Short film: El sánwich de Mariana

I´ve been doing a lot of work with short films, cortometrajes, lately. They are a great central authentic resource for units on a variety of topics.  It is my New Year´s resolution (is March too late to make a resolution??) to carve out the time to blog some of my favorite units and lessons related to film once again. Today's post centers on the film El sánwich de Mariana.  I was first introduced to the film in a college-level textbook for a Spanish Conversation course. In this lesson, I have added my own activities to make this a stand-alone unit appropriate for an intermediate level course or above.  I've included lots of authentic resources and activities in all 3 modes: interpretive (viewing and reading), interpersonal (a survey and lots of in-class paired conversation), and presentational (a written reflection and a public service announcement).

El sánwich de Mariana is a an 11 minute short by Carlos Cuarón (brother of Alfonso!). The film is available on YouTube, and centers around the theme of school bullying. The film does not have English subtitles, but the students don´t need them to understand the message.

imdb.com

Vocabulary building:  I've attended several regional conferences in the past year, and one of my key take-aways has been using Infographics as vocabulary-building tools. The visuals are appealing to our students, and make it easier for them to infer the meaning of unknown words. Be careful to check the source of the infografía to make sure it is appropriate- there are lots of options put out by government agencies and ngos which also makes them authentic resources! A quick search for "Infografía violencia escolar" pulls up several good options. A couple of my favorites are here and here.

I'd start the unit with students working in pairs to understand the information being communicated in the infografia and making a list of relevant vocabulary. Depending on the group, you might want to give them a few basic comprehension questions to help keep them focused, or you could have students write their own comprehension questions and answers! An extension of this idea:  you could also use two different infografías in the class, and have groups switch and answer the comprehension questions written by the first group.

Next up: students work in small-groups to write a survey - using their new vocabulary - about acoso escolar. This can be done easily with a Google form, which can then be shared with other Spanish classes at your school to collect data. Google makes it easy to capture very cool graphics from a Google form, which your students can then include in a written activity summarizing their survey findings.

Now we can watch the film!  I'd give the students a basic comprehension activity to complete while they are watching the film - perhaps a "put these events from the film in the order in which they occur" type activity, which also serves as additional comprehensible input for them. After viewing the film in class, I´d give pairs of students a list of questions to use as a spring-board for conversation about the film. A few ideas:  

1. Students put the characters in order of who bullies who, to point out the cause-and-effect relationship in bullying.
2. A true/false activity where students have to correct the false statements. 
3. Basic conversation questions, such as ¿Cómo es la escuela de Mariana y Isabel? ¿Cómo es similar a la escuela primaria que Uds. asistieron? ¿Cómo es diferente? ¿Por qué Mariana no dice nada a su maestra sobre el acoso? ¿Para qué sigue Isabel a su casa? ¿Qué aprende Mariana sobre la familia de Isabel? ¿Cuáles insultos escuchas en el cortometraje? ¿Cuál es el peor, en sus opiniones? ¿Por qué? ¿Qué solución tiene Mariana para el problema de acoso escoloar? ¿Qué piensan Uds. de esta solución? ¿Puede funcionar? ¿Qué otras soluciones tienen Uds.? ¿Tiene el cortometraje un final abierto o cerrado? Explica. ¿Cuáles tipos de abuso denuncia este cortometraje? Den ejemplos. ¿Existen estos tipos de abuso en sus comunidades? Explica.

You could easily work several possible grammar tie-ins with this film: pretérito e imperfecto, with students narrating the events of the film and describing various elements - the school, the characters, etc. The future tense to make predictions about the relationship Mariana and Isabel is another easy one, or an activity contrasting por qué and para qué using the basic plot line of the short film. (¿Por qué es abusiva Isabel? ¿Para qué Mariana sigue Isabel a su casa? ¿Para qué le regala un sánwich Mariana a Isabel?)  Here´s a quick explanation to help us make the distinction for our students. 

Cyber bullying: The film El sánwich de Mariana is a great example of traditional in-person bullying, but it does not address the more modern version, which is ciberbullying.  Again, you could find an infographic to build specific vocabulary related to to the topic, or many of the general bullying infographics also include information on cyber bullying.  Here is a lesson that I created on cyber bullying that has students reading a brief text that I adapted from an on-line authentic resources, and then has them writing a written reflection on their experiences. 

