WEBVTT 00:00:00.670 --> 00:00:05.336 Evidence suggests that humans in all ages and from all cultures 00:00:05.336 --> 00:00:09.486 create their identity in some kind of narrative form. 00:00:09.486 --> 00:00:12.227 From mother to daughter, preacher to congregant, 00:00:12.227 --> 00:00:15.291 teacher to pupil, storyteller to audience. 00:00:15.291 --> 00:00:17.081 Whether in cave paintings 00:00:17.081 --> 00:00:19.711 or the latest uses of the Internet, 00:00:19.711 --> 00:00:23.542 human beings have always told their histories and truths 00:00:23.542 --> 00:00:25.999 through parable and fable. 00:00:25.999 --> 00:00:29.476 We are inveterate storytellers. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:29.476 --> 00:00:33.859 But where, in our increasingly secular and fragmented world, 00:00:33.859 --> 00:00:37.957 do we offer communality of experience, 00:00:37.957 --> 00:00:42.307 unmediated by our own furious consumerism? 00:00:42.307 --> 00:00:45.807 And what narrative, what history, 00:00:45.807 --> 00:00:48.488 what identity, what moral code 00:00:48.488 --> 00:00:51.840 are we imparting to our young? NOTE Paragraph 00:00:51.840 --> 00:00:54.722 Cinema is arguably 00:00:54.722 --> 00:00:57.307 the 20th century's most influential art form. 00:00:57.307 --> 00:00:59.357 Its artists told stories 00:00:59.357 --> 00:01:00.639 across national boundaries, 00:01:00.639 --> 00:01:03.507 in as many languages, genres and philosophies 00:01:03.507 --> 00:01:04.757 as one can imagine. 00:01:04.757 --> 00:01:07.389 Indeed, it is hard to find a subject 00:01:07.389 --> 00:01:09.406 that film has yet to tackle. 00:01:09.406 --> 00:01:11.057 During the last decade 00:01:11.057 --> 00:01:13.473 we've seen a vast integration of global media, 00:01:13.473 --> 00:01:16.857 now dominated by a culture of the Hollywood blockbuster. 00:01:16.857 --> 00:01:19.273 We are increasingly offered a diet 00:01:19.273 --> 00:01:22.757 in which sensation, not story, is king. 00:01:22.757 --> 00:01:25.190 What was common to us all 40 years ago -- 00:01:25.190 --> 00:01:27.989 the telling of stories between generations -- 00:01:27.989 --> 00:01:30.074 is now rarified. 00:01:30.074 --> 00:01:32.322 As a filmmaker, it worried me. 00:01:32.322 --> 00:01:36.189 As a human being, it puts the fear of God in me. 00:01:36.189 --> 00:01:38.606 What future could the young build 00:01:38.606 --> 00:01:39.973 with so little grasp 00:01:39.973 --> 00:01:41.757 of where they've come from 00:01:41.757 --> 00:01:44.815 and so few narratives of what's possible? 00:01:44.815 --> 00:01:46.463 The irony is palpable; 00:01:46.463 --> 00:01:49.964 technical access has never been greater, 00:01:49.964 --> 00:01:53.031 cultural access never weaker. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:53.031 --> 00:01:57.364 And so in 2006 we set up FILMCLUB, 00:01:57.364 --> 00:02:01.399 an organization that ran weekly film screenings in schools 00:02:01.399 --> 00:02:03.481 followed by discussions. 00:02:03.481 --> 00:02:07.214 If we could raid the annals of 100 years of film, 00:02:07.214 --> 00:02:09.282 maybe we could build a narrative 00:02:09.282 --> 00:02:10.830 that would deliver meaning 00:02:10.830 --> 00:02:13.913 to the fragmented and restless world of the young. 00:02:13.913 --> 00:02:15.516 Given the access to technology, 00:02:15.516 --> 00:02:19.247 even a school in a tiny rural hamlet 00:02:19.247 --> 00:02:22.948 could project a DVD onto a white board. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:22.948 --> 00:02:24.782 In the first nine months 00:02:24.782 --> 00:02:27.130 we ran 25 clubs across the U.K., 00:02:27.130 --> 00:02:30.198 with kids in age groups between five and 18 00:02:30.198 --> 00:02:33.230 watching a film uninterrupted for 90 minutes. 00:02:33.230 --> 00:02:36.114 The films were curated and contextualized. 