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Sélection culturelle

"West Side Story" is Back!

West Side Story – the stage musical and the film – is already a classic. Steven Spielberg wants to make it a more authentic classic for the 21st century. After many delays due to COVID, it's finally arriving in cinemas.

18 Novembre 2021

film

Spielberg

Shakespeare

Sélection culturelle

Colin Kaepernick: Birth of an Activist

"Colin in Black and White" is a new Netflix mini-series directed by Ava Duvernay. It’s ostensibly the story of Colin Kaepernick’s high-school years, before he became an NFL Star and started his “take a knee” protests. In fact, it’s a sort of manifesto with the older Kaepernick using his younger self to illustrate how he came to hold his present views about systemic racism and chose to express them, at the risk of his career.

18 Novembre 2021

U.S. politics

protest

American football

Josephine Baker Enters the Panthéon

On 30 November, Josephine Baker will become the sixth woman, and the first black woman, to enter France’s Panthéon, where the country honours its greatest heroes. The Franco-American dancer and singer was an active member of the Resistance in WWII and civil-rights activist in the U.S.

18 Novembre 2021

Martin Luther King

WWII

civil rights

Conspiracy Theorist Alex Jones Found Liable for Defamation Over Sandy Hook Shooting

Controversial U.S. broadcaster Alex Jones has been found liable in defamation cases brought in Connecticut and Texas by parents of children killed in the 2012 mass school shooting. Jones has spread conspiracy theories for years saying the shooting was a government hoax aiming at promoting gun control. Twenty children and six adults were shot dead by a lone gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut on 14 December 2012. The gunman also killed his mother, and took his own life. Jones, a talk-radio host, businessman and founder of right-wing websites such as Infowars and Newswars, was sued by parents who are horrified by his claims that they were actors and the tragic events never really happened. The bereaved parents have been victims of trolling and harassment by Jones’ followers. The parents also accused Jones of making financial profit from his claims. In cases judged in Connecticut, and Texas, where Jones is based, judges found him liable of defamation. However, in all of the cases, the judgements were by default, because Jones and fellow defendants refused to provide the court and the families’ lawyers with documents demanded by the court, including financial records. His lawyers claimed that Jones’ statements were protected under First Amendment free speech, but the default rulings mean that those claims were not tested in court. In a bizarre twist, Jones actually admitted in an official deposition for a 2019 case in Texas brought by Sandy Hook parents, "And I, myself, have almost had like a form of psychosis back in the past where I basically thought everything was staged, even though I've now learned a lot of times things aren't staged." Juries in both Connecticut and Texas will now decide the amount of damages Jones will be ordered to pay to the plaintiffs. His defence team has indicated he will appeal. Fake News This is far from being Jones’ only farfetched conspiracy claim. He also says the 2018 Parkland shooting was another gun-control motivated hoax, that 9/11 was perpetrated by the government and the “Pizzagate” hoax he helped spread about Democratic Party officials including then Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton being involved in a child-trafficking ring based in a pizzeria basement is believed to have affected her election results. Jones was banned by Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in 2018 for hate speech and abusive behaviour. But he still hosts a popular talk radio show on the GCN network as well as running websites. Much of his funding is believed to come from selling dubious but unregulated health supplements according to reports by the New York Times. This article is an update on the documents on Alex Jones in Shine Bright AMC File 7 Media on screen, page 69. You could also use it as an example in connection with the section on freedom of speech in Shine Bright AMC File 13 The land of the free.

17 Novembre 2021

fake news

social media

conspiracy theories

Rendez-vous

Death of F.W. De Klerk: Last Apartheid-Era South African President

F.W. De Klerk, South Africa’s last President of the apartheid era, and instrumental in ending it, has died aged 85.

15 Novembre 2021

Nobel prize

South Africa

Nelson Mandela

Anti-Bullying Week

It's Anti-Bullying Week in U.K. schools from 15 to 19 November. The theme is kindness, how saying one kind word can potentially break the cycle of bullying. It lends itself well to a language activity on expressing kindness.

12 Novembre 2021

citizenship

EMC

videos

Travel to Dublin or Norwich for Language Training Courses

Every year, the Education Ministry finances 400 courses in language and culture in EU countries for language teachers in primary or secondary. Applications need to be in by 17 January 2022.

05 Novembre 2021

UK

Ireland

teaching

Short Films with your Lycée Students

The This is England short film festival in Rouen has a specific programme of short films for lycée classes covering topics from ballet to hip hop, flat earth theory to fox hunting.

05 Novembre 2021

film

animation

festival

Sélection culturelle

Eternals: A Team is Born

The expanse of the Marvel Cinematic Universe timeline is about to get much wider with the arrival of Eternals, whose storyline will span thousands of years. Directed by Chloé Zhao (Nomadland), Eternals is visually distinct from many other Marvel films.

