The other night I had a little whirlwind session exploring content on Vimeo and discovered some fantastic pieces of work, including this lovely short animation called Paraphernalia. It is a 3rd year film made by Sabrina Cotungo who is studying at The California Institute of the Arts – however her film was made at Gobelins, l’école de l’image in Paris.
Sabrina Cotungo describes her film as
The story of an anemic little recluse of a girl who makes a friend at the expense of her ceiling.
Paraphernalia from Sabrina Cotugno on Vimeo.
What strikes me about the little story is the openings it presents for a class to explore in terms of their narrative literacy unit, the questions that could be asked about the plot and the characters.
- Why is she all alone?
- Where are her family?
- Where was the gentleman heading?
- Why did he crash?
- Why had he invented such a wonderful flying machine?
Also a class could spend time working on the dialogue that takes place between our characters. It is conveniently silent and we might encourage our pupils to explain the emotions we see on their faces, to play these scenes out in some drama and then to perhaps develop the written dialogue.
What do you like about the film and how do you see it being used with your classes?
Your film is beautiful! Great for use and information… Keep up the good work! Love to read more!
Great to see how you have used the film with your students – thanks for
sharing Doris.
Hi, Tom.. this is what I did with my students… http://eflcenterspeakinggroup.blogspot.com/ I teach a low intermediate EFL conversational class. Thanks for sharing.. love the film. Keep on shining love and peace!
Doris3m
Lovely to see how you are using the resource Alejandra – thanks fo sharing your thoughts with me.
All of what you said are what ran through my mind when I saw it – would love to see some related work from this. Seems it could also work in a similar way to The Piano – by Aidan Gbbons which is used in the Y5 Film narrative unit.
Yes the way he refers to a past is a useful way in, as well as the reasons why she is a recluse, sad and timid towards others.
I’m Alejandra Quaglia, a 6th grade Language Arts teacher in Buenos Aires Argentina. I follow you on Twitter as well as your blog. I’ve posted the animation in my blog Creative Readers, Writers and Thinkers (http://yearsixale.blogspot.com/2011/05/paraphernalia-short-animation.html) for my students to reflect. We are actually working on fantasy genre. I’m planning for my students to write the script and then record their voices. Thank you so much for sharing so many interesting ideas!
Alejandra Quaglia
It is wonderfully poignant, I’d like to explore memory and its place in character and personality. It also provides a soft focus way to discuss dealing with bad, sad memories.
It’s a great short film Tom and it would be incredibly useful for narrative literacy units. I might even try showing it to my class tomorrow to gauge their reaction and let you know about their thoughts. I can picture dialogue being written to express the story between the characters as well as a narrative written alongside it. Perhaps even rerecorded with the voice overs on top. Wonderful find.