Reading Film in Context: Social, Cultural and Historical

Two dates, one film

Every film carries two dates. There is the year on the screen, the year the story happens in. And there is the year behind the camera, the year the film was actually shot and released. For a film about its own present, those two dates are the same and nobody asks the question. For any film set in the past they pull apart, and the gap between them is where most of the marks in a context question live. ⭐ A film set in the past is evidence about two periods, and it is far better evidence about the later one. What the film finds shocking, who it casts as the hero, what it leaves out and the ending it is willing to give you all come from the year behind the camera. The year on the screen supplies the costumes.

Three contexts you can bring to any film

Your specification names six contexts. This module works on three of them, the three you can bring to almost any film in the world. The other three, the political context, the technological context and the way funding and budget shape what gets made, belong to a separate module on this specification, so they are named here and worked there.

Put the context move in order

A context sentence that earns marks does four things, in this order. Arrange them.

• Name one specific contextual fact
• Say which of the two years that fact comes from
• Point at one choice visible on the screen
• Say what that choice does to the audience

Which year is it evidence about

A film shot recently tells a story set a hundred years earlier. It gives its heroine a kind of independence that would have been very unusual for a woman in the period the story is set. Which year does that choice tell you most about?

• The year behind the camera, because the choice reflects what audiences today expect to admire
• The year on the screen, because a period film shows how that period really was
• Neither year, because independence is a timeless human quality
• Both years equally, because the film shows one period and was shot in another

What each date can explain

Both dates are worth writing about. They explain different things, and mixing them up is the commonest way a context paragraph goes wrong. The safest sentence you can write names which column your fact came from.

Find the sentence that earns the marks

Here is part of a student answer about a hypothetical film. Select the ONE sentence that actually does contextual work.

• This film was shot several decades ago and is set even further back than that.
• At the time the story was set, most families in that part of the world worked on the land.
• Because the film was shot at a time when its own audience was moving into the cities, the farm is filmed in long, slow, golden shots that make the audience feel they have lost something.
• The main character is very brave and the audience likes him.
• Overall, the historical context of the film is very interesting and adds a lot to the story.

Which of these are context

Three of these five statements about a hypothetical film are statements of context. Choose the three.

• In that society, land was passed to the eldest son and daughters inherited nothing
• The community in the film treats a particular festival as the most important day of the year
• The brother arrives late and the argument starts at the dinner table
• The film was shot at a time when very few films were being given a female lead
• The chase lasts about five minutes and ends on a bridge

The question to ask first

When a question hands you a film and asks about context, do not begin by listing what you know about the period. Begin with one question. ⭐ Which year is this film evidence about? Answer that and the rest follows, because you now know which facts are worth reaching for. And there is a quick check on anything you write: if you could delete your fact and the sentence would still stand, the fact was never doing any work.

Match the film detail to what it tells you

What an old photograph gives away

Forget film for a moment. Somebody hands you a photograph of a stranger and asks you when it was taken. You do not answer by looking at the stranger. ⭐ You look at the hairstyle. The cut of the coat. The paper it is printed on, and whether the edges are scalloped. The car parked behind. Whether the person is posed stiffly against a painted backdrop or caught mid-laugh. Every one of those things belongs to the year the shutter was pressed. None of them belongs to the person, who is the thing the photograph is supposedly about. ⚠️ And here is the strange part. If the stranger dressed up for the picture in the clothes of an earlier age, the photograph STILL gives away the year it was taken. The idea of which earlier age was worth dressing up as, and how it was imagined, belongs to the moment the picture was made, not to the age being imitated. ⭐⭐ A film works in exactly the same way, on a much larger scale and with hundreds of people making the decisions. Every costume that was approved, every line that was cut and every ending that was preferred is a mark left by the year the work was done. That is why a story about the distant past can be the most revealing document we have about the decade that told it.

Complete the film context facts

A film shot in one decade but set in another is the better evidence about the year behind the _____. Writing about how that society was organised and who held power is writing about its _____ context. Writing about what a group believed and how it lived is writing about its _____ context. Writing about the moment in time the film belongs to is writing about its _____ context. And a fact earns nothing until it is tied to a _____ on the screen and you say what that does to the _____.

Build a context sentence that works

Complete the model sentence about a hypothetical film so that every part of it does a job.

Find the film context words

Six words from this module are hidden in the grid. Each clue describes one of them.

Context quick-fire

Five quick decisions. Three lives.

Plan a context answer

You have fifteen minutes and a question asking how the contexts of your film shape it. Work through the plan.

• You read the question. What do you do in the first thirty seconds?
• You have two minutes to choose your material. Which is the stronger choice?
• You are writing your first paragraph. You have named a fact and pointed at a moment in the film. What comes next?

Write about a film in its two contexts

Write about a film you have studied, or about a film you know well, in the way this module has taught. Do not summarise the story.

• Name the year the film puts on the screen and the year it was shot in, and say which one your answer is mainly about
• Give one specific social or cultural fact, not a general impression of a period
• Point at one moment or decision in the film where that fact can actually be seen
• Say what that moment does to the audience watching it
• Finish with one sentence on what the film gives away about the decade that made it