Blogs to get resources about films for the Spanish class

Today I'd like to talk about  websites or blogs which contain information about films and how to use them in a class. Some of these resources were created to teach Spanish as a second language so most of the films and shorts come from Spanish speaking countries. In other cases the blogs or websites are from schools and teachers who use the resources for the subject of cinema studies in Spanish speaking countries. In the latter, over 50% of the films studied are originally in a language other than Spanish. However, all the attached resources are in Spanish and based on the dubbed version of the films.

Todoele.net is a social network which has over 10,000 Spanish teachers as members. Their main goal is to share resources and strategies to teach Spanish as a second language. The website also gives information about courses, masters and even job opportunities. In the section about cinema there is a list of films with lesson plans created by different Spanish teachers. The activities are organized in levels that follow the European framework of reference. Almost all the films are from a Spanish speaking country an the activities focused on linguistic and cultural elements. The lesson plans were created for adult Spanish learners but many of these films and their lessons plans can be used in a Spanish bilingual or IB program.

Redele is an online magazine published by the Ministry of Education of Spain specialized in teaching Spanish as a second language. It's published annually and everyone working with Spanish programs can send an article to be published. The magazine started in 2004 and in the 25 published numbers so far we can find interesting articles about how to introduce films and short films in the Spanish class. All the previous numbers are available and all articles can be accesses easily.

Con "C" de Cine is a blog dedicated to all the teachers teaching Spanish as a second language who want to use films in their classes. The blog's author regularly introduces films that can be used in the classroom with suggested activities.

Cineele is another blog that also offers suggestions to use films in the class and provides us with different lesson plans ready to be used and organized by levels. The blog also offers a list with links to lessons plans based on films available online under the section "Actividades en la red".

Cero en conducta is a social network maintained by a Spanish teacher, which has the goal of supplying resources and information about the cinema ("the seventh art") to teachers. Teachers can register and participate on the existing working groups or start a new one. Some of the existing working groups are about specific films that can be used in a classroom; some other groups are exploring themes like how to use short films in elementary education. This website is a good tool to contact teachers who are working in similar fields to ours and start a collaboration.

These are some links to find information about films and how to use them in the Spanish class. Naturally, we all need to build up our own list of short films and films, create some activities and share them with the rest of teachers.

Short documentaries for the Spanish class: Other cultures

We should not understimate the potential of resources which have been translated into languages from the original ones. They are great resources for a Bilingual or IB program and we can use the Spanish subtitled version to learn more about other cultures.

El maná,  by Artal and Carrascal, is a short documentary from Colombia. The narrator tells us about his life as a Wayúu. The Wayúus are an ethnic group from La Guajira peninsula, in the border between Colombia and Venezuela. Surrounded by the desert they have kept their language, culture and laws up to our days. However, globalization is affecting them now in unexpected ways.

Balthasar by Joanot Cortés, a young director from Spain. In Mozambique the effects from the European colonisation and the civil war are still present. However, there are projects that bring hope to the most vulnerable ones, the children. "A nossa Escola" is a pedagogical project between the Universidade Beira Interior (Portugal) and the elementary school Bairro Triunfo in Mozambique. Balthasar wants to recite the poem that he learnt in the best possible way. He rehearses the verses and then he delivers them in a outstanding way. We can listen to a poem that embodies the wish for a better future for all children in his country and around the world. The information about the short was taken from this blog.

Djenneba, by José Manuel Herraiz. This is another short documentary that shows the hope for a better future for Djenneba. She is an albino young girl in Mali, one the poorest countries in the world. Despite her condition, despite the environment where she grew up, she has not given up and still thinks a bright future is waiting for her.

 

In this link, we can also watch the short film and learn about the reasons that moved the director to create it. He is planning a second part and I can´t wait to see his second short film about Djenneba´s life: Buscando a Djenneba.

 

These are three short documentaries that took part in Notodofilmfest, the film festival I have mentioned in previous posts. They show a different reality for our students and can trigger interesting discussions in our class and they can also be used in research projects .  They are good examples to make students aware that Spanish can be a working tool to learn about other realities, not only Hispanic cultures.

