This month, A level Film students enjoyed the excellent ‘FaME’ (Film and Media) conference at the Central theatre, Chatham where this year, the theme was ‘Genre’. For the 4th year running, our own students were part of the day, opening the conference with a presentation on the genre of British Social Realism, discussing the politics behind it’s rise to popularity in the post-War period, to how the print media and social attitudes to the working class inspired the ‘New Wave’ in the 1990s-2000s. The class talked about their own set texts in the A level exam – ‘Trainspotting’ (Boyle, 1996) and ‘Fish Tank’ (Arnold, 2009) and how these fit the criteria of realism films. Two of our class, Diana and Emily, also wrote the accompanying article that features in the course booklet.

 We also heard from various other schools, discussing other aspects of film genre that will be of benefit to exam revision and enjoyed other students’ demonstrations of their Media coursework.

The day ended with the classic film ‘Airplane’, looking at how this parodies the genre features of the popular 70s disaster films. Myself and Mr May enjoyed a great day with lovely students and look forward to next year’s event, where Stocky students will again be contributing.

Miss Lockett