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Evidence suggests that humans in all ages and from all cultures

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create their identity in some kind of narrative form.

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From mother to daughter, preacher to congregant,

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teacher to pupil, storyteller to audience.

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Whether in cave paintings

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or the latest uses of the Internet,

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human beings have always told their histories and truths

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through parable and fable.

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We are inveterate storytellers.

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But where, in our increasingly secular and fragmented world,

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do we offer communality of experience,

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unmediated by our own furious consumerism?

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And what narrative, what history,

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what identity, what moral code

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are we imparting to our young?

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Cinema is arguably

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the 20th century's most influential art form.

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Its artists told stories

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across national boundaries,

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in as many languages, genres and philosophies

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as one can imagine.

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Indeed, it is hard to find a subject

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that film has yet to tackle.

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During the last decade

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we've seen a vast integration of global media,

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now dominated by a culture of the Hollywood blockbuster.

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We are increasingly offered a diet

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in which sensation, not story, is king.

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What was common to us all 40 years ago --

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the telling of stories between generations --

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is now rarified.

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As a filmmaker, it worried me.

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As a human being, it puts the fear of God in me.

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What future could the young build

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with so little grasp

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of where they've come from

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and so few narratives of what's possible?

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The irony is palpable;

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technical access has never been greater,

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cultural access never weaker.

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And so in 2006 we set up FILMCLUB,

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an organization that ran weekly film screenings in schools

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followed by discussions.

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If we could raid the annals of 100 years of film,

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maybe we could build a narrative

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that would deliver meaning

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to the fragmented and restless world of the young.

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Given the access to technology,

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even a school in a tiny rural hamlet

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could project a DVD onto a white board.

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In the first nine months

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we ran 25 clubs across the U.K.,

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with kids in age groups between five and 18

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watching a film uninterrupted for 90 minutes.

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The films were curated and contextualized.

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But the choice was theirs,

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and our audience quickly grew

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to choose the richest and most varied diet that we could provide.

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The outcome, immediate.

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It was an education of the most profound and transformative kind.

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In groups as large as 150 and as small as three,

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these young people discovered new places,

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new thoughts, new perspectives.

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By the time the pilot had finished,

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we had the names of a thousand schools

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that wished to join.

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The film that changed my life

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is a 1951 film by Vittorio De Sica, "Miracle in Milan."

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It's a remarkable comment

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on slums, poverty and aspiration.

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I had seen the film on the occasion of my father's 50th birthday.

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Technology then meant we had to hire a viewing cinema,

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find and pay for the print and the projectionist.

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But for my father,

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the emotional and artistic importance of De Sica's vision was so great

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that he chose to celebrate his half-century

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with his three teenage children and 30 of their friends,

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"In order," he said,

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"to pass the baton of concern and hope

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on to the next generation."

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In the last shot of "Miracle in Milan,"

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slum-dwellers float skyward on flying brooms.

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Sixty years after the film was made

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and 30 years after I first saw it,

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I see young faces tilt up in awe,

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their incredulity matching mine.

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And the speed with which they associate it

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with "Slumdog Millionaire" or the favelas in Rio

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speaks to the enduring nature.

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In a FILMCLUB season about democracy and government,

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we screened "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."

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Made in 1939, the film is older than most of our members' grandparents.

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Frank Capra's classic values independence and propriety.

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It shows how to do right,

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how to be heroically awkward.

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It is also an expression of faith

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in the political machine as a force of honor.

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Shortly after "Mr. Smith" became a FILMCLUB classic,

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there was a week of all-night filibustering in the House of Lords.

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And it was with great delight

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that we found young people up and down the country

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explaining with authority

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what filibustering was

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and why the Lords might defy their bedtime on a point of principle.

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After all, Jimmy Stewart filibustered for two entire reels.

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In choosing "Hotel Rwanda,"

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they explored genocide of the most brutal kind.

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It provoked tears as well as incisive questions

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about unarmed peace-keeping forces

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and the double-dealing of a Western society

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that picks its moral fights with commodities in mind.

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And when "Schindler's List" demanded that they never forget,

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one child, full of the pain of consciousness, remarked,

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"We already forgot,

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otherwise how did 'Hotel Rwanda' happen?"

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As they watch more films their lives got palpably richer.

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"Pickpocket" started a debate about criminality disenfranchisement.

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"To Sir, with Love" ignited its teen audience.

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They celebrated a change in attitude

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towards non-white Britons,

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but railed against our restless school system

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that does not value collective identity,

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unlike that offered by Sidney Poitier's careful tutelage.

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By now, these thoughtful, opinionated, curious young people

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thought nothing of tackling films of all forms --

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black and white, subtitled,

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documentary, non-narrative, fantasy --

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and thought nothing of writing detailed reviews

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that competed to favor one film over another

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in passionate and increasingly sophisticated prose.

