Films About...

From orphaned children on the Iraqi border in Turtles Can Fly to a Cuban poet persecuted for his homosexuality in Before Night Falls, films have provided powerful insights in to the lives of refugees around the world.

The emotional turmoil of being forced to flee a homeland has driven some of cinema’s greatest stories, such as Casablanca, about European refugees desperate to get their hands on safe passage documents.The fortunes of a young Russian-Jewish mouse fleeing persecution by cats inspired the much-loved songs of children’s animation An American Tail, while an Afghani refugee determined to rectify a childhood wrong is the focus of best-seller adaptation The Kite Runner.

FILMCLUB has created an indepth resource that looks at each individual film in more detail - examining how refugees are portrayed on film and offering up ideas to stimulate some fascinating debates and discussions about a very emotive topic.

You can download the resource here

There are lots of ways for a film to make it onto FILMCLUB’s LGBT Role Models list. Some tell the story of historical figures who stood up for LGBT rights (Milk) or suffered discrimination because of their sexuality (Wilde, Before Night Falls). Others are about fictional characters with a relevant experience (Philadelphia, My Beautiful Launderette, Tomboy). Some, like Cry Baby, Independence Day, Little Man Tate and Volver were directed by talented gay people in the film industry. In some LGBT issues are at the forefront (The Kids Are All Right, Ma Vie En Rose), but more and more we’re seeing films where the sexuality of the characters just isn’t a big deal (Scott Pilgrim Vs The World). We hope that’s a sign that society at large is finally cottoning on to Stonewall’s brilliant message: “Some people are gay. Get over it!”

1.    Milk (2008), 15
Sean Penn won an Oscar for this inspiring portrayal of gay rights campaigner, Harvey Milk.

2.    Wilde (1997), 15
The life of gay, brilliantly witty writer Oscar Wilde is the basis for this film, in particular his disastrous relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas.

3.    Before Night Falls (2000), 15
The moving and finely-crafted tale of the Cuban Poet and novelist Reinaldo Arenas who suffered severe persecution because of his sexuality.

4.    The Kids Are All Right (2010), 15
Modern family relationships are examined with delicious honesty in this smart and sassy comedy-drama.

5.    Ma Vie En Rose (1997), 12
Charming and sharp French film about a little boy who likes dressing as a girl.

6.    My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), 15
Pioneering British drama about two outsiders setting up business during the Thatcher years.

7.    Philadelphia (1993), 12
Powerful drama made in 1993 when it was daring to make a Hollywood film about AIDS, about a top lawyer sacked when his firm learns he has the disease

8.    Gods & Monsters (1998), 15
Sir Ian McKellen, a co-founder of the lesbian, gay and bisexual rights charity Stonewall, stars in this tender and melancholic account of the last days of gay Frankenstein director James Whale.

9.    Frankenstein (1931), PG
Based on Mary Shelley's classic Gothic horror novel, about a misunderstood monster hounded through Transylvania's foggy graveyards. Directed by the openly gay James Whale.

10.    The History Boys (2006), 15
This excellent film about the value of education launched the career of many a contemporary British actor, including out-and-proud Being Human star Russell Tovey.

11.    Cry Baby (1990), 15
Cult classic musical comedy in which a moody tough guy falls for a clean-cut girl, setting the Drapes subculture against the Squares.

12.    Independence Day (1996), 12
Big-budget, futuristic film with state-of-the-art CGI about a hostile alien invasion of earth.

13.    Little Man Tate (1991), PG
Engaging drama in which a working-class woman strives to get the best for her six-year-old genius son, getting help from a child psychologist

14.    A Taste of Honey (1961), 15
A memorable drama that involves a pregnant teenage girl who shares a flat with an openly gay man.

15.    Tomboy (2011), U
A beautifully understated, naturalistic drama about childhood gender identity confusion that’s both touching and gently humorous.

16.    Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (2010), 12
Full of rock music, computer-graphics and hilarious supp

Inner cities have a bad reputation. Residential areas set in the middle of cities they are known for high unemployment and being stuck in a cycle of poverty, causing a life of crime, violence, gangs and drug use.

A growing problem of the 21st century, contemporary British films such as Kidulthood (15), Shifty (15) and Bullet Boy (15) all focus on the dangers of inner city London. The realism of these films highlights the run-down landscape as the stories reveal the gritty lives of teens in areas where crime is the norm.

Unfortunately, films about the inner city are sometimes content rely on stereotypes of wannabe gangsters rather than telling the stories of individuals. Ticking this box is Save The Last Dance (12) in which a white would-be ballerina new to an inner city American school discovers a taste for hip-hop. However, although it relies on stereotypes it also challenges them by showing an inspirational black lead male not impressed with the gangster lifestyle.

Where Save The Last Dance gives inner city life the glossy Hollywood treatment, Boyz N The Hood (15) was one of the first films to provide a more realistic view. A coming-of-age story about a group of boys growing up in South Central LA, it is a grim account of a community dogged by gangs, guns and drugs. A similarly powerful representation of inner city life can be seen in Precious (15) - through the eyes of an overweight girl growing up in a poor, abusive family, we see the struggles of living in a New York.

Viewed as the French Boyz N The Hood, La Haine (15) confronts the harsh reality of inner city Paris. Shot in black and white, it follows a day in the life of three friends, angered by the abuse of another friend at the hands of the police. In doing so it reveals a violence bubbling under the surface of the picture-perfect version of Paris we more often see in films like Amelie (15). Likewise, through its very real depiction of two teenagers involved in a turf war in their slum, the Brazilian film City of Men (15) does exactly the same for the ‘favelas’ (shantytowns) of Rio de Janeiro.

