Away day · Wednesday March 28, 2007 by Lily
We left the house at 6.20am and caught the train to London, arriving at the French Institute in Kensington only just in time for the Film Ed screening (10am) as Rupert had to watch the buses near Warren Street Underground Station and the circle line trains seemed to take for ever.
We then waited for 3/4 hour for one of the schools and the projectionist to arrive for “Days of Glory,” a very powerful WW11 film. It isn’t released until Friday. During the last Film Ed screenings we’d seen “Regeneration” and “The Wind that Shakes the Barley.” R found the second one very disturbing, so I’m taking great care with films now. They follow a theme for us. I’m trying to look at war from different angles.
The film today was very moving. It chronicles the story of 4 Algerian men fighting alongside the French army, the injustices they faced at the time of the war and the discriminations afterwards. After watching the movie, Jacques Chirac restored the veteran’s pensions. It was in French with English subtitles, and there will be a podcast of the masterclass that followed on the Film Ed website. 4 people took the masterclass, a Gurkha, a lady from the Imperial War Museum, the Director and the Film Ed representative. It was very interesting but there was little audience participation this time. Sometimes at these events there can be a great deal and the discussions are lively, (as in Regeneration.) The stance of the Gurkhas is one of several ideas I want to follow through as well as the influence of the offensives from the south on the outcome of the war and the immigrant situation in contemporary France and UK.
Unfortunately, R isn’t often interested in being active in discussions and so I try to expose him to situations where others discuss and debate and he can listen. He does find it diificult retrieving the words, though as with other things, that is partially self remediating and of course he can talk for Britain about his interests.
We then had our usual Subway sandwich sitting on the wall of a traffic island (as you do) before making our way to the Natural History Museum. This time I remembered to take my camera to photograph R in front of the beautiful building, and we went in to see the Red Zone Earth exhibits, including the earthquake shop. This ties in with the volcano theme from the IMAX film we saw a couple of weeks ago and we’ve also been to several RockWatch events organised by an HE friend over the past few months and have done some work on rocks and the rock cycle in Chemistry. A good example of how an interest is cross curricular.
We made our way back to Euston and ds watched the buses come and go for a while. It was a long day but ds still had time for MSN chats when we arrived home.
I would like to see the film again so must investigate where it is showing.
