Two short films to explore friendship and love.

In this blog I have tried to showcase resources that we could use in a bilingual program. The format is almost limitless: short stories, poems, podcasts, songs... and naturally feature films and short films. I am a big fan of short films because they allow us to work in a very flexible way. Short films are usually topic-specifc so students can follow their plots more easily than feature films. Moreover, they are available through numerous websites and portals: Youtube, Vimeo,  Solocortos.com, Cineele, Notodofilmfestival, Cortometrajes online and many others. Short films normally show a very direct and authentic form of the target language and students have access to different varieties of Spanish.

 

I would like to suggest for a Spanish bilingual class two short films from Spain and Mexico that explore the concepts of friendship and love in a very humorous way.

 

¿Quieres ser mi amiga? is less than 4 minutes long, with a very simple language  and talks about how the new social media have changed our concept of friendship. The idea that we keep repeating to students that having multiple "friends" on Facebook doesn't mean that these people are their friends in real life is presented to us in a very funny way in this film. Because the language is very accessible and the topic affects almost any student, we can use this short film in both junior and senior high.

MarcoELE is a website that offers lots of resources that can be used in a Spanish class designed and uploaded by teachers. Two teachers have designed a very interesting lesson plan to use this short in class: ¿Quieres ser mi amiga?

The second short film, Yo también te quiero,  comes from Mexico and deals with the old ideas that men and women cannot be friends and that sensitive, understanding men never get the girl at the end of the story. We follow the adventures of Luis, a young man in love with "a friend" who considers him a very trustworthy friend. So, she tells him everything about the ups and downs of her relationships, to Luis' dismay. Thanks to a dog Luis buys, his luck changes for the better...or so we thought... The short story can trigger lots of discussions and can be used in conjunction with other materials about personal relations. I would use this with senior high school students because of the mood and language.