The Cinema in the History Classroom: Why Watching Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain?

Abstract

The didactic value of historical films is a topic long discussed by historians and film specialists such as Ferro (1991), Burke (2005), Rosenstone (1988), Caparrós (2007), and Martínez-Salanova Sánchez (2003). Taking into consideration the theoretical contributions of these and other scholars, as educators in the subject Perspectives on the Present World, annual fourth year course of the English Teacher Training Program, we decided to develop a project to work systematically with audiovisual materials to complement the instruction of the historical contents outlined in the syllabus. In the present paper we focus on the experience carried out with the movie Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain (2014), included to illustrate some aspects of the topic of globalization. We present the most relevant reasons that drove us to adopt films as didactic resources as we proceed to explain the experience with the viewing and later debate of the movie about the tragedy of Bhopal. A brief summary of the case of the chemical disaster and of the film based on such catastrophe are provided before communicating the process implemented for the viewing and analysis of the movie, as well as of the results of the survey applied to assess the activity.