English corner - The voice of the students on Films and SDGs

 

We've challenged the students to share information on films they think are suitable to address the SDGs

Here are some suggestions:

When analyzing the Titanic, we realized that several scenes in the film are identified with SDG-10, namely the fact that there is a lot of inequality at an economic level. Most of the people with little money used it only to emigrate in order to have a better life, while others travel on vacation.

Rita Batista and Beatriz Rêgo

Interstellar is a science-fiction movie released in 2014, directed and written by Christopher Nolan and his brother Jonathan Nolan.(…) The story of the movie ties in with the goals of life on land, climate change, and sustainable communities, which are all absolutely failing in this world. Thanks to that, the Earth can no longer support life and humanity must find a new planet to live in and sustain themselves in a more responsible way, which is fulfilled thanks to the efforts of Cooper, Murphy and their respective crews.

Rodrigo Gomez

WALL- E

After cluttering the Earth with rubbish and polluting the atmosphere with toxic gases, humanity left the planet and moved to live on a giant spaceship. The plan was for the retreat to last a few short years, with robots being left to clean up the planet. Wall-E is the last of these robots, which is kept running thanks to the self-repairing of its parts. (…)

In the film WALL-E we can find four sustainable development goals being violated: SDG-11 Sustainable cities and communities, SDG-12 Sustainable production and consumption, SDG- 13 Climate action and SDG-17 Life on land.

Sofia Gomes, Nuno Marques  and Bruno Santos

VANISHING OF THE BEES

There are various types of movies that talk about some important things like: Climate Changes, deforestation, war, etc. Those topics are the ones that affect our planet the most, since making our land infertile to plant more trees and food, to have very toxic and radioactive places that can affect our health and our ecosystem. (...)

 Basically I did a research for documentaries that had to do with the SDG I chose “Life on Land”, because documentaries are the ones that have various types of information that we need to make our world better. The documentary I decided to talk about is  Vanishing of the Bees (2009). This documentary shows how important bees are for us human beings and for the ecosystems. 

Carolina Pires

I’m going to talk about The Courageous Heart of Irena Sandler (2009) and why this movie can be connected to a SDG.

Now, you might be wondering: “How does a movie about World War II spread a message about a goal to be achieved in 2030?” Well, that is very simple: human kind is a disappointment and we still have similar problems to when a literal war was happening.

You see, this movie isn’t really fictional. It’s based on the true story of Irena Sandler, a woman who, during World War II, saved many Jewish children, by helping them escape the ghetto and the Holocaust.

Due to addressing these issues, this movie has a theme of wanting peace amongst people. Do we have a SDG goal for that? Yes we do!

Number 16: “Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions”.

Jorge Lima

The film On the basis of sex, it’s an autobiography of a woman called Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the 1960s who wants to be a lawyer and it’s based on a true story.

She fought against the gender inequality, abortion, search and seizure and international law. Despite having contributed to several subjects and themes, this film focuses on the issue of gender inequality, where it played a very important role, in such a way that it changed old and inadequate laws, creating new ones and later becomes part of the Supreme Organ of North America Justice. (…)

Through this brief explanation, we can conclude that this film fits into objectives 5 (gender equality) and 10 (reduce inequalities), since what was intended was a reform in the Justice model, achieving gender equality, and consequently a reduction in inequalities.

Margarida Pintéus and Matilde Costa

THE HUNDRED - After the Earth was destroyed by nuclear missiles, humanity only survived thanks to the space stations that eventually came together and formed the Ark.

After 97 years, the Ark's resources began to end up threatening the extinction of mankind!

This is a science fiction series with 7 seasons. Throughout the seasons we can see a good number of SDGs being addressed:

The SDG -5 (gender equality) is a theme that is discussed a lot in this series, as with the creation of strong, intelligent female characters with a great protagonism, the best known being Clarke Griffin a great leader and strategist, Lexa kom Trikru the commander (Heda), Raven Reyes a mechanic, engineer and is the most intelligent and charismatic character in the series and completing Octavia Blake one of the best warriors.

The SDG 10 (Reduced inequalities) and 17  (Partnerships for the goals) are also in this series, as it shows the various peoples from different clans working together and ended up forgetting how the differences between them survived.

The issue of homosexuality is embraced, through Clarke the main character and Lexa who sets aside her ideals for Clarke and which we consider to be a very important moment because there is a great acceptance of the series in the fact that Clarke never says she is bisexual its main objective is to show that homosexuality does not have to be shown in words or assumed verbally by the character.

 

In this series, the SDGs 8 (decent work and economic growth), 9 (industry, innovation and infrastructure), 11 (sustainable cities and communities) and 12 (responsible consumption and production) complement each other as Humanity had to develop methods of survival creating a new civilization on the Earth's surface and in space but it is on Earth that there is a great growth since these removed Starting from scratch without technologies, they created their own language, a central city to Polis, making a rite of passage to decide who would be the commander and a council with a representative of each clan so that all clans could have power in the decisions of the City.

The commander is chosen through the Conclave, this has great training and the Nightblood children fight to the death and the winner will be the commander regardless of the clan to which he belongs.

Finally, the SDG 13 (climate action) is also addressed, in season 5, where they had to survive meteorological catastrophes, such as black rain, a deadly rain and finally a wave of radiation that will kill everyone who is hit by it.

Maria Serafim and Joana Martins

Enjoy watching these films and learn about the SDGs

Have fun!!!