leading…