Option A cinema - DST suggested answers

DST Option A Cinema mars 2008. Suggested answers.

Note : There are several answers possible, these are just suggestions. If you show both your understanding of the passage and extract shown, and your knowledge of the main challenges and successes of British cinema in the 20th Century, that should be fine.

Part one (6 points)
Watch the extract from the film “East is East”.

Write a few paragraphs about the extract, noting what image of Britain is given and how, and how this compares to images of Britain in the main types of films we have seen so far. How interesting do you find the image presented ?

Suggested answer :
In this extract we see a part of town where ordinary people live - they obviously are not part of the elite. The houses are basic and uniform, the children play in the streets, the parents and children are not sophisticated and polite. It is a part of town which is ethnically very mixed, and we see the mixing and interaction, in particular of different religious and cultural customs.

The showing of the lives of working class people is typical of the films of Ken Loach and others over the last few years. However, many of Loach’s films until recently have shown parts of the working class which are not ethnically mixed.

The image given in the extract from “East is East” is in many ways very positive, some might even say idealized. The only racist seen is a ridiculous and isolated character, obviously not enjoying the sypmathy even of his daughter and grandson, who, on the contrary are very much friends with the non-white children. It is an image of multicultural Britain where there is no tension. Even religious customs - the Christian procession at the beginning, and then the Pakistani wedding ceremony, do not cause tensions between the communities. Everybody enjoys watching the Christian procession. The whole street except for one person is excited about the pakistani wedding. The priest is a friend to everyone (and can play good football too). The Pakistani father and the extremely English mother both have faults. Although the father has tried to impose his culture on his son, the father too is shown with some sympathy.
We can see the director is trying to deal with complex questions carefully, but is it oversimplified?
Part two : read the following passage and answer the questions (14 points)

i. British director Ken Loach has launched an attack against other UK film-makers, saying they are far too preoccupied with Hollywood. Loach, famous for films like My Name is Joe, Raining Stones and Riff-Raff, is in Cannes for a special screening of his film Kes, which was made in 1969. Loach's comments could hit a raw nerve this year, as no British films have been shortlisted for the prestigious Palme d'Or.
ii. He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "The climate generally in Britain is to make films that look across the Atlantic and I think that's disastrous." "It means our own culture gets devalued and it's as though there has to be an American in everything."
iii. Loach said that British films and many directors use British films as calling-cards for the states. "I think it's time British film-makers stopped allowing themselves to be colonised so ruthlessly by US ideas and stopped looking so slavishly to the US market," he said, adding that it "demeans film-making when they do that".
iv. Ironically, his latest film, Bread and Roses, was made in Los Angeles, but Loach insisted it was a "very anti-Hollywood film". He said it was a story of the people who clean the offices in LA. "There is a nice irony in making a film in LA about that half of the people you don't see - that aren't represented - they're the ones who do the work really," he said. "Their lives are as full of drama and comedy - much more so really - than the white people who live in the hills."
v. But despite dipping his toes in US waters, he imagined it will be his last film in America. "It's a fairly hostile place to be in - probably the most difficult place in the world to make films, oddly enough because they have very fixed ways of doing things," he said.
BBC News
Read the document and answer the questions in your own words. Do not quote the article. You are expected to show your knowledge of recent British cinema.

1 What does Loach complain about ? (3 points)

Suggested answer : Ken Loach is unhappy because the films he sees being made in England are too much centred around American values and American preoccupations. Directors are only worried about whether their film will sell in America, and are careful to use an American star to help things along or, even worse, they only make a British film in the hope of being invited to work in Hollywood afterwards. He would like to see a real independence in British films.

2 How does Loach try to avoid being too « Hollywood » - give examples from the article and also from outside the article. (5 points)

Suggested answer : He deliberately uses stories about ordinary people, who Hollywood normally doesn’t write about, and at the centre of his stories is the dignity and drama of ordinary people, a very positive image. He rejects the idea of an automatic « happy end » to a movie. In addition, to try to give an impression of real life, he frequently uses amateur actors, people who have really lived similar experiences rather than people who have learned how to act at acting school. Sometimes he does not give the actors scripts, as he wants them to be spontaneous. Even his lighting and camerawork are often rough and ready rather than smooth as Hollywood is.

3 American domination is a long-term problem for British film-makers. Explain some of the different strategies that British film-makers and governments have used throughout the last hundred years to survive despite US domination. (6 points)

Suggested answer :
US domination is a very old problem for British film makers. At some periods the government has made laws to defend British film production - for example in the 1920s, a law was passed obliging all cinemas to present a certain percentage of British-made films. (a Quota). One of the disadvantages of the law was that cinemas were tempted to make very cheap, low-quality films simply to fill the quota. The government later tried to stop this practice by establishing a minimum amount that could be spent on a film, per minute of film.

In more recent years the most important tactics to protect British film making have been attempts to find « niche markets » - to specialize in particular types of film, and not to try to compete with the American bestselling blockbusters. So « heritage films » of famous British romantic novels, (Emma, The English Patient, The Remains of the Day,and so on)sophisticated comedies about the upper middle classes, (Four Weddings and a Funeral) or working class « realist » films (Ken Loach’s films, Trainspotting, the Full Monty, and so on) have made up the greater number of films made in Britain.

Other tactics include making joint projects, using American money, and/or making sure there is an American star in the film (Notting Hill, Four Weddings and a Funeral, A Fish named Wanda, and so on).