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Six thousand reviews each school week

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vying for the honor of being review of the week.

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From 25 clubs, we became hundreds, then thousands,

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until we were nearly a quarter of a million kids

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in 7,000 clubs right across the country.

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And although the numbers were, and continue to be, extraordinary,

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what became more extraordinary

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was how the experience of critical and curious questioning

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translated into life.

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Some of our kids started talking with their parents,

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others with their teachers,

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or with their friends.

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And those without friends

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started making them.

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The films provided communality across all manner of divide.

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And the stories they held provided a shared experience.

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"Persepolis" brought a daughter closer to her Iranian mother,

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and "Jaws" became the way in which one young boy

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was able to articulate the fear he'd experienced

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in flight from violence

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that killed first his father then his mother,

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the latter thrown overboard on a boat journey.

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Who was right, who wrong?

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What would they do under the same conditions?

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Was the tale told well?

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Was there a hidden message?

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How has the world changed? How could it be different?

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A tsunami of questions flew out of the mouths of children

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who the world didn't think were interested.

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And they themselves had not known they cared.

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And as they wrote and debated,

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rather than seeing the films as artifacts,

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they began to see themselves.

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I have an aunt who is a wonderful storyteller.

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In a moment she can invoke images

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of running barefoot on Table Mountain and playing cops and robbers.

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Quite recently she told me

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that in 1948, two of her sisters and my father

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traveled on a boat to Israel without my grandparents.

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When the sailors mutinied at sea in a demand for humane conditions,

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it was these teenagers that fed the crew.

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I was past 40 when my father died.

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He never mentioned that journey.

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My mother's mother left Europe in a hurry

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without her husband, but with her three-year-old daughter

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and diamonds sewn into the hem of her skirt.

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After two years in hiding,

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my grandfather appeared in London.

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He was never right again.

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And his story was hushed as he assimilated.

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My story started in England

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with a clean slate and the silence of immigrant parents.

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I had "Anne Frank," "The Great Escape,"

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"Shoah," "Triumph of the Will."

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It was Leni Riefenstahl

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in her elegant Nazi propaganda

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who gave context to what the family had to endure.

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These films held what was too hurtful to say out loud,

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and they became more useful to me

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than the whispers of survivors

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and the occasional glimpse of a tattoo

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on a maiden aunt's wrist.

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Purists may feel that fiction dissipates

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the quest of real human understanding,

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that film is too crude

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to tell a complex and detailed history,

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or that filmmakers always serve drama over truth.

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But within the reels lie purpose and meaning.

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As one 12-year-old said after watching "Wizard of Oz,"

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"Every person should watch this,

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because unless you do

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you may not know that you too have a heart."

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We honor reading, why not honor watching with the same passion?

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Consider "Citizen Kane" as valuable as Jane Austen.

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Agree that "Boyz n the Hood," like Tennyson,

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offers an emotional landscape and a heightened understanding

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that work together.

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Each a piece of memorable art,

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each a brick in the wall of who we are.

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And it's okay if we remember Tom Hanks

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better than astronaut Jim Lovell

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or have Ben Kingsley's face superimposed onto that of Gandhi's.

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And though not real, Eve Harrington, Howard Beale, Mildred Pierce

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are an opportunity to discover

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what it is to be human,

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and no less helpful to understanding our life and times

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as Shakespeare is in illuminating the world of Elizabethan England.

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We guessed that film,

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whose stories are a meeting place

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of drama, music, literature and human experience,

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would engage and inspire the young people participating in FILMCLUB.

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What we could not have foreseen

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was the measurable improvements

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in behavior, confidence and academic achievement.

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Once-reluctant students now race to school, talk to their teachers,

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fight, not on the playground,

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but to choose next week's film --

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young people who have found self-definition, ambition

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and an appetite for education and social engagement

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from the stories they have witnessed.

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Our members defy the binary description

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of how we so often describe our young.

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They are neither feral nor myopically self-absorbed.

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They are, like other young people,

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negotiating a world with infinite choice,

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but little culture of how to find meaningful experience.

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We appeared surprised at the behaviors

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of those who define themselves

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by the size of the tick on their shoes,

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yet acquisition has been the narrative we have offered.

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If we want different values

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we have to tell a different story,

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a story that understands that an individual narrative

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is an essential component of a person's identity,

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that a collective narrative

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is an essential component of a cultural identity,

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and without it it is impossible to imagine yourself

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as part of a group.

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Because when these people get home

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after a screening of "Rear Window"

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and raise their gaze to the building next door,

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they have the tools to wonder who, apart from them,

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is out there

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and what is their story.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)