https://youtu.be/5p5CVviX1dE?si=N0pZP3O0wVkWyZgg

 

https://youtu.be/is5H02LRmFw?si=mD9wVvDX4dqSz-Vf

GEORGE ORWELL - 5^C LINGUISTICO

George Orwell was born Eric Arthur Blair on 25 June 1903 in eastern India, the son of a British colonial civil servant. He was educated in England and, after he left Eton, joined the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, then a British colony. He resigned in 1927 and decided to become a writer. In 1928, he moved to Paris where lack of success as a writer forced him into a series of menial jobs. He described his experiences in his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London, published in 1933. He took the name George Orwell, shortly before its publication. This was followed by his first novel, Burmese Days, in 1934.

An anarchist in the late 1920s, by the 1930s he had begun to consider himself a socialist. In 1936, he was commissioned to write an account of poverty among unemployed miners in northern England, which resulted in The Road to Wigan Pier (1937). Late in 1936, Orwell travelled to Spain to fight for the Republicans against Franco's Nationalists. He was forced to flee in fear of his life from Soviet-backed communists who were suppressing revolutionary socialist dissenters. The experience turned him into a lifelong anti-Stalinist.

Between 1941 and 1943, Orwell worked on propaganda for the BBC. In 1943, he became literary editor of The Tribune, a weekly left-wing magazine. By now he was a prolific journalist, writing articles, reviews and books.

In 1945, Orwell's Animal Farm was published. A political fable set in a farmyard, but based on Stalin's betrayal of the Russian Revolution, it made Orwell's name and ensured he was financially comfortable for the first time in his life. Nineteen Eighty-Four was published four years later. Set in an imaginary totalitarian future, the book made a deep impression, with its title and many phrases - such as "Big Brother is watching you", "newspeak" and "doublethink" - entering popular use. By now Orwell's health was deteriorating and he died of tuberculosis on 21 January 1950.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/orwell_george.shtml

PDF Presentation

https://fsharetv.co/movie/1984-episode-1-tt0087803

HAMNET - 4^C LINGUISTICO

 

From Academy Award® winning writer and director Chloé Zhao, Hamnet tells the powerful story of love and loss that inspired the creation of Shakespeare's timeless masterpiece, Hamlet.

Adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s novel, this film is not a re-enactment of Shakespearean lore or a behind the scenes look at the creation of Hamlet. It is instead a visceral meditation on parenthood, loss, and the mysterious alchemy through which tragedy becomes art.  Read here. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/26/movies/hamnet-review.html

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/hamnet-paul-mescal-jessie-buckley-william-shakespeare-film-review-2025

https://thefilmstage.com/telluride-review-chloe-zhaos-hamnet-reminds-us-why-art-matters/

https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/hamnet-chloe-zhaos-adaptation-maggie-ofarrells-best-selling-novel-devastating-exploration-loss-creative-alchemy

https://edwarddouglas.substack.com/p/hamnet-review

ROBIN HOOD - 3^C LINGUISTICO

 

According to the legend, Robin Hood was an outlaw living in Sherwood Forest with his Merry Men,  he stole from the rich and gave to the poor – but did he really exist and if so, how much of the legend is true?  Read here.

THE LEGEND OF KING ARTHUR - 3^C LINGUISTICO

King Arthur, the mythological figure associated with Camelot, may have been based on a 5th to 6th century British warrior who staved off invading Saxons.  Read here.

Sir Thomas Malory was an English writer whose identity remains uncertain, but whose name is famous as that of the author of Le Morte Darthur, the first prose account in English of the rise and fall of the legendary king Arthur and the fellowship of the Round Table.

Arthur was the first born son of King Uther Pendragon and heir to the throne. However these were very troubled times and Merlin, a wise magician, advised that the baby Arthur should be raised in a secret place and that none should know his true identity. Continue reading here.

ON THE BASIS OF SEX

 

On the Basis of Sex opened in the way any movie about female empowerment might: a hopeful and determined young woman marching towards her future as her heels click against the pavement.