To finish the unit, I recommend using the Burger King ad from a few years ago as a springboard to having students writing their own public service announcement.  Here is a link to the marketing company that created the ad. The video of the commercial is also accessible through that page. Have the students read this page either before or after viewing the add to get a bit of background on the marketing campaign (using yet another authentic resource!)

This commercial from Burger King can be a great spring-board to have students create their own public service announcements about bullying. These can be oral presentations that they record, or pamphlets they create. Here is a lesson that I created for my college-level conversation class, with grading criteria and a grammar tie-in to get them using Si clauses, which we were studying at the time.  

What other activities could we include in this lesson??  Leave a comment with your ideas!

Pelo Malo

I first heard about Pelo Malo (2013) by Mariana Rondón on NPR several years ago, and you can read their film review here.  It is currently available on Amazon Prime streaming, YouTube movies, and on the Kanopy streaming service.

I have taught the film once, in my advanced level course on female writers and filmmakers in Spanish, and plan to teach it again this fall. It certainly isn't a "feel good" movie but it is a powerful film to spark conversation on a number of topics including the current Venezuelan political and economic crisis (it was filmed in 2011-12), homophobia, race, media influences, and gender roles.

My previewing activities, found here, introduce critial vocabulary, a summary of the film and the director, and introduces students to the current situation in Venezuela. Students could do individual or group research on Venzuela, which they then present to the class, in either English or Spanish, depending on the level. Some possible topics include Hugo Chavez, Bolivarian socialism, ALBA, Nicolas Maduro, Leopoldo Lopez, Antonio Ledzema, food and medicine shortages, and the Venezuelan refugee crisis in Colombia, to name just a few.

There are two sex sceens, which could be edited out if shown in class without loosing criticial storyline.

My during and post viewing activities, found here, include both simple comprehension activities and more dificult analysis questions. It may be helpful for students to make character charts about the personality and actions of Junior, his mother Marta, and his friend La Niña and how they interact with each other and other characters in the film. Students could aslo take notes on scenes that highlight topics presented in the student presentations (food scarcity, unemployment, gereralized poverty in Caracas, TV clips that reference Hugo Chavez's cancer treatment, etc.) while they are watching.

NBC News

Although I don't have specific questions, we do always have an in-class discussion about the societetial homophobic and racial stereotypes and discrimination surrounding Junior's Junior's desire to straighten his hair and his mother's fierce opposition to his obsession.  And the final scene of the film, in which we see Junior after he has cut his hair, choosing not to sing with his classmates, can be analyized on both a peronal level for Junior and his search for personal identity, and on a societial level. There is an excelent interview with the director, in English, about these and other topics, in this NBC article, and a "making of" video in Spanish here.

Using film clips in the classroom

It has been a loooong time since my last post. My professional interests have kept me moving in many different directions, but I'll spend the next few weeks blogging about what I've been up to in the last two years. For starters, I began this post 2 summers ago, and then never finished it. Here it is, finally.

Though most of my use of film includes having students watch an entire feature length film, there are times when I want to show only a small clip of a film. I have found clips can be very useful in the following ways:

• To highlight a particular scene or sequence in a longer film that students have already watched. I do this in class to draw their attention to particular features they may have missed, or to allow for more in-depth analysis.
• The film in its entirety doesn't support your learning goals, but one scene does. I mentioned showing clips only from the film Libertador in an earlier post to highlight certain aspects of the independence movement that we study in our course. The rest of the film might be appropriate in another class, but not in this one. 
• To highlight grammatical or lexical structures used in a particular. Film is a great source of authentic input. 

I  attended the International Association for Language Learning Technology (IAALT) Fleat 6 Conference in Cambridge  in 2015 and learned about several tools that will make using clips much easier.

Tools to use when you own the DVD and want to make clips to use in class or to assign as homework.

1. Berkley Film Database*

2. Extracting clips from a Film on DVD; allows DVDs from all regions to play on computer

• VideoLan/VCL Media Player (requires software download)

Tools to use when you have a video clip from YouTube or Vimeo and you'd like to make it more user friendly for the classroom or to assign as homework.