00:02:36.114 --> 00:02:37.865 But the choice was theirs, 00:02:37.865 --> 00:02:39.681 and our audience quickly grew 00:02:39.681 --> 00:02:43.914 to choose the richest and most varied diet that we could provide. 00:02:43.914 --> 00:02:46.713 The outcome, immediate. 00:02:46.713 --> 00:02:52.299 It was an education of the most profound and transformative kind. 00:02:52.299 --> 00:02:55.631 In groups as large as 150 and as small as three, 00:02:55.631 --> 00:02:58.347 these young people discovered new places, 00:02:58.347 --> 00:03:00.264 new thoughts, new perspectives. 00:03:00.264 --> 00:03:02.398 By the time the pilot had finished, 00:03:02.398 --> 00:03:05.231 we had the names of a thousand schools 00:03:05.231 --> 00:03:09.050 that wished to join. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:09.050 --> 00:03:10.671 The film that changed my life 00:03:10.671 --> 00:03:15.638 is a 1951 film by Vittorio De Sica, "Miracle in Milan." 00:03:15.638 --> 00:03:17.391 It's a remarkable comment 00:03:17.391 --> 00:03:20.721 on slums, poverty and aspiration. 00:03:20.721 --> 00:03:24.955 I had seen the film on the occasion of my father's 50th birthday. 00:03:24.955 --> 00:03:28.917 Technology then meant we had to hire a viewing cinema, 00:03:28.917 --> 00:03:31.894 find and pay for the print and the projectionist. 00:03:31.894 --> 00:03:33.566 But for my father, 00:03:33.566 --> 00:03:39.352 the emotional and artistic importance of De Sica's vision was so great 00:03:39.352 --> 00:03:41.983 that he chose to celebrate his half-century 00:03:41.983 --> 00:03:45.848 with his three teenage children and 30 of their friends, 00:03:45.848 --> 00:03:47.200 "In order," he said, 00:03:47.200 --> 00:03:50.667 "to pass the baton of concern and hope 00:03:50.667 --> 00:03:53.150 on to the next generation." NOTE Paragraph 00:03:53.150 --> 00:03:55.917 In the last shot of "Miracle in Milan," 00:03:55.917 --> 00:03:59.867 slum-dwellers float skyward on flying brooms. 00:03:59.867 --> 00:04:02.399 Sixty years after the film was made 00:04:02.399 --> 00:04:04.600 and 30 years after I first saw it, 00:04:04.600 --> 00:04:07.150 I see young faces tilt up in awe, 00:04:07.150 --> 00:04:09.418 their incredulity matching mine. 00:04:09.418 --> 00:04:11.916 And the speed with which they associate it 00:04:11.916 --> 00:04:15.540 with "Slumdog Millionaire" or the favelas in Rio 00:04:15.540 --> 00:04:18.488 speaks to the enduring nature. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:18.488 --> 00:04:21.605 In a FILMCLUB season about democracy and government, 00:04:21.605 --> 00:04:23.521 we screened "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." 00:04:23.521 --> 00:04:29.940 Made in 1939, the film is older than most of our members' grandparents. 00:04:29.940 --> 00:04:34.081 Frank Capra's classic values independence and propriety. 00:04:34.081 --> 00:04:35.640 It shows how to do right, 00:04:35.640 --> 00:04:37.374 how to be heroically awkward. 00:04:37.374 --> 00:04:40.124 It is also an expression of faith 00:04:40.124 --> 00:04:43.649 in the political machine as a force of honor. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:43.649 --> 00:04:47.132 Shortly after "Mr. Smith" became a FILMCLUB classic, 00:04:47.132 --> 00:04:51.798 there was a week of all-night filibustering in the House of Lords. 00:04:51.798 --> 00:04:53.082 And it was with great delight 00:04:53.082 --> 00:04:55.733 that we found young people up and down the country 00:04:55.733 --> 00:04:57.566 explaining with authority 00:04:57.566 --> 00:04:59.582 what filibustering was 00:04:59.582 --> 00:05:05.099 and why the Lords might defy their bedtime on a point of principle. 00:05:05.099 --> 00:05:09.233 After all, Jimmy Stewart filibustered for two entire reels. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:09.233 --> 00:05:12.300 In choosing "Hotel Rwanda," 00:05:12.300 --> 00:05:15.583 they explored genocide of the most brutal kind. 00:05:15.583 --> 00:05:19.116 It provoked tears as well as incisive questions 00:05:19.116 --> 00:05:20.916 about unarmed peace-keeping forces 00:05:20.916 --> 00:05:23.599 and the double-dealing of a Western society 00:05:23.599 --> 00:05:27.533 that picks its moral fights with commodities in mind. 00:05:27.533 --> 00:05:31.599 And when "Schindler's List" demanded that they never forget, 00:05:31.599 --> 00:05:35.716 one child, full of the pain of consciousness, remarked, 00:05:35.716 --> 00:05:36.985 "We already forgot, 00:05:36.985 --> 00:05:40.999 otherwise how did 'Hotel Rwanda' happen?" NOTE Paragraph 00:05:40.999 --> 00:05:44.766 As they watch more films their lives got palpably richer. 00:05:44.766 --> 00:05:49.399 "Pickpocket" started a debate about criminality disenfranchisement. 00:05:49.399 --> 00:05:53.266 "To Sir, with Love" ignited its teen audience. 00:05:53.266 --> 00:05:55.915 They celebrated a change in attitude 00:05:55.915 --> 00:05:57.615 towards non-white Britons, 00:05:57.615 --> 00:06:01.035 but railed against our restless school system 00:06:01.035 --> 00:06:04.083 that does not value collective identity, 00:06:04.083 --> 00:06:10.150 unlike that offered by Sidney Poitier's careful tutelage. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:10.150 --> 00:06:14.265 By now, these thoughtful, opinionated, curious young people 00:06:14.265 --> 00:06:17.100 thought nothing of tackling films of all forms -- 00:06:17.100 --> 00:06:18.415 black and white, subtitled, 00:06:18.415 --> 00:06:21.149 documentary, non-narrative, fantasy -- 00:06:21.149 --> 00:06:23.848 and thought nothing of writing detailed reviews 00:06:23.848 --> 00:06:27.332 that competed to favor one film over another 00:06:27.332 --> 00:06:31.156 in passionate and increasingly sophisticated prose. 00:06:31.156 --> 00:06:34.322 Six thousand reviews each school week 00:06:34.322 --> 00:06:38.840 vying for the honor of being review of the week. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:38.840 --> 00:06:42.900 From 25 clubs, we became hundreds, then thousands, 00:06:42.900 --> 00:06:45.982 until we were nearly a quarter of a million kids 00:06:45.982 --> 00:06:49.398 in 7,000 clubs right across the country. 00:06:49.398 --> 00:06:52.282 And although the numbers were, and continue to be, extraordinary, 00:06:52.282 --> 00:06:54.565 what became more extraordinary 00:06:54.565 --> 00:06:58.115 was how the experience of critical and curious questioning 00:06:58.115 --> 00:07:00.633 translated into life. 00:07:00.633 --> 00:07:03.500 Some of our kids started talking with their parents, 00:07:03.500 --> 00:07:05.266 others with their teachers, 00:07:05.266 --> 00:07:06.249 or with their friends. 00:07:06.249 --> 00:07:07.949 And those without friends 00:07:07.949 --> 00:07:10.150 started making them. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:10.150 --> 00:07:15.466 The films provided communality across all manner of divide. 00:07:15.466 --> 00:07:18.583 And the stories they held provided a shared experience. 00:07:18.583 --> 00:07:23.000 "Persepolis" brought a daughter closer to her Iranian mother, 00:07:23.000 --> 00:07:26.801 and "Jaws" became the way in which one young boy 00:07:26.801 --> 00:07:30.366 was able to articulate the fear he'd experienced 00:07:30.366 --> 00:07:31.916 in flight from violence 00:07:31.916 --> 00:07:34.900 that killed first his father then his mother, 00:07:34.900 --> 00:07:39.782 the latter thrown overboard on a boat journey. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:39.782 --> 00:07:41.741 Who was right, who wrong? 00:07:41.741 --> 00:07:43.857 What would they do under the same conditions? 