04 Novembre 2021

comic book

superhero

Cinéma

Young Kenyan Activist Asks World Leaders to Open their Hearts to Climate Victims

In a short and moving speech to the COP26 conference in Glasgow, Elizabeth Wathuti highlighted the plight of of populations in sub-Saharan Africa who are suffering the worst effects of climate change, which is threatening their livelihoods and even their lives.

04 Novembre 2021

speech

Kenya

Africa

A South African Author Wins the 2021 Booker Prize

Damon Galgut had been shortlisted twice before but 2021 was third time lucky. His novel The Promise mixes the history of a family and his country over four decades. The titular promise shows up power, class and racial divisions in South Africa.

04 Novembre 2021

video

literature

South Africa

Résister à ses automatismes au collège: webinaire

Les études de psychologie et de neurodidactique peuvent fournir des outils pratiques pour les enseignants. Vous pourrez découvrir l’importance du contrôle inhibiteur au collège lors d'une conférence interactive le 24 novembre 2021.

04 Novembre 2021

neurosciences

error

webinar

Photographing the Modern

The interwar period was a highly creative time for the relatively young art of photography. An exhibition at the Jeu de Paume in Paris features an extraordinary collection of photographs from New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

03 Novembre 2021

exhibition

portrait

photography

Guy Fawkes Webpicks

To "remember, remember the fifth of November", as a children’s rhyme says, A1+-level pupils can watch a slideshow about Bonfire Night. At A2-A2+, useful links can be made with the history curriculum It’s worth giving pupils a few basic facts about the failed plot and the annual celebrations. This Powerpoint presentation from the UK Parliament education service also works from A1+ . This article written for kids is a good introduction to Guy Fawkes , usable from A2. The top part concentrates on last year's COVID lockdown starting in England on 5 November, but scrolling down there's more general information. This article about the Gunpowder Plot is can also tackled from A2+. It makes a good link with pupils' history classes, as it emphasises the importance of looking at contemporary source documents. Pupils will no doubt enjoy comparing Fawkes' signatures on arrival at the Tower of London and after questioning – was he tortured and does that explain the differences in the signatures?

02 Novembre 2021

Guy Fawkes

traditions

game

Guy Fawkes: Man in a Mask

November 5, or Guy Fawkes Night, is when British people remember the failed “Gunpowder Plot” to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605. Every November, British people light bonfires and set off fireworks to remember the day when the Houses of Parliament, and King James I, were almost blown up by terrorists. In a rather ghoulish tradition, children make “guys”: effigies of the man who came to symbolise the Catholic “Gunpowder Plot”, to burn on the bonfires. The plot was actually led by an aristocrat, Robert Catesby, not Fawkes, a lowly soldier who happened to be the one caught with the 36 barrels of gunpowder. But Guy Fawkes is the one who is remembered, not only in the Bonfire Night tradition which is still going strong, but also as the face of the Anonymous and Occupy protest movements. Occupy now traditionally holds demonstrations on 5 November. He is also mentioned probably every minute around the world: the ubiquitious word for a man or even person, "guy", derives from Guy Fawkes' name. A children's rhyme says: Remember, remember, the fifth of November, Gunpowder, treason and plot. I know of no reason Why the Gunpowder treason Should ever be forgot! The British have very long memories. Not only is Guy Fawkes night celebrated every November, but, to this day, when the Queen attends the Palace of Westminster for the annual State Opening of Parliament, Yeomen of the Guard (Beefeaters) ritually search the cellars of the building to check there are no barrels of gunpowder!

28 Octobre 2021

Guy Fawkes

Gunpowder Plot

bonfires

Poppy Day

Any image of people in the UK, Canada and Australia in November is likely to include some who are wearing a red paper poppy in their lapel. The Poppy Appeal for war veterans in the run-up to Remembrance Day began in the aftermath of World War I. Today, as the British and Commonwealth armies commemorate the centenary of the terrible loss of life in the Battle of the Somme, the poppy is a poignant link to the past.

28 Octobre 2021

war

remembrance

World War I

Trick or Treat to Do Good

Halloween is an important fundraiser for UNICEF U.S.A. Trick or Treat for UNICEF was started in 1947 and 31 October was declared UNICEF Day by President Lyndon B. Johnson 20 years later. It allows kids "put some meaning in their Halloweening" by collecting money for the United Nations Childrens' Fund.

27 Octobre 2021

U.S.A.

united nations

charity

Sélection culturelle

Love Letter to France

Wes Anderson’s latest film "The French Dispatch" is a homage both to his adopted country and to the amazing writers nurtured by "The New Yorker" magazine, of which Anderson is an avid reader. As with his earlier films like "The Grand Budapest Hotel" and "Moonrise Kingdom", he has assembled an amazing cast.

