Contextual Studies - Surrealism

For today's contextual studies lesson, we looked into the concept of surrealism and the ways in which it is portrayed through films and other art forms.
Numerous films that displayed surrealism included:

• Un Chien Andalou 
• Blue Velvet
• Destino

We also looked at a film that in contrast showed rationalism and was realistic. This film was:

• A Brief Encounter

Finally, we explored the proper ways to write film reviews and how being conservative with our reviews would benefit us academically. To do this we reviewed four American film reviews of Spider-Man 3 and compared their similarities and differences. Their similarities were that they were partially were biased and informal but their differences were that they each focused on limited aspects of the film itself, such as only the actors or the plot. We also discovered that their main purpose was not to promote the film but to simply state their own opinions of it as they hadn't used the Harvard referencing method and they were more critical than conservative.

Our recommended read was "Understand Film Studies (Teach Yourself) by Warren Buckland as it is thought to be one of the best in explaining the basics of reviewing films along with how to be analytical.