Wasp (2003)

Directed and written by: Andrea Arnold

Starring: Danny Dyer, Nathalie Press, Jodie Mitchell, Molly Griffiths, Kaitlyn Raynor and Danny Daley

Zoe is a single mother who lives with her four children in Dartford, she is poor and cant afford to buy food. One day her ex-boyfriend drives by and asks her to go on a date with him. This will be her first date in years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasp_(film)

Fishtank(2009) directed by Andrea Arnold

Directed and written by: Andrea Arnold
Starring: Katie Jarvis, Michael Fassbender and Kierston Wareing

Mia a 15 year old girl lives with her mother and younger sister in a Essex council estate. Mia is a loner and does not seem to have any close friends. In the first scen of the movie she gets into a fight with other girls on the estate. We realise early on her only way escape is through dance, where she practices alone in a deserted flat.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_Tank_(film)

Representation of women in contemporary British cinema

• Library dramas like Charlotte Gray have celebrated the roles played by women in history.

• On of the most developed area of British film culture a rising number of female directors and writers have contributed to this rise increase.

• Films such as Fanny Elvis (1999) have confronted issues such as infidelity and abortion, other films like Mad Cows (1999) have tried to confront roles which affect the female body in particular hard hitting subjects which the female audience can relate to.

• Close friendships represented in films such as 'Anita and me' are used as to overshadow other tensions and jealousies relating to age, gender, ethnic and intellectual difference.

• How to used narrative or voice to represent women rather than the body can be seen in Stella does tricks (1996) where a teenage victims story of abuse and prostitution is recounted to others.

• The Bridget Jones films is perhaps the best film to look at to compare the change in gender politics in recent years where the Bridget Jones character has become an icon for post-feminists.

• They depict the feelings of both freedom and loneliness and displays the singleton lifestyle and how this trend of single occupancy is increasing.

• There has also been alot of films made around the grief and trauma of abuse that women receive.

• The film 'Red Road' shows this passive nature of women who suffer the abuse along with the intensity of their grief.

Media language library

http://www.medialit.org/reading-room/language-media-literacy-glossary-terms