Social Realism Research

Anna Medvedeva

Theme and Style of Social Realism Films

Social Realism movies usually represent real problems that people have at the time and focus on working class people. Some of the movies are based on real stories which help audience to have a view on the difference between people’s life from different parts of the world

Settings/Locations

Producers usually use normal locations for instance urban arias of London

For example in “Kidulthood” movie they represent London as a main location where the main story had been represented.

The movie starts in west London’s school where they introduce the main characters to audience

Characters in Social Realism Movies

Usually main characters are from a poor family where they grew up without parents attention or love. Producers of the movies show the main character’s usual life outside for example what they do to survive, what is their job etc

In “Kidulthood” they showed different social class characters (middle class and low) they also showed their life at school, home and between friends. From the movie it is clear that people have not an easy life and that they have to be aggressive to each other so others don’t bother them.

Kidulthood Movie

Kidulthood: social realism drama film

Released in UK in March 2006

Director: Menhaj Huda

Writer: Noel Clark (one of the actors)

Budget: £600 000 Box office: £453

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Kidulthood Plot

The film focuses on young school kids aged 15-18. They showed what usually teenagers do when they are not at school or home

The movie converges on drugs, sex, alcohol and crime around teenagers.

Characters

All characters are different from each other and have different type of life.

One of the main characters in this movie is Alisa (Red Madrell) who in her young age got pregnant from her boyfriend. During the whole movie she was with her best friend Becky (Jaime Winstone) taking drugs and trying to get rid of her baby. At the end of the movie she decided to have this baby and do not do an abortion

Characters

Another character Becky (Jaime Winstone) is Alisa’s friend who is totally different from Alisa. She only interested in partying, sex and drugs (typical social realism film character). During the movie it is clear that she is quite jealous and very selfish girl who pretends to be a good person.

Characters

Trife (Aml Ameen) is another positive character in this movie. He is Alisa’s ex boyfriend who thinks in an absolutely different way and not like his best friends. In the movie they show that he is trying to make something of his life by working for his uncle that is a gangster. At the end of the movie he realizes that he does not want to be in crime so he finds his ex girlfriend Alisa and decides that they should stay together.

Slumdog Millionaire

Released in UK 9th January 2009

Genre: Social Realism, Drama, Romance, Thriller

Director: Danny Boyle

Budget: $15 million

Box office: $377 910 544

Distributed in UK by: Pathe

Slumdog Millionaire Narrative The movie is about two

brothers from a poor part of India. One of the brothers decides to go on a famous TV program “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire”

while he was answering the questions on the show, he had flashbacks which were the part of the movie that show his past life.

Characters in Kidulthood and Slumdog Millionaire

These two characters (Trife, from Kidulthood) and (Salim from Slumdog Millionaire) are similar because they both from poor areas and represented as bad people but at the end of the movie they turned to be exactly opposite to what they were during all film, showing that there can be good potential in all people.

Settings/ Location in Kidulthood and Slumdog Millionaire

The locations where movies were filmed are quite similar. Both in these movies were shown poor neighborhoods of England and India, for example in Kidulthood they showed west part of London where the majority of the people are low class and have financial problems

References

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1010048/ http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?

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https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ie=UTF-8&ion=1#hl=en&sa=X&ei=sExoULLJCOOV0QXW5oCQCw&ved=0CBsQvwUoAQ&q=wikipedia&spell=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&fp=7cc30a0591b0014f&ion=1&biw=1061&bih=583