Film education/literacy

Film education/literacy
What does it mean
& where does it come from?
Ian Christie
www.ianchristie.org
Cinema is changing…
Education is
changing…
…although not
for everyone
Between 1905-14
the Jesuit Abbé
Joye collected films
for weekly shows
to young people in
Basel, Switzerland
The ciné-club and film society movements spread
rapidly during the 1920s – many of them offering
lectures and practical classes in filmmaking
Film enthusiasts in many
countries learned the new
language of ‘montage’
from Eisenstein’s
Battleship Potemkin
(1926) – still being taught
long after the silent era as
the ‘grammar of film’
Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941)
made spectacular use of deepfocus composition in depth, and
launched the new wave of misen-scene film aesthetics
The critic André Bazin (here in
Cannes, with Sadoul and
Zavattini) would promote misen-scene criticism and
decoding film’s meaning in
his influential writing – and
would inspire the French ‘new
wave’ of Godard, Truffaut etc
In the 1970s and 80s, ‘film theory’ became a
specialised academic field – far removed from
the world of ‘film appreciation’. And from
teaching children about cinema.
During the 60s and 70s –
Marshall McLuhan’s ideas
about ‘the medium as
the message’ also
launched Media Studies.
And Cultural Studies
emerged to analyse how
popular media shape and
reflect social attitudes.
Amid all this theorising of film, media and
society – there was also a tradition of
promoting filmmaking for and by young
people (like the Childrens Film
Foundation and the Children’s Film Unit)
Meanwhile, the custom of Saturday film
matinees began to disappear
Film in schools
| (school)kids in cinemas
Film in schools | (school)kids in cinemas
Country-wide and regional organisations
And what’s the aim of all this?
Historically, Vincent Pinel defined the aim of French cine-clubs as threefold:
A method - a club which shows films that are reviewed and discussed; a fact the collective effort of a group of spectators to get to know and love the
cinema, and a goal – an organization dedicated to training viewers through
contact with the work.
Or, consider how a cine-club discussion was intended to proceed:
• 1 - evoke impressions and reactions to images and sounds by spectators
• 2 - ask the public to discern the themes of the film
• 3 - determine the meaning of the work
• 4 - appreciate qualities and defects, discuss the effectiveness of the
writing, the staging [l’écriture, la mise en scène]
• 5 - situate the work in comparison with other films by the same director
• 6 - to compare with other films and other directors.
So what does film education/literacy mean today?
A definition offered by the BFI:
“the level of understanding of
a film, the ability to be
conscious and curious in the
choice of films; the
competence to critically watch
a film and to analyse its
content, cinematography and
technical aspects; and the
ability to manipulate its
language and technical
resources in creative moving
image production”
I’m not too happy with this.
It shows traces of the old ‘language
of cinema’ approach – spotting how
filmic techniques are used.
We also have to deal with fashion and
taste – why some films (in black & white)
may look out of date. To push the
children’s taste – but also to respect it.
And we have to remember that a cinema
is not a classroom: it should be a place
where magic happens…
What’s missing I think is the fact that
films can really move and impress us –
blow us away. We need to respect their
power (for good and bad) – and not just
teach trainspotting
meaning / canons / threshold
How’s it done?
1. Top down, as in France: Ecole et cinema, organised at national level by
Ministry of Education, with CNC [or in UK: National Schools Film Week]
- or in UK and other countries, with national exam syllabuses offered,
which individual schools may teach, depending on suitable staffing*
2. Regional, initiated by cinemas, like Les Grignoux (Belgium); screeningbased, with centrally produced documentation.
3. Individual schools’ initiative:
a) Recreational/cultural – after-school screenings (like Filmclub in UK)
b) One-off cinema visits, for screenings that may support wide range of
curriculum subjects (literature/history/geography/politics etc)
The books
The teachers constitute the major partners of the "Ecran large sur
tableau noir" project: therefore it is essential to take into account
their expectations, backgrounds and abilities, which are multiple,
various and surely incomplete as far as cinema is concerned. Thanks
to these educational books, the people in charge of the "Ecran large
sur tableau noir" project can address the teachers in a very simple
way, which does not require any previous training course in the
cinematographic field; that way, the teachers just need to use the
abilities and tools they already possess.
