Cinema Journal Teaching Dossier
Against the Global Right Vol 5 (1)
Dr. Yael Friedman and Mr. Steve Whitford, University of Portsmouth
This paper aims to reflect on film practice pedagogy and students’ political agency, drawing on our experience of teaching for nearly a decade on the BA (Hons) Film Production course at the University of Portsmouth, as well as course leading and shaping curriculum for a period.
The course at the University of Portsmouth is in many ways indicative of the wider context of filmmaking education in the UK. Its development could be seen as a direct corollary of the educational and cultural agenda and policies ushered in by the New Labour government in the early 2000s. This agenda was informed by an approach to Higher Education that placed it at the service of the economy and industry. HE institutions were encouraged to ‘produce’ graduates who would possess the skills to contribute to Britain’s growing post-industrial knowledge economy (Duncan Petrie, 2012; Ramsey and White, 2015). Part of this agenda was the reframing of arts and media within an economic context, resulting in a terminology shift that labelled them as ‘cultural industries’ and later ‘creative industries’.
The new agenda of the Creative Industries was: “signalling a new and apparently seamless integration of culture and the market” (Duncan Petrie, 2012: 364.), entailing a realignment of the British film industry as a hub of skills and services catering for the global film market, and a new strategy for filmmaking education, led by the UK Film Council and Creative Skillset: an organization initially set up in the early 1990s to coordinate training across the film and television industries. The new film education strategy emphasized vocational training, skills development and links with the industry, noting bluntly that – “there is a clear distinction to be made between academic studies and vocational provision” (SkillSet/UK Film Council 2013: 17). As Petrie puts it, conspicuously absent from this agenda “is an acknowledgment, let alone discussion, of the importance of critical thinking to the propagation of creative, innovative, vibrant and socially relevant film and television production” (2012: 369).
The ethos and curriculum of our BA Film Production profoundly reflected this vocational and market-orientated approach, and has been very successful in doing so. It has grown exponentially over the last decade, been accredited by Creative Skillset in 2014 (one of only nine UK similar BA Film Production courses), and has impressive employability stats to match. Aligning with the stated Creative Skillset educational strategy, aims such as engaging students in political awareness and facilitating critical thinking about the social, cultural and political realities around them, rarely featured in our discussions. At best such pedagogical aims were seen as ‘academic’ and therefore neatly boxed-in with what has been labelled ‘contextual studies’: an area of the curriculum that is seen by most students – and staff – as an annex.
The curriculum of the contextual studies modules on the course invited students to think critically about cinema within wider political, social and cultural contexts and to consider the ways that film texts function in shaping dominant and alternative discourses of society, culture and identity. A specific module is dedicated to issues of representation, in which students engage with representation of gender, ethnicity, race and social-class in Hollywood cinema, in British Cinema and recent transnational films.
The module has been part of the core curriculum for over a decade, with the central aim of rendering visible the process by which film language and narrative constitute practices of ‘Othering’ different cultural, racial and social groups, and how the cinematic apparatus can in turn be utilised to counter such representations. The rationale behind the module was, perhaps naïvely, that students would seek to apply the possible understandings gained in this ‘theoretical’ module to their own film practice; to reflect on how they represent, or seek to represent ‘Others’. In other words, asking students not only to understand in the abstract that an act of representation is always bounded by what Donna Haraway referred to as “a partial perspective and situated knowledge”, but also to acknowledge their own positioning. (1998: 583).
Despite this goal, we found that in most cases what was taught in the ‘contextual’ modules in the classroom was, in the mind of the students, divorced from their film practice, and certainly from any form of Praxis: the critical awareness that leads to political agency and action. Even our best students often did not necessarily make the connection. It is testament to the power of the discursive climate that unequivocally prioritises skills over critical thinking. It is also, in our view, a product of the structural dichotomy between theory and practice, which perpetuates a skewed perception of both; masking the ways in which practice is always constructed within social, political and cultural realities and ideologies, whether explicit or implicit, and that quality filmmaking cannot be divorced from critical thinking and agency.
The scope of this short article precludes discussion of the different scholarly critiques on the limitations of practice/theory dichotomy. Suffice it to say that we share such critical sentiment and look to redesign the curriculum of the course in ways that would converge the two and more specifically re-introduce into the practical modules, pedagogical concerns around issues of representation and political agency that are deemed to be, according to the agenda of the Creative Skillset, in the realm of the ’contextual’. We seek to adopt what Mette Hjort advocated as a more ‘value based’ and ‘action–orientated’ approach (2016: 157). Writing about transnational film pedagogy, Hjort postulates a performative model of teaching which puts the emphasis on experiential learning; in her words on the “’doing or ‘performing’ transnationalism”, in and through the classroom, rather than merely identifying and reflecting on it, linking scholarship as advocacy to actual practice. (2016: 157). This approach, which sees the teacher as a facilitator, and focuses on the practitioner’s agency, resonates with us.
If learning resides in the experiential, then film-making – the process, the pro-filmic and the filmic events, and exchanges and encounters they invite – is a potent site not only for the development of skills but for the exploration of self and other, but also for the development of political consciousness, for critical thinking and social and creative agency. Experiential learning is embedded across several of the practical modules that we teach on the course, providing not merely ‘hands on’ experience of practical filming skills but also ‘life-learning’ opportunities and embedded critical reflection. (Gibbs, 1988). Yet, the governing Creative Skillset agenda and its market-orientated approach means that such reflections are often centred on questions of professional conduct and skills proficiency, rather than on modes of representation and the ideological socio-political and economic conditions that constitute them.
