ABSTRACT
This chapter will be relevant to the section ‘FM4 – World Cinema’ in the WJEC’s A level in Film Studies. It will be directly applicable to questions relating to ‘Specialist Study 1: Urban Stories – Power, Poverty and Conflict’. (You should note that further films that could be used in relation to this part of the syllabus may be found in other parts of this book: Chungking Express is used as a focus film in Chapter 12 on ‘New Waves’ and there are sections on The Bicycle Thieves and The Battle of Algiers in Chapter 11 on ‘Neo-realism’. You may also like to consider the material offered on Strike in Chapter 9 on ‘German and Soviet Cinemas of the 1920s’.)
Approaching films from different cultures In the process of watching films we each bring our own awareness of the world, or our own ideology, to bear on the texts before us. In this way we each create our own understanding of any given film. When we watch the films under discussion here, La Haine or City of God, we use our knowledge of the world and our way of seeing the world to help us to make sense of the array of images and sounds presented to us. Our individual ideologies may, for example, position us as pro-police or anti-police, or as somewhere in between these poles, and this will have a bearing on how we ‘read’ La Haine.
