Cry Freedom/ Richard Attenborough visit

I would just like to voice my appreciation, that i know is shared by all of you, to Andy and the academey for arranging Richard Attenborough's visit last week. I was unsure what to expect from the creative talk as there seemed to be so much that he has achieved to possibly condense into one hour!
In person he came across as a very intelligent, kind and passionate man. It struck me how passionate he still speaks about filmmaking and it was extremley inspiring to me and i'm sure everyone else in the class. When he spoke about his personal life, his adopted sisters and the loss of his daughter, it really put things into perspective, and he was extremley graceful when he spoke of this.
A truly wonderful filmmaker, i am very grateful that we had the opportunity to listen to him, it's just a shame there wasnt more time, as i believe we could all have happily listened to him for hours.

This brings me on to Cry Freedom. Id just like to say that for me this was a truly wonderful film. I had never seen this before and was even quite unsure what the story was. After the screening i was still thinking about the film for hours afterwards. I get that quite a lot if sonething has made quite an impact on me. I was in shock that this was still happening in the late 70's and felt almost guilty at my own ignorance. I had no idea the extent of what was going on in South Africa.
I think its a true testament to Attenborough's work to be able to deal with such a sensitive story in such a truthful and subtle way. I normally think this impact normally comes from the 'shock factor' in many films, however i think the story was visually told in such a way, that the impact is already there without that element.
Im really glad that we were able to watch this film, as it is perhaps a film i would never hadve seen otherwise,

Recent viewings!

Well it seems that I've been watching a lot of trash TV recently and hasn't seen anything that's particularly grabbed my attention.
The last film that stuck for me was ' Man with a movie camera' which i actually thought was really good. It's very good at capturing your attention, considering it's without narrative or dialogue. I think the pace of the film is crucial to its success. The pace was really good and the shots were really nice, i liked the shots of the 'man with a movie camera' It's the first time I've seen that kind of observant filming of someone filming so early on in cinema. This was a real eye opener for me anyway in terms of advancements in early film.

In other news, i was lucky enough to have a preview of a new series that will be broadcast on channel 4 on Monday made by a Scottish production company. It's an animation show called KNTV, an education show aimed at teenagers. They previous series was KNTV-Religion and KNTV- Philosophy and the one to be aired on Monday is called KNTV- Sex. Now we know that there are many minefields in sex education in Britain today and i foresee some controversy surrounding this. Screened at 11am every day for two weeks some of the language and scenarios could be questionable for this time of day.
Unlucky that the time means we will all probably miss it, but if you get the chance give it a watch...I thought it was great!

Karen