Spanish Civil War 2, the International Brigades

A chapter in the Spanish Civil War that has always interested me is the involvement of other countries in the conflict. Just before the war, Europe experienced the rise of non-democratic regimes in Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union. Germany and Italy supported Franco's nationalistic side with troops and arms. The famous Guernica mural by Picasso portrays one of the most outrageous episodes of the civil war when German planes of the Condor Legion and Italian planes destroyed the defenseless small town of Guernica. The Republicans were supported mainly by the Soviet Union and Mexico. Both countries sent arms although the involvement of Mexico after the war was much more intense, opening the country to thousands of Spanish refugees. Something that still surprises many people is the lack of involvement of Western democracies in the conflict to help a democratic regime in Spain, a fact which influenced  the outcome of the war profoundly.

This part is important but I am much more interested in the anonymous citizens who decided to go to Spain to support the democratic government and to stop the rise of totalitarianism in Europe. The reasons that moved these young people to go to Spain were varied but all of them thought that they were helping to stop the spreading of fascism. In most cases their governments were against their participation in the war. According to the website of La Asociación de Amigos de las Brigadas Internacionales the number of members that fought in the Brigadas Internacional is still unclear today but probably close to 50,000 members from around 50 countries. Information about the amount of people going to Spain, the nationalities and the battles in which they took part can be found on the website. Many of these people did not take part in the military action and worked as journalists, in medical care, as translators etc.

Naturally, some members of the International Brigades were already known before going to Spain and some others will become famous after the war. In the Wikipedia article, International Brigades, there is a list of people who are famous for different reasons. The list includes politicians like German former chancellor Willy Brandt, writers like George Orwell and artists like Mexican David Alfaro Siqueiro.

There is not an official number for the Canadians who fought in Spain. The website of La Asociación de Amigos de las Brigadas Internacionales speaks of about 512. Other sources raise the number up to 1,600 men and women. They were integrated into the Mackenzie-Gatineau Battalion, which was part of the Lincoln Brigade. This Brigade had 3 more battalions, one of them was Lincoln Battalion integrated mainly by Americans. A documentary by the National Board Film of Canada shows the political and economical situation both in Spain and Canada before the war and how it pushed young Canadians to travel to Spain even though the Canadian government forbade them to do so. The documentary also shows the battles where they fought and their lives back in Canada.

A very interesting documentary is also about the Lincoln Brigade and the young Americans who participated in the war. It was probably the first time in history that an American military unit was led by an Afro-American.

Most of the members of the International Brigades were not well received back in their countries by their governments. Many lived a life of ostracism and were never recognized by their generosity. In the case of Canada, many were not allowed to join the Canadian army when the World War started just months after the end of the Spanish Civil War.

In 1996, 21 years after Franco's death, the Spanish government decided to offer Spanish nationality to the members of the International Brigades who were still alive. It was the first time I ever heard about them and I was impressed by the emotions they demonstrated when they returned to Spain and being granted citizenship. A documentary on the Spanish television shows that historical moment.

The last Canadian fighter Jules Paivoo, died in September 2013 at 97. When he was 94 he received Spanish citizenship in a ceremony at the Spanish Embassy in Canada. Even then he still thought of visiting Spain with his brand new passport.


In 2000 the British newspaper The Guardian interviewed 23 of the 40 survivors from the Spanish Civil War. They were the last 40 of the 2500 British citizens who traveled to Spain to support the Republican government. Again their opinions are worth being listened to.

Some of the writers who went to Spain wrote novels portraying their experiences in the war. Homage to Catalonia, by George Orwell, and For whom the bells toll, by Ernest Hemingway, are the most famous ones. While I was researching for this post I came across the story of James Neugass, an American who went to Spain and was driving an ambulance during the war. After he went back to the States, he married, had a family but died when he was 44, leaving two young sons. In 2000, Jim Neugass, the youngest son, got a phone from a professor asking for his permission to publish some of his dad's poems. The professor also mentioned the manuscript of the diary that the father wrote during his time in Spain and the whole family has never heard of. The book was published in 2008 and in 2012, Jim Neugass went to Spain to visit the places where his dad had driven the ambulance. In turn, he took part in a documentary produced and directed by a doctoral student at Oxford University. Here we can read about his journey.

