Children’s Film: Children’s Cultures

Abstract

Children’s films are currently hugely successful commercially and well received critically; many, many films for children are made each year (although less so in the UK). In the past families watched the first broadcast of films at Christmas such as The Wizard of Oz, (Fleming, 1939). According to research published by the now-abolished UK Film Council (UKFC), of the most successful films worldwide between 2001 and 2008 the top twenty were made for families and accessed by children (UKFC, 2009a), for example the Harry Potter, (Columbus, 2002) Lord of the Rings, (Jackson, 2001), Star Wars, (Lucas, 2002) Spiderman, (Raimi, 2002) and Shrek, (Adamson and Jenson, 2001) series of films. Furthermore, children and young people and their parents make up the largest audiences for cinema in the UK:

The cinema audience for the top 20 films in 2008 was predominantly young, with the 7–34 age group (40% of the population) making up 64% of the audience. (UKFC, 2008, p. 116)

Children today access many more and a much wider range of films at the cinema, on television, on video, DVD, and on the Internet. Viewing can be a solitary or shared experience and children can watch again, pause, rewind and fast-forward to favourite moments and watch the ‘making of’ content. Related toys, clothes, bedding and books can extend their experience of film narratives (Marsh, 2005).