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Films/Videos James Bond Series ​ ​ The James Bond Series of films are based on a fictional character, James Bond, character by Ian Fleming. Fleming featured Bond in 12 novels and 2 short story collections. After Fleming died in 1964 other writers have authored Bond-inspired novels. James Bond or 007 has been adapted for a range of other media including video games and a comic strip. The films are famous for their music and the gadgets Bond uses. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Black Opal Victoria Holt 1993 Abandoned as a baby, her exotic beauty prompted hushed whispers of gypsy blood. But lovely Carmel March remained shrouded in mystery.... When tragedy struck her adopted home of Commonwood House, little Carmel had been bundled off to Australia. Returning to England as a young woman, she became haunted by questions from her past, as well as the shocking revelation that she had been rushed from a murder scene those many years ago. Yet she was convinced that the wrong man had been sentenced for the crime. Was the answer locked away in her childhood memory -- or in the dark, secretive behavior of her old childhood friend, Lucian? And what fateful role did the opals -- always present at crucial moments of her life -- play? For only when she released the dark secrets imprisoned at Commonwood would she find the freedom to love.... External Website

Films/Videos Evelyn ​ 2017 Nine-year-old Evelyn Doyle (Sophie Vavasseur) and her two brothers, Maurice (Hugh MacDonagh) and Dermot (Niall Beagan) are motherless when their mother abandons the marriage to a drunkard out-of-work father Desmond Doyle (Pierce Brosnan). When Desmond's mother-in-law (Claire Mullan) reports the situation to the authorities, a judge decides the children are prohibited by law to being left in broken homes; they are placed in Church-run orphanages. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Feast Margaret Kennedy 2021 The Feast originally published in 1949. A surprisingly funny novel about a hotel that has collapsed and buried a number of the guests. Who had died and how did it happen? One of the families has one natural daughter and three adopted children, and their plot does include the adopted girl struggling with her identity as the adopted daughter. Cornwall, Midsummer 1947. Pendizack Manor Hotel is buried in the rubble of a collapsed cliff. Seven guests have perished, but is it murder, and what brought this strange assembly together for a moonlit feast before this Act of God - or Man? Over the week before the landslide, we meet the hotel guests in all their eccentric glory: and as friendships form and romances blossom, sins are revealed, and the cliff cracks widen .. External Website

Films/Videos A.I. Artificial Intelligence ​ 2001 A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) is an American sci-fi film directed by Steven Spielberg. Set in the future, the film features Jaley Joel Osment as David, a childlike android programmed to give and receive love. David is given to Monica (Frances O’Connor) and Henry Swinton (Sam Robards) because their son, Martin (Jake Thomas), has a rare disease and been placed in suspended animation. When Martin unexpectedly recovers, he returns home and is jealous of David. Monica and Henry decide that David should be returned to his creators and destroyed, but on the way, Monica abandons David in the woods. External Website

Films/Videos Baby Driver ​ 2017 Baby Driver (2017) is an American action film directed by Edgar Wright. It stars Ansel Angort as Baby (Miles), a getaway driver for criminals in Atlanta, Georgia. Baby was a child when he was orphaned; the only survivor in a car crash that killed his parents. We see Baby in the movie with his foster father, Joseph. We don’t know if Joseph was Baby’s only carer or not, but the two have a sound relationship, with Baby taking on the caring role for the deaf older man. Baby was coerced into becoming a getaway driver for criminal mastermind Doc (Kevin Spacey) and the film traces the story of how Baby extricates himself from this role. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Yield Tara June Winch 2019 Award-winning Australian Wiradjuri writer, Tara June Winch (b. 1983) has written a moving novel - The Yield - about the ongoing impact of colonisation on First Nations People. Central to the story is August Gondiwindi, a young woman who returns to Australia from London on the death of her grandfather, Albert Gondiwindi. August Gondiwindi grew up in the kinship care of Albert and grandmother Elsie in the fictional town of Massacre Plains. Prior to his death, Albert Gondiwindi was writing a dictionary of Aboriginal words. Albert grew up in a Boys Home. The Yield is beautifully written and a stunning reclamation of Aboriginal language. External Website