That young woman was Supreme Court Justice and women’s rights advocate Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Felicity Jones). She was on her way to her welcoming ceremony at Harvard Law School in 1955. Ginsburg looked around, realizing she was one of nine women in her class, solidifying her isolation as a woman at Harvard Law.

This, among other incidences of thinly veiled and blatantly put gender discrimination, defined Ginsburg’s struggle throughout the movie. She is questioned, criticized and patronized during nearly every move she tries to make in the film, just as the real Ginsburg is in her own life and career.

The climax of the film appeared after her time at Harvard with the case of Moritz v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue. In the case, a man was denied tax provisions to support the costs of hiring an in-home nurse for his sick mother simply because he was unmarried. Ginsburg saw this opportunity to show how gender discrimination could impact men and took on the case alongside her husband, Marty (Armie Hammer), now a tax attorney, and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Here, the movie did the best job of making an entertaining story out of the life of an attorney. Despite the weight and symbolism behind this case, most would have been bored by the legal formalities of court proceedings themselves. To counter this, the movie picked up on the drama, and included a few typical tropes to keep viewers going. These ranged from “evil lawyers plot someone else’s demise in a dark room filled with cigar smoke” to “protagonist endearingly practices speech in front of a mirror before big events,” and showed us the magnitude of the variety of challenges she faced.

What Ginsburg did for women across America was give the persona of justice in a two hour film. Ginsburg’s work is ongoing, and it was a much better move to show the American people where the story of one of their role models began, which this movie did beautifully.

JANE AUSTEN'S PRIDE AND PREJUDICE - 5^C LINGUISTICO

MARY SHELLEY'S FRANKENSTEIN

 

The monster has always been the true subject of the Frankenstein story, and Kenneth Branagh’s retelling understands that. “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” has all of the usual props of the Frankenstein films, brought to a fever pitch: the dark and stormy nights, the lightning bolts, the charnel houses of spare body parts, the laboratory where Victor Frankenstein stirs his steaming cauldron of life.  Read here. 

https://fsharetv.co/movie/mary-shelley's-frankenstein-episode-1-tt0109836

JULIUS CAESAR - 4^C LINGUISTICO

https://www.rsc.org.uk/julius-caesar/

https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/j/julius-caesar/play-summary

https://www.litcharts.com/lit/julius-caesar

CHARLOTTE BRONTË'S JANE EYRE - 5^C LINGUISTICO

https://myblog-inplainenglish.blogspot.com/2014/04/charlotte-bronte.html

https://myblog-inplainenglish.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-bronte-sisters.html

https://owlcation.com/humanities/Book-Review-of-Jane-Eyre-by-Charlotte-Bronte

https://www.rai.it/dl/RaiTV/programmi/media/ContentItem-bf479522-b276-420e-84ea-b46630a71147-cinema.html

THE VICTORIAN NOVEL - 5^C LINGUISTICO

This is why I studied literature in college. This is why I became a teacher: to share in grand conversations about books, to spread the joy, to initiate and welcome students into the fraternity, into ..."the club of clubs," to travel with them into wondrously familiar or incredibly strange imaginative worlds.

Jeffrey D. Wilhelm

The Victorian Age was called the "age of fiction"  because of the immense popularity the genre gained in the period. Many outstanding writers turned to novel writing and the number of novels published yearly increased enormously. Novels were also serialised in magazines. The first part of the Victorian Age was characterised by the triumph  of the realistic novel. Both characters and events were interpreted and judged by an omniscient  narrator who expressed the dominant moral view of the time. The story generally ended in a happy way or at least with good triumphing over evil.  In the second part of the Victorian Age an anti-Victorian trend developed in the criticism of the hypocrisy and bigotry of the middle  classes. The  general anti-Victorian trend culminated towards the end of the century with the Aesthetic Movement which rejected the Victorian moral view of literature.

