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on 31/3/03 6:20 PM, Steve Welburn at [log in to unmask] wrote: > Also, just because any points are covered elsewhere and earlier, doesn't > seem to make The Matrix as an example less relevant. For example, how about > younger people to whom a film from pre-1980 is from before they were born > (e.g students)... What about them? If you're giving a class, why is it necessary to use a recent film just because they happen to know it because they were alive when it was made? Sure, when I was in my UG classes, I always looked forward to the 'recent' films (loosely current films then included _Thelma & Louise_, _Born on the 4th July_, _Santa Sangre_) that my tutors put on, whilst simultaneously dreaded almost anything that wasn't (_Sing as We Go_ I didn't look forward to). By the same token, I loved the Gracie Fields film, whilst I fell asleep (and snored like a good'un) during Fellini's interminably self-indulgent _8 1/2_. (will I go to hell for saying that?) Ultimately, I don't think my experience of cinema was necessarily enriched by watching recent film as much as it was by being introduced to Eisenstein's _Strike_, or Tarkovsky's _Mirror_, or even _Passport to Pimlico. Surely film classes give us (now that I'm on the other end of that relationship) the opportunity to widen our students' experience of cinema. This last year I've done a bit of both approaches - I've shown _Road to Perdition_, _Battleship Potemkin_, and even shown them a copy of _Vidocq_ I picked up in France. I suppose _The Matrix_ would be on a list of films I would show (although quite far down), but that's because I give a lecture on the terrors of technology, not because it's recent and the students (poor darlings) might feel alienated or just get bored if I show them _Westworld_, _Metropolis_, or a couple of Griffith shorts. >> which is funny, because that's where I think the level of its > philosophical >> discussion about "we're all slaves to the machine" belongs. > > Assuming you mean "the machine" as our perceptions, I'm not sure it's a > topic I'll tire of soon... and I don't think the final word on it'll ber > said for a long time yet... No, I don't mean "'the machine' as our perceptions". What does that mean? best Damian