I'd like to finish this post with a reference to El Quijote, the most universal book of Spanish literature. In  chapter LVIII Cervantes, who had been in prison several times, puts the following words in the mouth of the main character Don Quijote: "Freedom, Sancho, is one of the most precious gifts that heaven has bestowed upon men; no treasures that the earth holds buried or the sea conceals can compare with it; for freedom, as for honour, life may and should be ventured; and on the other hand, captivity is the greatest evil that can fall to the lot of man." To those who dreamt and fought for freedom in Spain and all over the world I give my deepest respect and my gratitude.

Three short Documentaries for the Spanish Class

I have already written that the short documentaries that appear in the cinema festival Notodofilmfest can be used in our classes for linguistic and thematic reasons. I'd like to introduce 3 short documentaries that have impressed me because of the topics they deal with. As in previous posts, I always try to look for resources that can be useful linguistically but also that introduce current issues which engage students in research projects or discussions.

Khessal a short film by Spanish director Jorge Dorado shows a terrible reality affecting young women in some African countries. In the short film we learn about a chemical product, khessal, which is used by many African women to whiten their skin. To have a paler skin means that they can have a better life personally and professionally. If this was not enough, most of the khessal makers use chemicals which are devastating for these young women's health. This is the reality the short film introduces and criticises.

Llamame Parker is a very surprising documentary in many ways. In fact, the first time I watched it in the Internet I thought it was a fiction film. However, it entered the documentary competition in Notodofilmfest. The topic is also quite unusual: a man in Madrid disguises as Spiderman to entertain the tourists in Plaza Mayor and earn a living this way. He is neither proud nor ashamed of doing this, he sees this activity as his job, his everyday duty. We can download the script of the short film in this blog if we want to use it in our class.

The last film is just 30 seconds long, I have spoken about this section before. A man in the Aztec traditional clothes begs for money from the motorists in Mexico city. It makes us think how difficult it is for minorities to fit in this increasingly uniformed world we live in and be able to keep their cultures alive.

These are three suggestions that can open discussions in our classes. They are linguistically interesting and deal with current topics that affect us even if we think that they are remote from our lives. My suggestion is to continue surfing Notodofilmfest to find more exciting short films.

30 second short films for the Spanish class

In this post, I'll continue my previous conversation about 30 second long short films that appear in the Notodofilmfest. We relate these films with "microrrelatos", flash fiction, of which we have so many good examples in Spanish. I am going to introduce some of these "flash short films" that deal with the impact of technology on our daily lives.

Flatmates 3.0 by Francesco Marisei. This first short has won numerous awards for its simple but powerful message. Only one shot is enough to tell us so much about the communication society we live in. It is full of irony and sadness and it can lead to enriching discussion in our classes.

In many ways related to the previous short film, I find Las Batallitas del Abuelo, by Néstor Fernandez, very interesting. A grandfather is telling his grandson about his "batallitas" in his younger years, when he was brave, idealistic and dreamt of changing the world. Only that when he was young, the Internet took over society and changed it forever. This short is very powerful but we need to consider the language used before showing in a class.

 

 

And technology has changed the way we get involved romantically with other people, as Chicaconocechico by Pablo Vara  depicts in 30 seconds full of irony.

These 3 short films can be used to discuss about how technology is affecting and changing our lives in the era of global communication. It doesn't mean that we feel less lonely though.

Notodo Filmnfest, short films for the Spanish class

I came across Notodo Filmfest surfing the web in the look of resources for the Spanish class. My first impression was not very optimistic, considering the main sponsor of the festival. However, after a closer look I was very much surprised and I highly recommend to spend some time surfing its website to find very interesting resources for our Spanish classes.

Some of the features I like about the festival and the philosophy behind are:

• The short films can be in any language (most are in Spanish) and must have English or Spanish subtitles. We can encounter many cultural realities.
• Short films cannot be longer than 3 minutes and a half. This fact makes them very flexible for a class.
• The Jameson Triple Distillation Award is for 30 second long films, which makes their length similar to commercials and relate them to the concept of microrrelatos that I also like to use in my classes.
• The jury members are recognized film directors or screen play writers, so the quality of the awarded films is guaranteed.
• There is section called Latinoamerica en corto, so we have also access to a number of short films from other Spanish speaking countries, not only Spain.
• There is section that includes three and a half minutes documentaries. They deal with current issues in a very accessible way.