Here  you can find information about the Victorian novel.

https://graziatripodi/the-victorian-novel-main-characteristics/

ROBIN HOOD - 3^C LINGUISTICO

The spirit of adventure is alive and well in this retooling of the exploits of a legendary hero, the valiant and principled outlaw Robin Hood.  Director Kevin Reynolds and screenplay writers Pen Densham and John Watson have come up with just the right mix of action, dash, romance, and humor.

With the help of Azeem (Morgan Freeman), young nobleman Robin of Locksley (Kevin Costner) escapes from a Middle Eastern prison and makes his way home to England, where a rude surprise awaits him. His father has been murdered, King Richard is in exile, and Prince John has usurped the throne. Locally, the wicked Sheriff of Nottingham (Alan Rickman), has laid siege to the countryside. Robin gathers his merry men and fights back, pausing only for romance with the lovely, strong-willed Maid Marian (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio).

https://theflixertv.to/watch-movie/watch-robin-hood-prince-of-thieves-full-19662.5297473

POSSESSION, A VERY ROMANTIC MOVIE

A visiting American scholar is paging through an old volume at the British Museum when he comes upon a letter stuffed between the pages, a love letter, it would appear, from Queen Victoria's poet laureate, addressed to a woman not his wife. The poet has been held up for more than a century as a model of marital fidelity. The letter is dynamite. The scholar slips the letter out of the book and into his portfolio, and is soon displaying it, with all the pride and uncertainly of a new father, to a British woman who knows (or thought she knew) everything about the poet. Read here.

https://www.silverpetticoatreview.com/possession-2002-a-love-story-with-multi-generational-pull/

https://fsharetv.io/watch/possession-episode-1-tt0256276

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING - 4^C LINGUISTICO

Here you can download a PDF presentation to revise the play. 

https://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/short-stories/much-ado-about-nothing

https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/shakespedia/shakespeares-plays/much-ado-about-nothing/

Now let's watch the light-hearted film Much Ado About Nothing (1993), a spirited, winningly acted rendition of one of the Bard's most popular comedies.

https://fsharetv.co/movie/much-ado-about-nothing-episode-1-tt0107616

NOTTING HILL

William Thacker is a London bookstore owner whose humdrum existence is thrown into romantic turmoil when famous American actress Anna Scott appears in his shop. A chance encounter over spilled orange juice leads to a kiss that blossoms into a full-blown affair. As the average bloke and glamorous movie star draw closer and closer together, they struggle to reconcile their radically different lifestyles in the name of love.  Read here.

https://fsharetv.co/movie/_uid12012022-notting-hill-episode-1-tt0125439

DOWNTON ABBEY

This is far from a perfect film—it feels a bit rushed and thin  ...  still, it works. It really works. It's goodhearted and clever, and it knows when to end.  Read here.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/sep/10/downton-abbey-review-imelda-staunton-maggie-smith

https://engvideo.pro/en/films/downton-abbey/

JANE AUSTEN MOVIE ADAPTATIONS

The iconic Jane Austen's stories of independent women in the Regency era have been enthralling audiences for centuries. It only makes sense that with the creation of the movies these stories quickly moved to the big screen. Movies allow Jane Austen's stories to be told in an entirely new way, bringing life to many beloved characters.  Read here.

https://fsharetv.co/movie/persuasion-episode-1-tt0844330

https://fsharetv.co/movie/pride-&-prejudice-episode-1-tt0414387

https://fsharetv.co/movie/emma-episode-1-tt0116191

https://fsharetv.co/movie/sense-and-sensibility-episode-1-tt0114388

https://fsharetv.co/movie/the-jane-austen-book-club-episode-1-tt0866437

HIDDEN FIGURES - 4^C LINGUISTICO

https://www.forbes.com/sites/gaudianohunt/2017/01/23/9-leadership-lessons-from-hidden-figures/

https://fsharetv.co/movie/hidden-figures-episode-1-tt4846340

THE LAST LETTER FROM YOUR LOVER

If you are in the mood for a "they don't make movies like that anymore" movie, meaning soapy melodrama with enough glamorous glow to keep you from thinking too hard, then "The Last Letter From Your Lover" might do the trick. Read here.

https://fsapi.xyz/movie/tt1893273