Moreover, these books take current film knowledge into account:
even though there are many theories about cinema and many
methods to analyze a movie, some of these theories are not even
close to ensuring a proper knowledge that could enable people to
approach all film productions in a thoughtful and critical way.
Each educational book meets 2 requirements:
1. Will the teachers be able to use the given tools and
reflection topics?
2. What will these tools and reflection topics bring to the
students? And will the students be able to apply all
the things they've possibly learned to other movies?
Sheffield – an example of close
cooperation between the
university and Showroom Cinema
Issues for school-cinema cooperation:
- Training the teachers/facilitators – who takes the
lead? Who offers training? Who pays?
- Space: are films best viewed in a classroom? But if
shown in the cinema, is the screening open to the
public? And who pays? Good use of cinema space?
- Documentation and publicity: who produces this; in
what style; and who pays (or volunteers)
Whatever state or regional support, this is all highly
person-dependent. Needs commitment by individuals!
Cinemas and young people
in the digital era
How modern do (most) cinemas look
in the modern environment?
• Is there a ‘threshold’
problem?
• Would I feel
comfortable if I
entered?
• Who would I meet?
• (my parents???)
• Would my friends
think this was a cool
place to be?
• Do I have to be an
expert to come here?
Another traditional
service has faced
the same problem
– libraries.
They see a
threshold
problem…
Cinema
Library
Cinema
Library
Cinema
Children
Library
Children
How can cinemas improve their
appeal to young people?
An historic example which inspired many Europa
Cinemas members was the Netherlands MovieZone,
started over a decade ago in ‘Hooght, Utrecht*
*(Cute, certainly, but is it cool?)
The basic idea was to offer
a programme of films
showing in the afternoon,
intended for school pupils
– as they moved between
school and home. A kind
of drop-in club, without
too much obvious
‘education’…
The experiment was
successful, and developed
into a national
programme, with its own
programmer and
administrator.
Movie Zone is the place to learn everything about film. Movie
Zone provides teachers in content (moving) images and text to
learning about film school ( movie, create and analyze ) and
provides film as a place in education. Movie Zone offers :
FILM TIPS
MovieZone tips appropriate , specific and current films , both
lower and upper school, HAVO and VWO. These films can be in
the classroom or in a cinema or movie theater… and make
use of the film-specific information on the site.
LESSON MATERIALS
On MovieZone you find a teacher's guide ( with analysis ) and
free worksheets to use in a movie discussion in the classroom .
Through the lessons students will get to work with artistic and
technical aspects of film.
EDUCATIONAL EVENTS IN CINEMAS
Movie Zone and We Want Cinema offer an educational tool to
help teachers to organise an educational presentation at the
movies, whether in a cinema or cultural centre.
Another useful sitespecific example: the
UK’s first ‘media
centre’, Watershed in
Bristol
Watershed has successfully created a brand
Hampered by its iimited
space, in historic
premises, Watershed has
created an impressive
and varied online
presence in DShed
http://www.watershed.co.uk/dshe
d/bristol-stories
Issue #2 Alt Content
In Sweden: € 3,6 m from Alt Content events,
compared with the income from 3,711
screenings over the same period: €4,5 m
So ‘alternative content’ is spreading like wildfire – or like a virus, as DIRE
would probably say...
It offers cinemas
a) Higher revenue per seat sold (and so faster amortisation of costs of
digital projection)
b) The chance to attract a new audience (who may come back to see upmarket films)
Impossible to predict how this new struggle for screen time will be resolved.
Will it favour blockbuster films, by squeezing out riskier independent film
bookings? Or could AC subsidize venues to present a more varied content?
The digital cinematheque... or will this be
by VOD?
Might the ‘film
only’ programming of
cinemas have been a
temporary phase, from
around 1950
to 2010?
The internet is not like plumbing
Social media are interactive.
Better use of media, including
print as well as social media.
NB Communicqtion is a two-way
process
(meaning you have to
show you’re listening
to your customers,
as well as telling them
what’s on)
Do I get emails like this from my local cinema(s)?
Sometimes,
but they’re often
little more than
standard listing
Information,
re-formatted for
the web
Interactive marketing of a hotel group – creating a ‘community’
And finally… online/digital and the cinema experience
• How do we choose?
• How do we manage our time?
• What is the place of ‘screen time’ in our lives?
(and how will it be for today’s infant interacters?)
http://www.shaunthesheep.com