Study Guide Themes Archives: Women

Undefeated

Set in Memphis, Undefeated chronicles the Manassas Tigers’ 2009 football season as they strive to win the first playoff game in the high school’s 110-year history.

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The Wooden Camera

In Kayelitsha, a township close to Capetown, after the end of Apartheid, two thirteen-year-old kids- Madiba and Sipho – play along the railway line. A train passes by. A dead man is tossed from the train and rolls to their feet. His lifeless hand clutches an attaché case. Inside, the boys find a gun and a video camera. Sipho takes the gun and Madiba the camera. Madiba starts filming the township and its inhabitants. Through the lens, his bleak surroundings take on a strange new beauty. His status enhanced by gun ownership, Sipho becomes a gang leader and operates out of Capetown. In Capetown Madiba meets Estelle, who lives in a traditional Capetownian white community in which century-old prejudices have not died with the end of apartheid. Madiba introduces Estelle to Sipho, who inadvertently encourages her rebellion against her racist, strict father. Estelle introduces Madiba to Mr. Shawn, her music teacher who has taught music in the townships. Mr. Shawn encourages Madiba’s filmmaking. Madiba and Estelle each deal with problems at home of a very different sort. For Madiba, it’s the extreme poverty and an alcoholic father. For Estelle, it’s the rising confrontations with her narrow-minded father. Meanwhile, Sipho’s friendship with Madiba becomes strained as Sipho falls into drug use (sniffing glue) and deeper into crime.

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Circo

Circo follows the Ponce family’s hardscrabble circus as it struggles to stay together despite mounting debt, dwindling audiences, and a simmering family conflict.

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Circus Kids

What happens when a youth circus troupe has the opportunity to travel from St. Louis to Israel to collaborate with the Galilee Circus, a local troupe comprised of Jewish and Arabic children? Circus Kids is a powerful, interfaith film that follows the kids’ experiences and witnesses the understanding that grows between youths who have little in common but their love of the circus.

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The Class

The Class follows the year in the life of a French schoolteacher working at a high school in a tough neighborhood of Paris. Cultures and attitudes often clash in the classroom, and his classroom ethics are put to the test when his students begin to challenge his methods.

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