Turning the inner city stereotype on its head, Tsotsi (15) - set in the shantytowns of Johannesburg, South Africa - explores how a young gangster copes with a newborn baby. British film Attack The Block (15) pokes fun at the stereotype by showing “hoodies” becoming heroes, when a group save their tower block from invading aliens. Very different again, experimental film The Arbor (15) reveals life on a tough Bradford council estate, but follows few of the conventions usually associated with the subject matter. For example instead of using traditional dialogue, the actors lipsynch to recorded interviews with real people.

Until the mid 1960s, African Americans living in the south of the US could not vote, go to the same schools as white people, use the same drinking fountains or travel on the same part of the bus. The dramatic years when this changed, known as the Civil Rights era, have been revisited many times by Hollywood.

The latest film to do this is The Help. A young white woman comes home to Jackson, Mississippi from college and realises that the most interesting people in her community are the ones everyone ignores – the black maids. She writes a book that scandalises her town, and is a wake-up call about the change that is about to come to all their lives.

The Help isn’t a big, political drama. It’s a comedy about a small group of ordinary people who only see the main, sometimes tragic events of the Civil Rights movement on TV. That’s not unusual – although Dr Martin Luther King even has a public holiday named after him in the US, there has never been a big budget Hollywood movie taking in all the crucial events of the struggle. Most films that have been made, like The Help, have a much smaller focus. And often, like The Help, they are as much about the white characters as the black ones.

Writing about The Help and other Civil Rights movies in the New York Times, the influential critic Nelson George claimed, "To protect viewers, sometimes at profound damage to the historical record, white heroes are featured […] giving blacks a supporting role in their own struggle for liberation."

Dealing with those white characters were black people who critics claimed were a little too perfect. The great actor Sydney Poitier made two films in the late 1960s just after the new Civil Rights Act had ended officially ended racial segregation.

In Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner he’s a doctor meeting his white fiancée’s shocked parents, while in In The Heat Of The Night he’s a detective stranded in backward small town. Although they are very different in style, both films are about white people confused and threatened by a black man who is more intelligent and more sophisticated than they are. At least in In The Heat Of The Night, he’s allowed to be a little bit arrogant.

The film whose saintly black hero caused most debate was the Oscar-winning Driving Miss Daisy. Made in 1989, but set from the 1940s onwards, it looks at the changing relationship between the black and white Americans by spending 25 years with a wealthy woman and her chauffeur, who slowly become friends. The Washington Post said, "This lovely comedy salutes mutual understanding in a time of wilful ignorance." Director Spike Lee, on the other hand, complained his more realistic characters are "scary to white audiences. They’d rather see black guys like in Driving Miss Daisy."

Lee's own contribution to the films about the Civil Rights era is one of the most powerful and one that takes on history directly. 4 Little Girls is a documentary about the bombing of a Sunday school in Birmingham, Alabama in June 1963 that killed four young black girls. It’s both shocking and very moving. But it’s also true that if you want get a little bit of this crucial time in history to the biggest possible audience, a gossipy, character-led comedy like The Help is the way to do it.

A housewife - the stay-at-home wife who cares for her family, cooking and cleaning while her husband heads off to work to earn a crust – is instantly recognisable. In cinema, she is often a symbol of old-fashioned views towards family and marriage and usually stuck in a sedate suburban town. For filmmakers looking to challenge the traditions of society she is the perfect instrument and, as a result, numerous classic female characters have been born.

One of the earliest films to challenge this icon of domestic bliss is Brief Encounter (1945). Suburban housewife Laura is in an affectionate but dull marriage when a chance encounter with Dr Alec at a train station unexpectedly unlocks emotions of real love. Struggling with her feelings, her first person narration sounds like a confession to her husband as she continues to meet Alec at the station café.

Similarly torn between following her heart or bowing to social convention is middle-class widower Cary in All That Heaven Allows (1955). In this gorgeous melodrama she goes against the norm by falling in love with her gardener - strongly disapproved of by her children and neighbours. So great at exposing the conventions of the 1950s, the film was recreated by director Todd Haynes in Far From Heaven (2002). Played flawlessly by Julianne Moore, the polished wife of a seemingly perfect white middle-class family falls in love with her black gardener, crossing the lines of social class and race.

Then there are some women less afraid to break the domestic shackles, such as Mildred Pierce (1945). With lashings of film noir, Joan Crawford gives an Oscar-winning performance as a housewife who divorces her husband and sets herself up as a successful restaurateur. Or, the dangerous and sultry Phyllis from Double Indemnity (1946), so discontent with her life she wishes her husband dead.

Less cruel but just as frustrated is Mrs Lee in The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (2009). On the surface a well-behaved housewife and mother, flashbacks to her youth reveal a different woman. Much like April from Revolutionary Road (2009), she is so unhappy with what she has become she wants to run away to Paris.

Taking this theme of loss of independence to the extreme is The Stepford Wives (1975). Joanna and her husband are newcomers to the weirdly pristine suburb of Stepford in which all the wives are unnaturally submissive and immaculate. Artistic and independent, Joanna is soon in great danger as she fights to avoid giving in to Stepford society.

This all leads us to Potiche (2010) and its glamorous housewife Suzanne. This 70s-set French farce shows Catherine Deneuve sparkle as the wife of a chauvinist factory owner, whose tyrannical ways cause his staff to strike. Regarded even by her family as a ‘potiche’ – a trophy wife, she shocks everyone when she steps in to settle the dispute. Through much hilarity and cheeky French charm Potiche is a refreshing take on the classic suppressed housewife, making Suzanne as great an icon as the film wives that have gone before her.