The aim of this enquiry is to get students focussing on the chronology of the cold war.
By using a recent film by Steven Spielberg, they will begin to identify his eye for historical accuracy.
However, are the audience watching ‘Bridge of Spies’ (2015) aware five years of history is crammed into and rushed through 144 minutes?!
Your class with watch the trailer, establish the plot of the film, then cross-reference it with the agreed historical facts about the U2 crisis and this period.
With a lot of ‘dramatic license’, best not use his film for revision…
They finish by creating advice about how to tackle a ‘write an account’ (8 mark) question, they just don’t realise it.
NB: Many thanks to historian Alex von Tunzelmann for her Guardian article (22nd Dec, 2015) which was the inspiration for this lesson.
Download lesson
- Lesson presentation: PowerPoint
- Lesson write-up: PDF
- Resource 1: PDF
- Worksheet 1-3: PDF
