Screen Education No. 96

YEAR 8 AVAILABLE NOW Depth Study 1: The Western and Islamic World » Medieval Europe » Renaissance Italy » The Ottoman Empire » The Vikings Depth Study 2: The Asia-Pacific World » Japan Under the Shoguns » Angkor/Khmer Empire » The Polynesian Expansion Across the Pacific Depth Study 3: Expanding Contacts » Mongol Expansion » The Black Death in Asia, Europe and Africa » The Spanish Conquest of the Americas Depth Study 6D (NSW: Expanding Contacts) » Aboriginal and Indigenous Peoples, Colonisation and Contact History (Covers Australian Aborigines, North American Indians, New Zealand Maori) AVAILABLE NOW 2019 (INCLUDES TITLES FOR DEPTH STUDY 1 AND 3. Depth Study 1: Making a Better World? » The Industrial Revolution Depth Study 2: Australia and Asia » Making a Nation (Forthcoming in 2019) Depth…

It’s a film about a family, a city and a country, but ultimately it’s about humanity. I wanted to make a film that was both intimate and universal – a film that speaks to everyone. My hope is that, in some way, Roma connects with you and your past, with your memory.– Alfonso Cuarón1 How equipped is the language of cinema to articulate the nuances of memory? The breadth and scope of accumulated experience, the density of stored images, sensations and sounds? And what of those faltering, time-breached memories that elude capture, and that take on the subtle contours of lived experience as they evolve? This tension between our recollection of the places, people and events that define us and their material reality is at the beguiling heart of Roma…

1 ‘Roma – an Invitation from the Director’, Netflix, <https://www. netflix.com/au/title/80240715>, accessed 1 October 2019. 2 See Kristopher Tapley, ‘Alfonso Cuarón on the Painful and Poetic Backstory Behind Roma’, Variety, 23 October 2018, <https://variety.com/2018/film/news/roma-alfonso-cuaron -netflix-libo-rodriguez-1202988695/>; and ‘Roma Stars Break Down the Film’s Unique Shooting Style’, Los Angeles Times, 18 February 2019, <https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/ movies/moviesnow/la-en-mn-roma-live-20190218-story.html>,both accessed 1 October 2019. 3 See Zack Sharf, ‘Alfonso Cuarón at Cannes 2018: Festival “Continuing to Beg” Netflix to Let Roma Premiere’, IndieWire, 13 April 2018, <https://www.indiewire.com/2018/04/alfonso -cuaron-cannes-roma-netflix-ban-1201952422/>, accessed 1 October 2019. 4 ‘The 40 Best Films of 2018’, Sight & Sound, 11 January 2019, <https://www.bfi.org.uk/best-films-2018>, accessed 4 October 2019. 5 Louise Tutt, ‘Why Alfonso Cuaron Teamed Up with Netflix on Roma’, Screen Daily, 11 January 2019, &lt;https://www.screendaily. com/features/why-alfonso-Cuar%C3%B3n-teamed-up-with -netflix-on-roma/5135040.article&gt;, accessed 1 October 2019. 6 Paul Gillingham,…

Not long after its fifth and final episode aired, HBO and Sky’s miniseries Chernobyl became the highest-rated television series on the Internet Movie Database.1 It would be easy to assume that this popularity is at least partially due to the tragic nature of the event it depicts: that being the 1986 meltdown of the No. 4 reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the then-Soviet-ruled Ukraine. After all, significant disasters are endlessly mined for the screen; whether they be terrorist attacks (United 93, Paul Greengrass, 2006; World Trade Center, Oliver Stone, 2006; Patriots Day, Peter Berg, 2016), natural events (The Impossible, JA Bayona, 2012) or catastrophic engineering failures (Deepwater Horizon, Berg, 2016; Titanic, James Cameron, 1997), real-world tragedies are a source of boundless fascination for audiences. So where does…

1 Todd Spangler, ‘HBO’s Chernobyl Is Now the Top-rated TV Show on IMDb’, Variety, 5 June 2019, &lt;https://variety.com/2019/ digital/news/chernobyl-top-rated-tv-show-all-time-1203233833/&gt;,accessed 25 September 2019. 2 Craig Mazin, in ‘The Chernobyl Podcast | Part One | HBO’, YouTube, 6 May 2019, &lt;https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=rUeHPCYtWYQ&gt;, accessed 25 September 2019. 3 See David Wise, ‘Closing Down the KGB’, The New York Times Magazine, 24 November 1991, &lt;https://www.nytimes. com/1991/11/24/magazine/closing-down-the-kgb.html&gt;,accessed 25 September 2019. 4 Stephen King, Twitter post dated 30 May 2019, &lt;https://twitter. com/StephenKing/status/1134084923915145218&gt;, accessed 25 September 2019. 5 Dan Bongino, Twitter post dated 31 May 2019, &lt;https://twitter. com/dbongino/status/1134237358411460609&gt;, accessed 25 September 2019. 6 Craig Mazin, Twitter post dated 31 May 2019, &lt;https://twitter. com/clmazin/status/1134256172284801024&gt;, accessed 25 September 2019. 7 See Lee McIntyre, ‘Lies, Damn Lies and Post-truth’, The Conversation, 19 November 2018, &lt;https://theconversation.com/ lies-damn-lies-and-post-truth-106049&gt;, accessed 25 September 2019.…

The more honest among us will readily admit that our memories of our early secondary school years are riddled with awkwardness, acne and a lot of general confusion. Adolescence is a time when our friendships become complicated, our bodies betray us and the opinions that tend to matter most are those of our peers. Eighth Grade (2018), written and directed by YouTube star Bo Burnham, is a coming-of-age film that remains true to these themes. Where this narrative differs from those of films of the same genre from an earlier generation – such as John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club (1985) and Sixteen Candles (1984) – is the way it portrays the trials of being a teenager in the digital age, a time in which nearly every important moment, staged or…