About Our Films

FILMS POLICY

FILMCLUB's catalogue of films has been chosen for our members with specific goals in mind. To find out more about these goals and the educational principles on which they are based, please read the FILMCLUB Programming Policy.

FILMCLUB Film Policy [PDF, 36 KB]

OUR AGE RATINGS

All our films have an age rating to let you know whether a movie is likely to be suitable for the children and young people in your club. This isn't the same as a BBFC certificate, which is there to tell you what kind of content a film features and whether the BBFC feel it is safe for a particular audience. The FILMCLUB age rating takes that information into account, but also factors in whether we think your club members are likely to actually find the film rewarding, engaging and entertaining. It's not a scientific process, as you know, what one ten year old (or five year old or eighteen year old!) will enjoy is very different to what another might but we hope it will give you a useful guide as to whether a film is likely to be right for the children and young people in your club.

TEACHERS GUIDANCE

If you click on the green button marked Teachers Guidance on a film's page, we can let you know whether it features bad language (and if so how much and what type). Not every film on our website features this guidance (some don't need it and some we're still in the process of reviewing) but in most cases we can tell you whether and how often your club members are going to have to clap their hands over their ears during a film! For more detailed information on the content of specific films, please see the BBFC website and the parent's BBFC website.

FILMCLUB RECOMMENDS

There are an awful lot of films on the FILMCLUB website, the last time we checked there were almost 4500. And of course, while we hope that you and your club members will enjoy any film you order from us, it wouldn't be honest of us to say that as film lovers we don't think some of our films are that little bit better or more interesting than others. And while we're not going to tell you what to watch and what not to watch, there are certain movies here on our site that are particularly dear to our hearts, and that we really do believe you and your club members will find an especially rich experience.

That's why we've hand-picked a collection of a few hundred of we feel are the best, most ambitious, imaginative, absorbing and all-round excellent films we have to offer and marked them with our FILMCLUB Recommends badge. There's a huge range of films from all countries and eras, suitable for audiences across all age groups but the one thing they all have in common is that for us at least they represent the very best of the best!

ISSUES OF SENSITIVITY

Although we hope that you'll have a thorough sense of a film's content between its BBFC certificate, our Teachers Guidance about bad language and the description of the film on its page, we can't guarantee that none of our movies contain anything that might potentially cause offence to an individual club leader or club member. In particular, older movies including some of the finest films ever made date from a time when society had different ideas about language related to race, gender, sexuality, disability and a host of other issues. If you do have concerns over a specific film please do get in touch with us and we'll try our best to answer them, but in general it's worth remembering that 'the past is another country' one that made thousands of wonderful movies we would wholeheartedly recommend to children and young people, but also had some aspects we might now find very unfamiliar.

SPECIAL EDUCATIONAL NEEDS

FILMCLUB has put together programming suggestions for different SEN areas. If you have any feedback or suggestions you'd like to share, please email support@filmclub.org.

Aspergers (PDF, 45KB)
Autism (PDF, 49KB)
MILD and MLD (PDF, 49KB)
SEBD (PDF, 53KB)
Severe Learning Difficulties (SLD) (PDF, 492KB)
Short Films For Short Attention Spans (PDF, 49KB)

Many DVDs have audio descriptions for the sight-impaired and subtitles for the hearing-impaired. You can find a full list of those available below:

DVDs for the sight-impaired (PDF, 76KB)
DVDs for the hearing-impaired (PDF, 80KB)