26 Octobre 2021

video

movies

Frances McDormand

Irish Legends: Wolfwalkers

Tomm Moore’s animated films are rooted in Irish folklore and history. After fairies in Brendan and the Book of Kells and selkies in Song of the Sea , the heroes of his latest film are wolfwalkers, which he describes as “benign Celtic werewolves”. The film is set in 1650, when Cromwell’s English army had put down an Irish rebellion and the colonisers were imposing urbanisation and destroying forests Robyn is English. She and her father have come to Ireland with the Cromwellian figure of the Lord Protector. Her father is an experienced wolf hunter and Robyn usually hunts with him but here, in a colonised Irish town under siege, she is as much in danger from the locals as wolves and is forced to remain in the village while her father goes hunting in the woods which are being cut down on English orders to “civilise” the area and prepare it for organised agriculture. Robyn hates being stuck at home doing domestic tasks and defies the ban on going into the woods. There she meets Mebh, who is a wolfwalker. When she is awake she’s a girl but when she sleeps she becomes a magical wolf who the real wolves obey. Mebh accidentally bites Robyn, who becomes a wolfwalker too, torn between her father the hunter and the wolves her friends. She swears to help Mebh find her missing mother but soon faces difficult choices. https://youtu.be/d_Z_tybgPgg All three films in the trilogy, which are traditional hand-drawn animations, have been nominated for best feature animation at the Oscars. They draw on Irish motifs and designs from pre-Christian times. This would make an interesting complement to the escape game in Shine Bright 2e SnapFile 18 Celtic Legends , or could widen out the escape game on Scottish legends in our escape-game pack.

25 Octobre 2021

Ireland

Irish history

film

Barbados Elects its First President

On 21 October, the Caribbean nation of Barbados took the first step towards becoming a republic when the joint houses of Parliament chose Dame Sandra Mason as the country’s first president, to replace Queen Elizabeth II as head of state. Ms Mason, a trained lawyer and former magistrate, has been the Governor-General of Barbados since 2018: the representative of the British Crown on the island. Barbados will officially become a Republic on 30 November, its annual Independence Day, joining three other former British colonies in the Caribbean which have replaced the British monarch with an elected official: Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and Dominica. All three remained members of the Commonwealth, which Barbados also intends to do. A committee is currently working on a new citizens' charter for the new President to read out on Independence Day, and next year Parliament will make proposals for new Constitution. When the decision to move toward Republic status was approved in 2020, Governor General Mason, delivering a speech on behalf of the country’s Prime Minister Mia Mottley, said, “The time has come to fully leave our colonial past behind.” Barbados was a British colony from 1627 century until independence in 1966. Colonists resorted to slave labour to produce sugar, with the result that today the population is in large majority descended from enslaved African people. Today it has a population of 285,000 and an economy based around tourism, finance and sugar production. This would be a good update for Shine Bright 1e File 7 Caribbean Vibes or Shine Bright LLCER File 8 From Isle to Isle.

22 Octobre 2021

colonisation

UK history

Caribbean

Rendez-vous

Jack Kirby: the Man who Created the Eternals

The Eternals movie is based on the Eternals comic and characters created by Jack Kirby, which was first released in 1976.

21 Octobre 2021

comic book

superhero

Marvel

The Earthshot Prizes: Working with Videos

The Earthshot Prizes website has great short videos on the five ecological challenges the prizes aim to tackle. They are perfect for class use, either picking a theme or having groups work on different videos and share information.

20 Octobre 2021

ecology

environment

climate change

Short Films with your Collège Students

The This is England short-film festival in Rouen has a specific programme of short films for collège classes covering topics from food poverty to sharing, coming-of-age to fossil hunting.

20 Octobre 2021

film

festival

farming

Rendez-vous

2021 California wildfires: Giant Sequoia Killers

On September 2021, two wildfires, one called the Colony Fire and the other Paradise Fire merged together to became the KNP Complex, a terrifying front flames . These big fires burned through the Sequoia National Park in the Sierra Nevada that is home to some of the largest trees in the world, which also include General Sherman, the world’s largest tree in volume.

20 Octobre 2021

sequoia

National Park

California

The Earthshot Prizes

The British Royal Foundation is awarding five prizes a year till 2030 for innovative ideas to help the planet. The Earthshot prizes have been named in reference to President Kennedy’s Moonshot project which concentrated innovators’ energies on putting a human on the Moon in the 1960s. Prince William explained that the aim of the Earthshots is to repair this planet, not explore another one.

20 Octobre 2021

video

sustainable development

India

Halloween with Unicef Videos

Halloween is a popular celebration with pupils, and it can be a great way to introduce some English-speaking culture. In the U.S.A., a major Halloween tradition is Trick or Treat for Unicef, a fundraising campaign for the United Nations children's fund. Unicef has lots of teaching resources about the campaign.

