The Future of Education

In our paper we want to present new perspectives on teaching film education, which we developed in the framework of a Master module on film education held in the summer of 2013 at Bauhaus-University, Germany. In this module, the central question was: how can film be taught and how can the teaching of film be taught to teachers and students.

In order to develop our own conceptualisation of film education we draw upon our experiences from the Master module yet also upon the longstanding film education traditions from France (e.g. Bergala 2006; Bourgeois 2010) and Spain (e.g. Aidelman and Colell 2010) and the works of German film educators (e.g. Pauleit 2010; Pantenburg und Schlüter 2011). Moreover, philosophies of film and philosophies of education are joined with the practice of film education in order to develop a theoretical and practical concept of film education and the teaching of it. In the framework of the taught Master Module we developed a series of methods with which research based and practice based teaching and learning can be brought together.

The module is on the one hand based on the reading of (traditional) philosophies of education and philosophies of film, which discuss concepts such as aesthetic experience, medial composition and acquisition of culture in educational processes as well as the relationship between subject and world, (e.g. Humboldt 1793; Adorno 1995; Horkheimer 1985; Zahn 2012). We also address issues such as (de-)subjectivation, gender, alterity and self and other (e.g. Butler 2012, Ricken 2012, Wimmer 2010). Theories of filmmaking, the spaces of film and knowledge about it (the cinema, festivals, internet) as well as the central aspects of film production also play an important part in the module.

On the other hand, together with the students we organised firstly a symposium to which we invited film educators to speak of their work, secondly an expert talk with two directors of children’s’ films and thirdly a workshop with children of a primary school to make films. We were also able to visit a children’s film festival with our students and observe how children react to film in the cinema and how such a festival is organised. After the Module we published a collection of essays on “FilmBildung” (film education) including a co-written paper by our students.

Through our research and practice based teaching method we were able to combine a number of different approaches to film (and) education and to develop those into new perspectives on teaching film education which we will elaborate on in our presentation.