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.

Transformers

Transformers is a movie about alian robots that come to earth to find a cube which has the power to turn any computerized object into an evil robot. The desepticons are trying to find the cube so that they can use its power to help take over the world where as the Autobots are trying to get to it first so that they can destroy ity and prevent the desepticons from destroying the earth.

It relates to the book The Secret River when the desepticons come to earth and try to take over just like the British come to Australia and take over the aboriginals land but like the book the humans fight the desepticons with the Autobots to help save the earth just like to Aboriginals fight to save there homes.

The Notebook

The Notebook is one of my favourite movies. I have read one of his novels The Lucky One, and watched two movies written by him The Notebook and A Walk to Remember. Each story is beautiful love story, but in each story conflict was encountered.

The Notebook is a story about about Allie, brought up in a rich family, with parents who put a lot of pressure on her to go to university and become very successful just like themselves. Allie meets a boy, Noah , in a much lower economic status than herself, and, after a lot of convincing from Noah, they fall in love (Much to Allie's parent's disgust). Allie's Parents realize Noah does not have the same economic stability as they have. They say Noah is "trash! trash! trash! Not for you!", they didn't want their daughter to throw all their effort away on a "summer romance". In order to get rid of their problem they decided to leave town giving Allie no opportunity to say goodbye to her first love.
After leaving town, Allie's parents watched her cry herself to sleep for weeks, and didn't inform Allie of the letters Noah had sent her everyday for a year. All this was because Noah didn't earn the same amout of money as they did. After many fights with her parents, and even getting engaged to another man. Allie and Noah found each other again and lived happily ever after.

raisin in the sun

raisin in the sun stars well known star Sean 'P Diddy' combs. the film is about poverty, racism and internal conflict these themes involve all of the character. i believe the secret river also expresses these themes throughout itself.

In the film they are poor and Walter(P. Diddy) is forever trying to earn money for his family; going into dodgy business investments just to get one step further. This relates to the secret river when Thornhill is trying to persuade Sal to agree to him owning their own land; he believes this is best for his family.

Also in the film the grandmother receives an amount of money; the inheritance of the grandfather's passing, this news brings about conflict between the family, all of whom give their two cents to where the money should go and who it should be given to, the conflict that arises in relation to the money is conflict within themselves their own morals and values. this relates to Thornhill in the secret river because he also has conflicting views in his mind about what is right and wrong.

the other theme i mentioned was racism, this occurs when the grandmother decides on what to do with the money. she had decided to buy a house. the house is in a white community on the south side of Chicago. the film, being set around the 1950's, shows the diversity between the African Americans and white people around this period. The white people went to many lengths to show the Younger family wasn't welcome. as racism is a major theme in the secret river i thought this also would relate to it.

The movie Signs (2002) staring Mel Gibson follows an average family whose life changes dramatically when they discover they must defend their home from a hostile Alien invasion.

I feel this movie really relates to the encountering conflict context and to the Secret River as it demonstrates how any race, if threatened, will violently protect its home, whether it is Human vs. Alien, or ‘white’ men vs. ‘black’ men as we see within the Secret River. Signs also relates directly to the Secret River as it follows an invasion of earth, similarly to the way the English invaded Australia and the way in which both the aboriginals and English react to such threats over what they believe to be rightfully theirs.