3. Add questions and other activities to pre-existing videos from YouTube, Vimeo, etc.

• eduCannon
• Edpuzzle*

2. Download YouTube videos

• KeepVid

3. Chopping YouTube videos into shorter segments

• TubeChop

*Since I started this post 2 years ago, these two tools have become my go-to resources. Berkley Film Database has a selection of films in a variety of languages. Some languages have more offerings than others, but all the clips have been tagged for language used, language function and much more. Sharing the clips is easily accomplished with a URL that can be shared via a content management system.  EdPuzzle is a a web-based tool that uses existing clips from YouTube and other similar sites. You can crop the video so that it shows only what you want, embed questions for your students, and track their answers or simply whether they watched it, and much more. You also have multiple ways to share your video clips with your students.  It is a tool that I use in multiple classes! 

Libertador: Simón Bolívar and the Independence Movement in Latin America

To show the film Libertador to my students or not to show it to them; that was my question.

A film about Bolívar? Ooo, I want to see it. I wonder if I can use it in any of my courses? This was my reaction last summer when I first heard about the Venezuelan/Spanish co-produced film about the life of the Sough American liberator, Simón Bolívar.

I had read a handful of reviews about the film Libertador (Alberto Arvelo, 2013), most of which seemed to imply that the film had taken some liberties with the historical facts surrounding Simon Bolívar's life, but that the film did manage to capture the spirit of the independence movement of 19th century South America. So, I decided, one of my summer projects would be to read a biography of Bolívar to gain more knowledge about the man and about the independence movement, and to the watch Arvelo's film and judge its historically accuracy for myself.

I choose to read the biography, in English, by Marie Arana called Bolívar American Liberator. (Arana, Marie. Bolívar: American Liberator. Simon and Schuster, 2013.) The biography had been well received by academics, editors and Amazon readers, and it lived up to its praise. The Washington Post has a review of her book here. The biography, at 468 pages, is certainly comprehensive, obviously meticulously researched, and quite easy to read. I can easily say that I enjoyed reading this book and I recommend it to anyone who wishes to learn more about El Libertador. Now armed with the a solid base of knowledge about Bolívar , I sat down to watch the film Libertador. It is available to stream through both Amazon and Netflix.

These are my conclusions:

Don´ts 

• Don´t show this film to your students as a stand-alone unit, without any other resources, to teach them about the Latin American independence movement. It needs some historical context or it´s message won´t be full understood. And while it does get many facts right, it also cherry picks those facts carefully, creating a very one-sided vision of history (see my do´s below). 
• Don't ignore this film completely. As the only contemporary film about Bolívar and the Latin American struggle for independence from Spain, it has much to offer our students.

Do´s 

• Do use this film in its entirety if you are prepared to balance it's message with the parts that is leaves out. This film is a great starting point for further discussion with your students.  Here are some books that offer a concise overview of Bolívar that you could use with your students:
• Iberoamérica: Historia de us civilización y cultura 
• Hoja de ruta: cultura y civilización latinoamericano (This is the text that I use in my advanced level university culture/civilization course.)
• The essay Tres Heroes by José Martí, which is included in the textbook ¡A que sí!
• Do use clips from this film to showcase a few select topics, which it does cover very well:
• the stunning geography of northern South America. The film has some beautiful cinematography. 
• What was it like to cross the Andes? Bolivar did it; San Martin did it. Its just a mountain range, how hard could it be? This film will show you, and your students, just how hard that kind of military march was. 
• Bolívar´s quest for a united continent.
• Bolívar as an orator. 
• the racial make-up of those fighting in the wars of independence, and the inclusion of women and children in the armies. Although Bolívar was not as nearly as enlightened about racial issues as the film would lead you believe, he did come around to the idea of including blacks and native americans in his troops after several years of fighting. He had to include them in his vision of independence, or they would have fought against him. Now, whether any of his promises of equality were actually kept, is another story altogether.
• fears about racial equality and what that might mean for the criollos of the time. 
• If you are going to show only one clip, I suggest the clip beginning approximately at minute 55 through 1:02 which incorporates many of themes I have listed.