00:07:43.857 --> 00:07:45.406 Was the tale told well? 00:07:45.406 --> 00:07:47.007 Was there a hidden message? 00:07:47.007 --> 00:07:49.740 How has the world changed? How could it be different? 00:07:49.740 --> 00:07:54.624 A tsunami of questions flew out of the mouths of children 00:07:54.624 --> 00:07:56.374 who the world didn't think were interested. 00:07:56.374 --> 00:07:59.845 And they themselves had not known they cared. 00:07:59.845 --> 00:08:01.757 And as they wrote and debated, 00:08:01.757 --> 00:08:04.723 rather than seeing the films as artifacts, 00:08:04.723 --> 00:08:09.789 they began to see themselves. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:09.789 --> 00:08:12.954 I have an aunt who is a wonderful storyteller. 00:08:12.954 --> 00:08:15.108 In a moment she can invoke images 00:08:15.108 --> 00:08:19.073 of running barefoot on Table Mountain and playing cops and robbers. 00:08:19.073 --> 00:08:20.639 Quite recently she told me 00:08:20.639 --> 00:08:24.038 that in 1948, two of her sisters and my father 00:08:24.038 --> 00:08:26.686 traveled on a boat to Israel without my grandparents. 00:08:26.686 --> 00:08:31.152 When the sailors mutinied at sea in a demand for humane conditions, 00:08:31.152 --> 00:08:34.886 it was these teenagers that fed the crew. 00:08:34.886 --> 00:08:37.036 I was past 40 when my father died. 00:08:37.036 --> 00:08:39.588 He never mentioned that journey. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:39.588 --> 00:08:43.273 My mother's mother left Europe in a hurry 00:08:43.273 --> 00:08:46.670 without her husband, but with her three-year-old daughter 00:08:46.670 --> 00:08:50.501 and diamonds sewn into the hem of her skirt. 00:08:50.501 --> 00:08:51.785 After two years in hiding, 00:08:51.785 --> 00:08:54.619 my grandfather appeared in London. 00:08:54.619 --> 00:08:56.919 He was never right again. 00:08:56.919 --> 00:09:01.620 And his story was hushed as he assimilated. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:01.620 --> 00:09:05.558 My story started in England 00:09:05.558 --> 00:09:09.821 with a clean slate and the silence of immigrant parents. 00:09:09.821 --> 00:09:11.972 I had "Anne Frank," "The Great Escape," 00:09:11.972 --> 00:09:14.486 "Shoah," "Triumph of the Will." 00:09:14.486 --> 00:09:16.541 It was Leni Riefenstahl 00:09:16.541 --> 00:09:19.324 in her elegant Nazi propaganda 00:09:19.324 --> 00:09:23.232 who gave context to what the family had to endure. 00:09:23.232 --> 00:09:28.882 These films held what was too hurtful to say out loud, 00:09:28.882 --> 00:09:31.232 and they became more useful to me 00:09:31.232 --> 00:09:33.949 than the whispers of survivors 00:09:33.949 --> 00:09:36.884 and the occasional glimpse of a tattoo 00:09:36.884 --> 00:09:39.732 on a maiden aunt's wrist. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:39.732 --> 00:09:42.515 Purists may feel that fiction dissipates 00:09:42.515 --> 00:09:45.516 the quest of real human understanding, 00:09:45.516 --> 00:09:47.015 that film is too crude 00:09:47.015 --> 00:09:49.449 to tell a complex and detailed history, 00:09:49.449 --> 00:09:53.699 or that filmmakers always serve drama over truth. 00:09:53.699 --> 00:09:56.833 But within the reels lie purpose and meaning. 00:09:56.833 --> 00:10:00.100 As one 12-year-old said after watching "Wizard of Oz," 00:10:00.100 --> 00:10:02.399 "Every person should watch this, 00:10:02.399 --> 00:10:04.249 because unless you do 00:10:04.249 --> 00:10:08.916 you may not know that you too have a heart." NOTE Paragraph 00:10:08.916 --> 00:10:13.315 We honor reading, why not honor watching with the same passion? 00:10:13.315 --> 00:10:16.609 Consider "Citizen Kane" as valuable as Jane Austen. 