Apart from the festival website, we can have access to the films in  the YouTube watching list:

There are several short films I would like to comment on but it will be on my next post.

Humor negro (Black Humour) for the Spanish class

When someone in Canada asks me about one recurrent feature in many works of art in Spanish, I always mention black humour and  surrealism. Both appear in every aspect of our daily lives too, we just need to have a look at the political and economical situation in Spain and how people are enduring it. It has been a tradition of the Spanish to use humour to help face hard or painful situations over the centuries. This vision can be found in the poems of El Libro de Buen Amor or in many of the passages in El Lazarillo, just to give you some examples. With the current economical situation, numerous writers and film makers portray today's society with an acidic sense of humour. It seems that laughing at ourselves is one of the best remedies at the moment. 

Guillermo Barbarov, an Argentinian director who has lived in Spain for several years, gives us in this short film, Como está la cosa, a hilarious but deeply sad vision of the crisis and how it is affecting basic human rights and even people's dignity. Once our smile fades away it is difficult not to feel sorry for the two characters in the short film and sorry for ourselves at the same time.

 

Spanish people dread going to government offices to do any kind of business. It can be a federal, provincial or local office, there is no difference. We have to deal with apathetic civil servants and in the end, we will likely need to go back because they will send us home with more forms to fill out. This is what this short film is trying to portray.

 

 



 

 

 

Black humour and surrealism are present in every day activities, for example, publicity. I have already spoken of the approach to football in Spain: you support a team, no matter what and  in a way that you sometimes need to seek medical advice to deal with it (as you will see in the film below). Naturally, the problem can be easily solved: buy an annual pass for your favourite team to become fully recovered and happy. Well, it is not so simple, as the doctor suggests. There is also a dark humorous reference to what is happening with public health care in Spain because the patient is number 1,924 in today's waiting list!

 

 



 

This surreal approach is very common in publicity. There are many examples but the way a brand of olive oil is advertised in this commercial, is one of my favourites.

 

 

 

Understanding humour will enhance students' appreciation of the target language and its culture. Video clips such as these will help students digest these ideas better because the humour is more "concrete". I encourage you to revisit or find similar clips for yourselves and your students.





Unexpected endings

A technique I like to use in my classes to encourage students to use the oral language is to show short stories, commercials or even news that have an unexpected ending. I try to find segments that elicit students' predictions of the outcomes. This way students can present their hypotheses and can lead to interesting discussions. Some other times, I encourage them to invent an ending for the story that we are working with. Naturally, there is a need to scaffold the language prior to start with the oral language activities.

The first example that I would like to comment on is a commercial from Argentina. I am a great lover of commercials and particularly Argentinian commercials. Before watching this short clip, we can ask our students to reflect on some commercials and try to find some features of the language of publicity, the settings, the characters. Do we expect a crying person trying to convince us about buying something? We can watch the man crying and ask what they are trying to sell us. After some discussion we can continue with the part about the soccer and discuss about its role in many Spanish speaking countries. Finally, we can talk about the unexpected ending and find out if anyone thought about the product they are advertising.

Capicúa is a short film by Roger Villarroya that deals with a very serious topic, how fragile human beings are, especially at the beginning and at the end of our lives. Capicúa is a number that can be read the same left to right as right to left. For example, 2112 is a capicúa number and when children, I remember that we were on the search of these numbers because they were like lucky charms. And our life is capicúa, we are as helpless and we need as much care at the beginning as at the end of our lives. We can start asking our students what babies' needs are and then they can compare the list with what the old people also need. This is the trick the director uses for an unexpected ending and to make us reflect about our own fragility.

The third example shocked me so much that I still don't know what the main purpose of the director is. The first time I watched it, I thought it was real people talking about their real experiences. I thought that the main purpose of the short film was to show how vulnerable we are and how our life and our dreams hang from a thin string. But after watching the totally unexpected ending, some new theories came to my mind and I think this is what we can use to trigger discussions and opinions.

It is always challenging to engage students to use the language orally. Using short clips with open or unexpected ending can be a good tool to convince students to speak using the target language. We will need to scaffold the language, give them some warm-up tasks before watching the clips...the results can be very outstanding!