• Do use this film as a study in how historical figures are recast over time. Every culture has the tendency to glorify its heroes, forgetting that there were simply human beings with their own strengths and weaknesses. Bolívar´s faults are almost never mentioned. His extreme brutality toward all who opposed him, especially at the beginning of his career, are only hinted at, and his tendency toward dictatorial and monarchical power, largely at the end of his career, are certainly present, but presented in a very positive light (see my comments about the chavistas below). He certainly was a military genius, and the film shows this well, but his national building and governing skills were, one could argue, some of his weaknesses. Additionally, his quest for recognition by other countries, as well as any and all foreign aid for his cause are not fully developed, and because the film distinctly shows that he resisted international interference in his fledgling nation´s sovereignty, the overall feeling is that Bolívar shunned outside help more than he actually did. The film also seems to imply that few people influenced Bolívar, that he was his own man and all of his triumphs were due to his own brilliance, but he was also greatly influenced by many historical figures and contemporary thinkers of the time. Oh, and then there is the ending, which clearly implies that historical records that indicate that he did of tuberculosis are nothing but a conspiracy theory. The ending needs to be addressed with students. Given how the chavistas of contemporary Venezuela have sought to create a distinct, if limited, portrait of their Venezuelan forefather, the Bolívar of Arvelo´s film feels a bit like everything Chavez and Maduro would want him to have said and done, which is another great point of discussion for our students.

Final word: this film has much to offer our students but only if we do our jobs as educators and put it in its proper context. 

Blancanieves (Pablo Berger, 2012)

The 2012 film by Spanish director Pablo Berger, Blancanieves, is an excellent film for the Spanish-language classroom. A remake of the Brothers Grimm's tale, Snow White, Berger's film is set in 1920's Spain and centers on classic Spanish cultural elements: bullfighting and flamenco. The film is silent (with intertitles in English) and is in black and white. So, what would you like to study with your students: film adaption? Spanish cultural elements such as bullfighting and flamenco? The silent film era in Spain? Blancanieves offers all of these possibilities! And it is easily available on Netflix streaming video. 

My students were surprised by how much they liked the film! They really enjoyed the cinematography and the cultural elements. Who knew a silent film could be so good?

Here is my lesson plan, as used in my advanced level film course (though it could easily be adapted for intermediate level students):

Students read a brief introduction to the silent film era in Spain, and Berger´s apparent homage to one filmmaker in particular, Florian Rey. (Note: I wrote this introduction myself and have included a bibliography of works consulted in the creation of the document.)

There are two student presentation topics (see how I do student presentations here):

• La historia de las corridas de toros en España y las partes principales de una corrida
• El flamenco con énfasis en las sevillanas

(There was a miscommunication with one of my students, so in the end I prepared the mini lesson on bullfighting. This is what I put together.)

I also have them read the story by the Brothers Grimm, since most students only know the Disney version. Here is a good version in Spanish.

And here is a link to document that has vocabulary, activities with vocabulary, comprehension questions for students to answer while viewing the film, and follow-up analysis questions that can be answers either in class or outside of class. And here are my in-class presentations: Antes de Ver and Después de Ver

This a fun film - super dramatic, with a fabulous soundtrack. Your students will enjoy it.

Women and Film: A summary of good resources

In my first blog post, almost a year ago, I mentioned that much of my recent research in the area of Spanish-language films has been in the area of contemporary female film directors and their films. Two summers worth of reading literature, blogs and other publications on the subject, and viewing many films, have lead to a quite a collection of information, not only about Spanish-language films, but about the global film and television industries as well. I would like to share what I have discovered with others (there must be others interested in this topic!) in hopes that they can continue the research. I do not claim this compilation of resources to be exhaustive and I hope that others will share their knowledge with me and tell me what I have missed!


Blogs, Twitter, Popular Press, etc.

• The topic of female directors, producers, and films with strong female leads in the global film industry- and the lack of recognition that they receive -  made headlines this year with Jane CAMPION's remarks at Cannes.

• A great general resource is Melissa Silverstein who is the founder and editor of Women and Hollywood. I follow her on Twitter (@melsil) and she is a treasure trove of information about women in the industry world wide. I also follow Girls on Film (@Girls_on_Film) the European Women's Audiovisual Network (@ewawomen) and CIMA: Asociación de Mujeres Cineastas y de Medios Audiovisuales (in Spanish) (@CIMAcineastas) onTwitter. They are all excellent sources of information. 
• The Geena Davis Institute on Gender and Media is fabulous and can be followed on Twitter (@GDIGM) and Facebook. 

