Tsotsi: contexts and key sequences — Eduqas GCSE Film Studies C670
Eduqas GCSE Film Studies · C670
Tsotsi: contexts and key sequences
Tsotsi
What you need to know
Tsotsi (Gavin Hood, 2005): in a township near Johannesburg, Tsotsi, leader of a small gang, shoots a woman while stealing her car and finds her baby on the back seat; caring for the baby, with help from Miriam, a young widow, changes him.
A South African film adapted from Athol Fugard's novel and moved from the 1950s to post-apartheid South Africa, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
The gap between wealth and poverty, crime, and the AIDS epidemic, with a kwaito soundtrack.
Key sequences to know in detail: the opening dice game and the killing on the train, Tsotsi with the baby and his memory of childhood, and the ending at the gate.
Cinematography and mise-en-scène: close-ups of hands, Tsotsi's point of view, warm township colours against the cold city, and his face half in light.
Editing and sound: cross-cutting to flashback, kwaito music, and quiet diegetic sound in the calmer scenes.
The few short lines of dialogue that matter most in these sequences, a few words each.
Short answers of the kind the first parts of the Section B question ask for: naming and describing a character, and explaining how a technique introduces them.
How to answer each part: the marks, and what the short identify and explain parts need as well as the extended answer, since naming a technique instead of a specific example from the film loses marks there. Practice questions to try, each headed 'Practice question' with its marks.
Quote only short lines of dialogue you're sure of, a few words at a time, and base every point on what happens in the finished film.
