Blood Diamond

Blood Diamond is a movie set during the sierra leone civil war in 1999. the film shows a country torn apart by the government and rebel forces.

Solemon Vandy, a fisherman in Sierra Leone, has hopes of his son becoming a doctor, his dreams are shattered when rebels come to his villiage and kidnap him, to work in diamond mines. one day he found a huge pink diamond, and while hiding it one of the rebels see, fortunately the rebels are attacked and soleman is arrested by the government army.

danny archer, a man tortured to have strong survival insticts. he made himself a key player in the conflict of diamonds. somehow he finds out about Solemon's diamond, and offers to help find his family and bring his whole family to safety inreturn of the diamond.

after much conflict between Danny and Solemon, they become good friends, and Danny ends up dying fighting to protect Solemon and his family. Solemon and his family end up being brought to safety in America, and their lives are changed forever.

MESSAGE STICK

BEAUTIFUL MIRIAM COROWA.
Originally uploaded by RubyGoes

Message Stick is a program on the ABC that explores the history and culture of Indigenous Australia. It is presented from the Aboriginal viewpoint and perspective. It features many issues, themes, ideas and topics that supplement our study of The Secret River. In your preparation for the exam you could check out the Message Stick website and view stories that capture your interest. In the screening of The Professor, Professor Marcia Langton made many stirring and poignant comments about Australia's history that can be seen to have strong links with the subject matter of The Secret River.

Conflict between Professor Marcia Langton and Germaine Greer over their interpretations of the film Australia by Baz Luhrman also makes for interesting reading. Read Langton's review and then check out Greer's perspective. Langton also responds to Greer in defence of her point of view.

The Line - S/N activity

When you study The Line by Arch and Martin Flanagan you will need to make connections that go beyond the set text, just as you did with The Secret River. The connections you make are about exploring the set context, Encountering Conflict, and building a pool of ideas to inspire writing pieces that are underpinned by themes, ideas and literary devices used in the set text.

To begin this process you are going to source four texts (a picture, a written text, a song and a film) that you can see are about Encountering Conflict and can be linked to The Line in some way. In these explanations make clear:
- the conflict/s you can see
- the links with the set text
- the ideas for possible writing pieces

An area for improvement from our The Secret River blog posts:

Enhance your digital writing by including links to information on sites that supports your commentary. Also, where possible, incorporate a relevant visual with your post. For example, if you are writing about a novel in the Text Tremors section of the blog, import a picture of the novel’s cover.