This enquiry gets your students to become 50s B movie film buffs and analyze 4 Sci-Fi classics through the lens of the Cold War.

By arming them with knowledge about the Cold War in the first task, you will draw out the four main themes of the conflict from a western perspective: the arms race, the space race, spying and fear of communism.

Having established the themes, your students will watch the trailers to these 4 classics:

• The Day the Earth Stood Still
• Them
• Body Snatchers
• The Blob

If you click on the films above you can watch the trailers.

They will use their new knowledge of the Cold War as a lense to spot the themes in each trailer. Next, they will show you their new knowledge via filling in a grid and using film summary information sheets to provide them with extra knowledge.

Having learned about the themes of the Cold War and seen how Hollywood projected the themes in movies, they need to plan their own.  Storyboard sheets have been included.

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