the 2023 SERIES
CORONADO PUBLIC LIBRARY THE WINN ROOM
SUNDAY AFTERNOON 1:00-3:30 ALL STUDENTS ARE WELCOME
Parents and grandparents are welcome to attend with the student.
Please note that adults without a student will not be permitted to attend to ensure the integrity and mission of the program.
This program is FREE to attend but we ask that reservations are made in advance.
The funds to launch this program were granted through a 2021 Coronado Community Grant
Heroes: “Like a Lion and Like a Lamb.” Two films portraying different ways to answer a call to
heroism and fight injustice. Genuine heroes accept the sacrificial responsibility for the well-being of others.
Shane (George Stevens 1953) Director George
Stevens’ masterpiece is an adaptation of Jack Shaeffer’s enormously popular 1949 novel Shane. Starring Alan Ladd as the latter-day knight errant and Van Heflin, Jean Arthur and a young Brandon DeWilde as the Starretts; a family beset by troubles and threatened with violence as they try to make a go of life as homesteaders on what was once open range. Set in the remote reaches of Wyoming in the late1800s, Stevens examines Western folklore, the demands of
chivalry and the dangers of hero worship. The Oscar-nominated screenplay delicately hints at relationship conflicts demanding restraint and masculine honor embedded in a visually stunning example of dramatic narrative in the Western genre.
A Tale of Two Cities (Jack Conway1935) Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer undertook the enormous
challenge of adapting Charles Dickens’ sweeping historical novel for the big screen. An unlikely pair of doppelgängers, one a banished French aristocrat who has
rejected his birthright and the other an alcoholic English lawyer who has surrendered himself to the enthusiastic embrace of dissolute living, both love the same woman. Set in London and Paris in the late eighteenth century, against the bloody backdrop of the Reign of Terror in the wake of the French Revolution, one of these men discovers that his path to true peace is to be found by making the courageous choice to keep the promise he once made to the only person he has ever loved and the only person who ever truly loved him.
CIFF’s Coronado Classic Film Study Program is open to any upper middle and high school students attending public schools, charter or parochial schools, and homeschoolers. We welcome all students to attend and join post-screening moderated discussion. This launch of the program was made possible with seed funding from the City of Coronado Community grant.
Two purposes will guide the program:
1) To develop in young people the discernment necessary to understand dramatic film narratives. Because movies employ so many senses, classic films are among the most powerful genres of visual storytelling. The program will introduce young people classic movies, made by recognized masters of the film medium.
2) to challenge young people to analyze dramatic film narratives and hone critical thinking skills. Every dramatic narrative is, in its essence, a story of redemption. Great stories incorporate an introduction, a protagonist, an antagonist, and some form of conflict. Great stories conclude when these conflicts are resolved. This general narrative model is followed, in various forms, in nearly every classic film made during Hollywood’s Golden Age.
EDUCATIONAL GUIDES/EXPANDED STUDY
A special program will be made available for Homeschoolers or independent study to document program completion as a drama and/or film appreciation elective.
The discussion guides are drawn from Dr. Onalee McGraw, founder of the Educational Guidance Institute (EGI) and a former educator. She has been featured on Turner Classic Movies, and her Classic Film study guides have been used successfully with audiences of young people around the nation from widely diverse demographic backgrounds and cultural experiences. If you would like more information on bringing a group or class and utilize the guided curriculum please contact Jon Mosier for more information: email@example.com .
ABOUT JON MOSIER Director of the Classic Student Program.
Jon is a long-time devotee of Classic Hollywood films. He developed the Student Classic Film Program as a fellowship Capstone Project in collaboration with Dr. Onalee McGraw at the Educational Guidance Institute. As Jon puts it, “The Student Classic Film Program is purposefully designed to engage the hearts and minds of young people, enrich their cultural literacy and strengthen their understanding of film as art, “