• Niamh Thorton has a very informative blog post on Latin American Film Makers. 

• In Argentina the organization La mujer y el cine, is an organization dedicated to promoting the work of women in the film industry. There webpage has recently been taken down, but I am hopeful that this is temporary. (Lamujeryelcine.com.ar)

• In Chile, Femcine is a "Festival Cine de Mujeres." 
• And 2013 article in the newspaper El País reports on the inequality in the Spanish film industry, stating that 9 of every 10 films that are filmed in Spain are directed by a man, and that the casts of these films directed by men are also disproportionately male. In this same article, the Spanish directora Isabel de Ocampo blames this imbalance on the exclusive decision making power of older males when it comes to film financing.

• In a 2013 forum, Colección Espejo, organized by the Asociación de Mujeres Cineastas y de Medios Audiovisuales (CIMA) in Madrid, several Spanish film directors spoke about the sexism that exists in the film industry, which is summarized here. 

• Newsweek has taken notice of some of the more recent films by Mexican directoras. In her piece, Alexis Okeowo highlights several directors and their recent films, including the documentary filmmakers Eva Aridis, as well as Mariana Chenillo and Andrea Martinez (both mentioned later in this piece), Eva Lopez Sanchez, Maria Novaro, and Patricia Riggen.

Books
There are a handful of books on female filmmakers from various Spanish-speaking countries.

Spain:
Barbara Zecchi's (UMASS) most recent book is entitled Desenfocadas: Cineastas españolas y discursos de género* and offers a comprehensive study of women in the Spanish film industry since its inception. She is the Director of the Digital Humanities project from UMASS on the History of Spanish Women´s Cinema. 

*Zecchi, Barbara. "Desenfocadas. Cineastas españolas y discursos de género (introducción)." Introducció del llibre: Desenfocadas. Cineastas españolas y discursos de género, Barbara Zecchi, Icaria 2014, ISBN: 9788498885682, 248 p. (2014).

Argentina:

Rangil, Viviana. Otro punto de vista: mujer y cine en la Argentina. 1st edition. Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo, 2005. Print.

Mexico:

Rashkin, Elissa J. Women Filmmakers in Mexico: The Country of Which We Dream. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001.

Other Academic Resources

Ayala Rojas, Laura Lucinda (2012) Miradas de mujeres mexicanas en las artes visuales y en el cine. IMAGINARIO VISUAL (3). pp. 1-8.

Castro Ricalde, M. (2008). Género y estudios cinematográficos en México. CIENCIA ergo sum, 16-1(marzo-junio 2009), 64-70.

Monterde, José Enrique. “El largo camino hacia la dirección.” La Mitad del cielo: Directoras españolas de los años 90.  Ed. Carlos F. Heredero. Ayuntamiento de Málaga ministerio de Educación y Cultura, 1998. 15-24. Print.

There are a good number of academic publications on individual films by contemporary female directors including Te doy mis ojos (Icíar Bollían, 2003), La Misma Luna (Patricia Riggin, 2007), among others. I have not begun to explore the scholarly journal publications which study the specific films by early female pioneers of film in Spanish-speaking countries. 

Latin America Film History: a blog by my students

Another academic interest of mine, besides film in the Spanish classroom, is education technology. I am constantly trying out a new tool or piloting a new app, and encouraging my students to do the same. One of my more recent projects has been student blogging, and last semester I incorporated two different blogging projects into one of my advanced Spanish classes.

This course's focus was Latin American history and culture, from pre-Colombian indigenous cultures to present day and, with so much information to include in just one semester, how to include both breadth and depth in the course was indeed a challenge. My solution was blogging. Each student was involved in two blogging projects: one individual project focused on one specific country in Latin America and a group project focused on a particular cultural project. Students had a number of cultural topics to choose from, including sports, gastronomy, holidays, literature, cinema, etc. Based on both my observations and student evaluations, the blogs were overall a great tool to allow students to dive deeply into two particular topics (their specific country and their cultural aspect) while the rest of the coursework focused on broader themes.

I am talking about this project here in my film blog because the group of 3 students who hosted the cultural blog on Latin American Cinema produced a great resource that deserves to be shared with other students and with educators. These three students (one senior, one junior, and one sophomore) presented their blog at our university's research day, and have given their permission for me to share their blog with my readers. Here it is.