00:10:16.609 --> 00:10:19.808 Agree that "Boyz n the Hood," like Tennyson, 00:10:19.808 --> 00:10:23.826 offers an emotional landscape and a heightened understanding 00:10:23.826 --> 00:10:25.575 that work together. 00:10:25.575 --> 00:10:27.109 Each a piece of memorable art, 00:10:27.109 --> 00:10:30.558 each a brick in the wall of who we are. 00:10:30.558 --> 00:10:33.425 And it's okay if we remember Tom Hanks 00:10:33.425 --> 00:10:35.475 better than astronaut Jim Lovell 00:10:35.475 --> 00:10:40.039 or have Ben Kingsley's face superimposed onto that of Gandhi's. 00:10:40.039 --> 00:10:43.595 And though not real, Eve Harrington, Howard Beale, Mildred Pierce 00:10:43.595 --> 00:10:46.292 are an opportunity to discover 00:10:46.292 --> 00:10:48.708 what it is to be human, 00:10:48.708 --> 00:10:52.742 and no less helpful to understanding our life and times 00:10:52.742 --> 00:10:58.492 as Shakespeare is in illuminating the world of Elizabethan England. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:58.492 --> 00:11:00.060 We guessed that film, 00:11:00.060 --> 00:11:02.059 whose stories are a meeting place 00:11:02.059 --> 00:11:04.288 of drama, music, literature and human experience, 00:11:04.288 --> 00:11:08.793 would engage and inspire the young people participating in FILMCLUB. 00:11:08.793 --> 00:11:10.325 What we could not have foreseen 00:11:10.325 --> 00:11:11.958 was the measurable improvements 00:11:11.958 --> 00:11:15.676 in behavior, confidence and academic achievement. 00:11:15.676 --> 00:11:19.958 Once-reluctant students now race to school, talk to their teachers, 00:11:19.958 --> 00:11:21.443 fight, not on the playground, 00:11:21.443 --> 00:11:23.576 but to choose next week's film -- 00:11:23.576 --> 00:11:27.162 young people who have found self-definition, ambition 00:11:27.162 --> 00:11:31.409 and an appetite for education and social engagement 00:11:31.409 --> 00:11:34.375 from the stories they have witnessed. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:34.375 --> 00:11:37.758 Our members defy the binary description 00:11:37.758 --> 00:11:40.576 of how we so often describe our young. 00:11:40.576 --> 00:11:45.559 They are neither feral nor myopically self-absorbed. 00:11:45.559 --> 00:11:47.326 They are, like other young people, 00:11:47.326 --> 00:11:50.793 negotiating a world with infinite choice, 00:11:50.793 --> 00:11:55.493 but little culture of how to find meaningful experience. 00:11:55.493 --> 00:11:58.127 We appeared surprised at the behaviors 00:11:58.127 --> 00:12:00.125 of those who define themselves 00:12:00.125 --> 00:12:02.326 by the size of the tick on their shoes, 00:12:02.326 --> 00:12:06.575 yet acquisition has been the narrative we have offered. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:06.575 --> 00:12:08.392 If we want different values 00:12:08.392 --> 00:12:11.859 we have to tell a different story, 00:12:11.859 --> 00:12:15.861 a story that understands that an individual narrative 00:12:15.861 --> 00:12:19.724 is an essential component of a person's identity, 00:12:19.724 --> 00:12:21.493 that a collective narrative 00:12:21.493 --> 00:12:25.474 is an essential component of a cultural identity, 00:12:25.474 --> 00:12:29.208 and without it it is impossible to imagine yourself 00:12:29.208 --> 00:12:30.609 as part of a group. 00:12:30.609 --> 00:12:33.665 Because when these people get home 00:12:33.665 --> 00:12:36.184 after a screening of "Rear Window" 00:12:36.184 --> 00:12:38.933 and raise their gaze to the building next door, 00:12:38.933 --> 00:12:42.598 they have the tools to wonder who, apart from them, 00:12:42.598 --> 00:12:44.165 is out there 00:12:44.165 --> 00:12:46.698 and what is their story. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:46.698 --> 00:12:48.349 Thank you. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:48.349 --> 00:12:51.031 (Applause)