E.M. Forster’s 1909 short story about a future dystopia provides an excellent stiumlus to explore many issues that impact young peoples’ lives in 2021. THE MACHINE STOPS (1909) paints a picture that allows us to reflect on a multitude of topical questions: how far has technology helped us to advance, individually and socially? how does technology impact our relationships to our bodies and senses? how does technology affect our relationship with the natural world? how do metaphor, irony and allegory work to convey social messages? how does technology impact our ability to gain knowledge of what is true and to separate fact from fiction? Forster’s prophetic short story was extremely prescient in its vision of a future society in which people would be confined indoors, socially distanced and isolated even from their closest kin, and in which all connection to people and the world is mediated through a “machine”. What happens when Kuno decides he wants to escape the machine and to live by his own wits?

This presentation is based on insights from Patricia White’s article ‘Cinema Solidarity: The Documentary Practice of Kim Longinotto’ from Cinema Journal 46, No. 1, Fall 2006. Using Sisters in Law (Ayisi and Longinotto) as the central case study, this 30-slide presentation forms the basis of an hour-long lesson and concludes with a past exam question. Ideal for teaching EDUQAS A-LEVEL** FILM STUDIES**, this resource focuses on Kim Longinotto’s documentary practice and ‘theory’, allowing students to contextualise her approach in terms of wider feminist debates around the position and role of Western feminists vis-a-vis feminists from other cultures and national contexts.

**Raise the Red Lantern **(Dir. Zhang Yimou, 1991, China) is an excellent example of a film that deconstructs how patriarchal power works and in this sense it is a film that is empowering for women, despite being a narrative *about * disempowered women. The film has also been discussed as a metaphor for Chinese state power and therefore also functions a a subversive political commentary. With beautiful cinematography and composition throughout, this film is also a study in cinematic perfection, with mise-en-scene used to great symbolic effect. The film could be studied just as an excellent example of mise-en-scene.