In our last blog we wrote about two films that take a cynical look at consumerism and how students can respond to these films with their own thoughts. To read about these and all our other posts, visit our blog here.
This week we're writing about a film we know you're going to love. It's called Bottle and it's a most quirky but fascinating film. You've heard of claymation? The process where clay figures are used to animate a film (such as in Wallace & Grommit). We'll Bottle is a version of this - but it's 'sandmation' and 'snowmation'. The film is about a sand figure who lives on a beach and discovers a washed up bottle. He decides to put some sand in the bottle and let the sea wash it out again. The bottle then washes up to a landscape of snow and pine trees where a snow figure finds it. The snow figure is fascinated by the sand inside the bottle (so different from its own landscape) and replaces it with some snow. Then it puts the bottle back in the water to be washed back to the beach. And so a relationship develops between these two figures - who are the same but different. They pass the bottle between each other with new things each time to represent the place they come from. We won't say what happens in the end, but it really is a lovely story. You can find it on Youtube here.
There are numerous ways this film can be used in the classroom. To begin with, it can be discussed as a 'message film'. We can ask our students: 'What can we learn about relationships and how to overcome and appreciate our differences from these two characters?' It can also provide stimulus for getting students to pass their own 'bottle' to students from another country. There are many sites which offer international pen pal services (via email of course), which can be a great way for getting students to write and exchange information with students from a much different culture to their own. For a list of pen pal sites, click here.
Something else you might like students to do is to get them to pick objects that they feel represent their sense of 'place' - not necessarily our country, but the particular 'place' they come from in it and feel strongly connected to. Students could list what objects they would pick if they were to put them in a bottle to send to someone else as happens in the film. Students could even do this online by creating a Discovery Box - a virtual time capsule tool. Find more about this tool here or a different time capsule tool here.
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