Films/Videos Fathers and Daughters ​ 2015 The 2015 film, Fathers & Daughters, tells the story of a family struggling for the custody of a child. After his wife dies in a car accident while he is driving, writer Jake Davis (Russel Crowe) goes into a psychiatric facility for 7 months to recover. His 5 year old daughter stays with her maternal aunt and family. When Jake returns to collect his daughter, the aunt wants to adopt Kate. Jake refuses and the aunt and her husband begin court proceedings. External Website

Films/Videos Scrooge ​ 1951 Care Experienced writer, Charles Dickens (1812-1870) had significant influence on how Christmas is celebrated in the West. Scrooge (A Christmas Carol in U.S.) 1951 British Christmas fantasy drama film. Starrign Alastair Sim as Ebenezer Scrooge, An adaptation of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol (1843). On Christmas Eve 1843, Scrooge tells two businessmen that he has no intention of celebrating Christmas. At his workplace, he refuses to donate to two men collecting for the poor. His nephew, Fred, invites him to dinner the next day, but Scrooge refuses, disparaging Fred for having married against his will. Scrooge reluctantly gives his poor clerk Bob Cratchit a paid holiday, but expects him back to work earlier the next day. Scrooge returns home and sees the door-knocker transform into the face of his long-dead partner, Jacob Marley. Inside the house, Jacob Marley appears as a ghost before Scrooge, warning that he must repent or suffer being forever bound in chains after death. He further warns Scrooge that he will be visited by three spirits; the first will arrive at one o'clock. Frightened by the visitation, Scrooge takes refuge in his bed. There have been many adaptations of A Christmas Carol as far back as 1901 with the lates in 2021. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Heart's Invisible Furies John Boyne (3) 2017 The Heart’s Invisible Furies (2017) by Irish writer John Boyne explores social change in the Republic of Ireland through the life of an adoptee, Cyril Avery. In 1945, Cyril’s mother, Catherine Goggin, is banished from her hometown after she is denounced by the local priest. Catherine moves to Dublin and gives her son up for adoption. Cyril’s adoptive parents, Charles and Maude Avery, leave the boy much to his own devices. Cyril realises early that he is gay but homosexuality is a criminal offence in Ireland and the young man is conflicted, resorting to secret sexual encounters with men but deeply unhappy with this. When he finally moves to Amsterdam in 1973, where homosexuality is legal, Cyril lives openly as a gay man, falls in love, and informally adopts a child with his partner. External Website

Fiction by Care Experienced authors Oi: Snowball Meets Some Very Toxic People David Jackson 2018 This autobipgraphical novel is based on the personal voyage into the 1960-80s childcare system as experienced first-hand by the author. Described as a brutally horrific system, that made countless victims of the very children it was designed to protect. These brutally horrific regimes, founded upon extraordinary levels of inhumanity, cruelty, violence, fear, and intimidation, brought children to their knees, brutalised, cowed and often in fear for their very existence. It was a stark, depressive, and oppressively dysfunctional system, that imposed perpetual physical suffering and mental hardship, upon its most vulnerable charges. This was the environment that the ‘Unfortunates’ found themselves embedded in during the 1960s. External Website

Films/Videos Auntie Mame ​ 1958 Patrick Dennis, orphaned in 1928 when his father Edwin dies unexpectedly, is placed in the care of his aunt Mame Dennis in Manhattan. Mame is flamboyant and exuberant, hosting frequent parties with a variety of guests and free-spirited friends Mr. Babcock (Fred Clark), Patrick's assigned executor, objects to Mame's unconventional way of living and tries to force her to send Patrick to prep school. As Mame and Patrick grow closer, Mr. Babcock tries to discipline Patrick and threatens to separate the two if Mame does not comply with his wishes. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Chaperone Laura Moriarty 2012 The Chaperone is a novel about the woman who chaperoned ant Louise Brooks to New York City in 1922 and the summer that would change them both. Only a few years before becoming a famous silent-film star and an icon of her generation, a fifteen-year-old Louise Brooks leaves Wichita, Kansas, to study with the prestigious Denishawn School of Dancing in New York. Much to her annoyance, she is accompanied by a thirty-six-year-old chaperone, who is neither mother nor friend. Cora Carlisle, a complicated but traditional woman was once an orphan who was part of the Orphan Train, which placed children with midwestern families (who also happened to be strangers!). Cora was lucky, her foster family treated her well but some of the kids became the victims of terrible cruelty, and more hunger, and more neglect—it all depended on who adopted them off of the train. Young Louise, already stunningly beautiful and sporting her famous black bob with blunt bangs, is known for her arrogance and her lack of respect for convention. Ultimately, the five weeks they spend together will transform their lives forever." External Website