19 Octobre 2021

U.S.A.

united nations

charity

Sir Walter Scott at 250

The father of the historical novel, author of Ivanhoe and the romanticised image of Scottish history portrayed in the Waverley novels, and a collector and preserver of ballads from the oral tradition, Sir Walter Scott was one major figures of Victorian Britain. This year, Scotland celebrates the 250 th anniversary of his birth. Scott was born the son of a lawyer in Edinburgh on 15 August, 1771. At the age of two, he contracted polio, which left him with a limp for the rest of his life. He was sent to stay with is grandparents in the Scottish borders, because the country air was considered better for his health. He was to stay there on and off until he was seven, and was greatly influenced by the ballads and folk tales his grandmother and Aunt Jenny told him. Many featured his ancestors, who, like many people who lived on the border were “reivers”: outlaws who regularly went on raids into England. This light and sound show to commemorate Scott’s 250 th anniversary was projected onto Smailholm Tower in the borders, where his ancestors had lived. https://youtu.be/uC5XsDTLZNI Scott trained as a lawyer, and did work as one, but he had fallen in love with German Romantic poetry and published several translations. He also published anthologies of Scottish ballads he had collected, Minstrelsy of the Scottish Borders. Then he started writing his own epic poems. The most famous, The Lady of the Lake (1810), was set to music by Schubert. It is a tale from Scottish history, a struggle between King James V and the powerful Douglas clan. It was to set the tone for many of Scott’s novels. His first, Waverley (1814), was an immediate and international success. Set in the Scottish Highlands, it combined romantic descriptions of the wild landscape and of the heroic clans. He would go on to write over two dozen of the Waverley novels and is credited with inventing the genre of the historical novel. Most of them are set in Scotland, like the hugely popular Rob Roy , although Ivanhoe , a medieval English tale of chivalry is another of the bestsellers. Both have been adapted as films. https://youtu.be/p76fH8_a32Y The Waverley novels were published anonymously, as Scott wanted to keep his name for his serious poetry, and his legal work. His authorship was only officially revealed in 1827, five years before his death. The world Scott often described, of the Highland clans living in harmony with admittedly harsh nature and according to strong codes of honour, had disappeared by the time he was writing. The clan system had been dismantled by the British crown after the 1745 Jacobite Rebellions. Wearing tartan and carrying weapons were outlawed. Scott contributed to reviving the fashion for tartan in 1822. Always torn between his love for the Scottish past and enthusiasm for the mercantile British future, he helped organise George IV’s visit to Scotland. He adorned Edinburgh in tartan and kilts and launched a craze that would lead to George’s niece, Queen Victoria’s love of Scotland. (She was an enthusiastic reader of Scott.) Scott, who had been made a baronet in 1818, died in 1832, but left his mark on Scotland and on literature. He contributed more words and phrases to the English language than any writer other than Shakespeare. After his death, his home city Edinburgh erected a large monument to him, which still stands on the city’s main thoroughfare, Princes Street. It is a stone’s throw from the main train station, named Waverley after his novels. https://youtu.be/Po_KnisANPY Head over to Ready-to-Use resources for a Biobox video to introduce your students to Scott from A2+.

18 Octobre 2021

poetry

anniversary

videos

3

Ressources
complémentaires

Extinction Rebellion Short Film

The Extinction Rebellion ecological movement first came to prominence in 2019 when after 11 days of protests it persuaded the British government to declare a state of ecological emergency. This twelve-minute-long film starring Emma Thompson is a fiction based on real events and was shot during the 2019 protests in an eco-friendly sustainable way. It can be studied with Shine Bright Terminale Short File 17 Carbon-Free UK.

18 Octobre 2021

video

film

London

3

Ressources
complémentaires

A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting

This Netflix adaptation of a book for teenagers uses all the Halloween paraphernalia: pumpkins, witches and monsters, among which the vile Grand Guignol is planning to steal children’s nightmares to unleash them upon the world. But the members of the Order of Babysitters are determined to stop him. When young Jacob is kidnapped by the villains, his babysitter Kelly calls them for help. This A2 worksheet is based on the official trailer.

18 Octobre 2021

film

literature

U.S. culture

1

Ressources
complémentaires

Sir Walter Scott

This year marks the 250th anniversary of author Sir Walter Scott's birth, on 15 August 1771. Our Biobox video quiz will allow you to familiarise your students with Scott's life from A2+ level. You can download the MP4 file below to use in class. [video width="1278" height="720" mp4="http://www.speakeasy-news.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/BIOBOX_210804_redux.mp4"][/video]

18 Octobre 2021

video

anniversary

British literature