For teachers in the Northern Hemisphere summer break is upon us. This is often a time for summer reading lists and, in the case of the film class, perhaps a summer watch list.
Cinema shapes our cultural codes and sense of self. Films get passed down, generation to generation, a form of heritage, each one a time capsule of its moment.
This summer, flip the script and invite your students to make your watchlist. A trade of sorts, your curated list for them, their homework for you.
Questions to help guide the selection process.
What films matter to you?
What stories have shaped how you see the world?
What should I see to understand your generation?
Ask them to share one or two films each, local, global, beloved, or underseen. Build your summer watchlist from their picks. Choose up to six to watch. Hopefully, there is an unexpected gem or two in there.
Let them surprise you. Come back in September, re-tuned to their worlds.
And if you would like to share a film that meant something to you as a teenager, or one recommended by a student, drop it in the comments or Substack chat (it’s live now!). For those of you who aren’t teachers or students, you’re invited to share too.
Happy viewing!
My teenage choice is After Life by Hirokazu Koreeda - it came out when I was about 14 and I think I must have seen it in the cinema, but remember later also having it on VHS. It was one of the first non-English language films that I really fell in love with.
Also my friends and I got very involved with London's mod/60s scene around the turn of the millennium, so Quadrophenia was dear to our hearts at that time!
My teenage pic would probably be Miyazaki’s Castle in the Sky. It opened up a world of anime that seemed pretty inaccessible to me before then