A number of already existing modules facilitate, to an extent, opportunities for students to grapple with questions of representation. For example, within a practical module entitled EXTERNAL LIVE BRIEF, designed to offer students ‘life learning’ opportunities to enhance their postgraduate employability prospects and industry experiences, students worked with a social organisation called MUSIC FUSION based in Havant, near Portsmouth. Music Fusion provides diversionary activities (such as music production) to young people in vulnerable circumstance who are out of employment, education or training. Portsmouth is the most densely populated city in Europe (outside London) and Music Fusion works in the city’s most deprived areas including the Ward of Charles Dickens, where 67% of children are affected by income deprivation or Leigh Park, a large housing estate in Havant, which, according to the Index of Multiple Deprivation, contains four Wards that are among the 20% most deprived areas in England. Deprivation and poor environmental standards have caused over the years an increase in crime, vandalism and anti-social behaviour, which is some cases came close to creating a no-go area for public services. Music Fusion CEO, Jinx Prowse explained in conversation: “we work with young people who are isolated, disengaged and disillusioned. They are vulnerable to poor physical/mental health, often anxious, depressed and angry… and are particularly susceptible to extreme ideologies”.
Within the External Life Brief module, students were invited to make films to document the work of Music Fusion and a group of young people over a period of six months. From the onset both groups of young people, who are very close to each other in age, were keenly aware of the social class divide which constituted, as Prowse pointed out “a huge disconnect between young people in mainstream education and the young people Music Fusion work with”, manifesting itself in various barriers in the initial communication between them. Apart from the initial brief for the film that encouraged students to make a film with and not about the young people, the students retained independence over the conceptual development – deciding on the filmic approach, the level of research, the mode of representation and the production process.
The outcome for us as teachers/facilitators was revealing. The experiential element of “doing” rather than “talking” about representation across a social-class divide certainly engaged students in reflecting on the set of questions that we were trying to introduce in the ‘contextual’ module. In their written reflective reports, students mentioned growing awareness to difference and overcoming stereotypical prejudice, some noting that the experience challenged them to examine their own socio-political environment critically. Others reflected on the benefit of being involved in a project beyond university. Indeed, outside of curriculum, students are now being privately engaged by Music Fusion to make more films. Similar sentiment was expressed in the reflection of Jinx Prowse, who noted that “one of the unexpected outcomes from this project was the relationship between the student film crew and our young people…the students had genuinely invested their time, hearts and minds to the social action of the project”.
However, while the pro-filmic event clearly generated a meaningful encounter, articulated in the post-event written reflections, in their filmic approach the students reverted to traditional modes of representation, which rendered these encounters invisible within the film text. Our work with Music Fusion has galvanised us to create more radical interventions within the curriculum. We are reshaping learning aims and elements of assessment to facilitate more critical understandings of the ideological and socio-political structures of power that lie at the heart of representation. Acknowledging that the wider neo-liberal agenda that shapes UK higher education is not likely to be changed in the foreseeable future, this inevitably means we need to adopt a nimble approach, utilizing opportunities made available by and within such a framework. Nevertheless, we remain convinced of the urgency, in the face of contemporary social and political challenges to decenter the ‘economy of culture’ model in film practice education.
References
Gibbs, Graham (1988) Learning by Doing A Guide to Teaching and Learning Methods. http://gdn.glos.ac.uk/gibbs/index.htm
Haraway, Donna “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective” Feminist Studies 14 (Autumn, 1998).
Hjort, Mette, (2016) facilitating student engagement a performative model of transnational film pedagogy in Marciniak, K., & Bennett, B. (eds.). Teaching Transnational Cinema: Politics and Pedagogy. New York: Routledge.
Petrie, Duncan (2012) “Creative Industries and Skills: Film Education and Training in the Era of New Labour”, Journal of British Cinema and Television 9.3, 357–376
Ramsey, Phil & White, Andrew (2015) “Art for art’s sake? A critique of the instrumentalist turn in the teaching of media and communications in UK universities” International Journal of Cultural Policy,
21:1, 78–96.
Yael Friedman teaches contextual studies and documentary practice at the University of Portsmouth and has been a joint course leader of the BA Film Production Course until recently. Her research in recent years focused on concepts of Transnational, especially in relation to production contexts of film emerging from the Middle East. Her publications on the subject include: “Guises of Transnationalism in Israel/Palestine” Transnational Cinemas, 6:1 and “Israeli Animation Between Escapism and Subversion” in Stefanie Van de Peer (ed.) (2017) Animation in the Middle East: Practice and Aesthetic from Baghdad to Casablanca, London: I.B Tauris.
Steve Whitford teaches production practice at the University of Portsmouth and until recently has been a joint course leader of the BA Film Production Course. He has been leading curriculum change to develop a responsive focus on greater student employability, including the embedding of professional/industry productions in curriculum, the synergy of practical and contextual elements of the curriculum and developing a transnational orientation for the course. Before joining the University of Portsmouth he has worked for over 25 years as a Sound Recordist in the Film/TV industry, specialising in observational documentaries, for international broadcasters.
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