Medieval Primary Source and Film Analysis: Kingdom of Heaven Resources

We all know that Kingdom of Heaven is a bad film. It includes bad history, and Orlando Bloom has about as much charisma as a bag of rocks. However, when I taught the medieval period, this film helped bring the crusades to life, and launched interesting discussions about how we use history to make contemporary political points. For example, Ridley Scott was trying to use this story about the crusades to make a comment on the War on Terror. This also helps students compare and contrast primary sources and a film adaptation of a specific time period.

This resource packet includes:

1. Graphic organizers for notetaking on the film. I have divided the film up into 4 parts

2. Nightly (or daily) primary source readings from the middle ages for students to read and make connections to the screen. There are four sections with about 2 sources in each

3. Historians' and film critics' reviews of the film

4. Rubrics for assessing student annotations, as well as rubrics for an essay that students can write comparing the film to primary and secondary sources.

If you choose to show the film in class and make room for discussion of primary sources, and maybe add a Socratic Seminar at the end, this series of lessons could last anywhere between 1-2 weeks.