Films/Videos August Rush ​ 2007 August Rush (2007) is a musical drama film starring Freddie Highmore, Keri Russell and Jonathan Rhys Meyers. When cellist Lyla Novacek (Keri Russell) gives birth to a son, her father secretly organises the baby to be adopted. The baby, Evan Taylor (Freddie Highmore) is a musical prodigy. Because he is bullied in the orphanage where he’s been living since birth, he runs away to New York City. In New York, Evan meets a Fagan-type character, ‘Wizard’ Wallace (Robin Williams), who takes in homeless and orphaned children and teaches them to busk. He gives Evan Taylor the name August Rush. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Dutch House Ann Patchett 2019 A richly moving story that explores the indelible bond between two siblings, the house of their childhood, and a past that will not let them go. The Dutch House belongs to a tradition in both fairy tales and American fiction of motherless children (sometimes raised by their father, often with the aid of an aunt or trusty hired help) Two siblings, Maeve and Danny Conroy, bond tightly after their mother leaves home when they're 10 and 3. Home is the eponymous Dutch House, a 1922 mansion outside Philadelphia that their father, Cyril, a real estate mogul, bought fully furnished in an estate sale as a surprise for his wife in 1946, when Maeve was 5. The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another. It is this unshakeable bond between them that both saves their lives and thwarts their futures. Set over the course of five decades, The Dutch House is a dark fairy tale about two smart people who cannot overcome their past. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Wuthering Heights Emily Nestor Brontë et al. 2003 Wuthering Heights is an 1847 novel by Emily Brontë, published under the pseudonym Ellis Bell. It concerns two families of the landed gentry living on the West Yorkshire moors, the Earnshaws and the Lintons, and their turbulent relationships with Earnshaw's adopted son, Heathcliff. External Website

Films/Videos Batman ​ ​ Batman is a superhero character created by Bob Kane and first appearing in 1939 for DC Comics. Batman is the alias of Bruce Wayne, a wealthy businessman who's parents were murdered when he was a child. Wayne trains himself to fight against crime, working with Gotham's city's administration. Batman began appearing in film during the 1940s. This was followed by a series from 1989 until 1997, the Dark Knight trilogy from 2005 until 2012, and in a number of DC Extended Universe films from 2016. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Likeness Tana French 2008 The Likeness (2008) is the 2nd novel by Tana French which includes the character of Cassie Maddox. The story is narrated by Cassie who was raised in kinship care after her parents were killed in a car accident when she was 5. Cassie takes on an undercover job investigating a home in which 5 young university students have been living as a family. 2 of the men are estranged from their families, 1 is an orphan. The 4th resident is a woman who grew up in foster care. The 5th young person, another woman, has been killed. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Wide, Wide World Susan Warner 1850 Often thought of as America's first bestselling book, The Wide, Wide World (1850) by Susan Warner features a child in kinship care. Ellen Montgomery is taken to Europe to live with an aunt because her mother is ill. The aunt, Fortune Emerson, is unkind. After a time Ellen is invited to stay with relatives in Scotland where she is treated more benevolently, but the relatives become possessive, wanting Ellen to renounce her American heritage and her religion. Ellen returns to American after she marries John Humphreys, the brother of a friend she met when living with Fortune Emerson. External Website

Films/Videos Foster Boy ​ 2020 Foster Boy is a 2019 American drama film. Michael is a high-powered lawyer and Jamal is an angry young man who has been imprisoned after years of abuse in the foster care system. Together they have to overcome their differences to find justice and expose the foster care system. Directed by Youssef Delara and starring Shane Paul McGhie, Matthew Modine and Louis Gossett Jr. External Website