Click here to evaluate my assignment
Name: Joshi
Riddhi
Topic: Use of
cinema in eduaction
Roll no: 30
Paper no 15:
Mass Media and Mass communication
M.A: Sem-4
Enrolment no.
: 2069108420180028
Year: 2017-19
Submitted to:
S.B. Gardi
Department of English
Maharaja
Krishnakumarsinhji
Bhavnagar
University
When the school film
club planned to take an autistic boy on a trip to London's Leicester Square to watch War Horse, his mother was
worried. He wouldn't make it through the tube journey, she warned, let alone
the cinema experience. Having survived both by keeping his anorak zipped well
up over his nose, the boy was asked what he thought of the film. "It was
very interesting," he replied. "I put my hand up to my face when the
horse was stuck in the barbed wire and it was wet. That's never happened to me
before," he added, revealing how for the first time a film had moved him
to tears.
The power of film to
make an emotional connection and how best to enable people to experience this
power through education was the theme of a roundtable discussion hosted earlier
this month by the Guardian in association with Filmclub, part of the new
charity Film Nation UK, which aims to put film at the heart of children and
young people's learning and cultural experience.
Special needs teacher
Liz Warne's story of the cinema trip involving the Orchards community middle
school in Worthing, West Sussex, was one of numerous examples cited by speakers
at the debate of how film clubs had helped break down barriers – emotional and
otherwise.
There was the way the
film club at Whickham School, Gateshead, had brought together children from
very different family backgrounds when culture clashes between them meant their
relationships elsewhere could be volatile. There was the showing of the film
Duck Soup – its simple narrative and black and white photography allowed
children on the autistic spectrum to watch a film with their peers and for the
first time laugh at the same moments. There was the thrill of children with
severe learning difficulties at Beacon Hill academy in Thurrock, Essex seeing
themselves inserted into scenes from You've Been Framed and projected on to the
wall. And then there was the elective mute at another school who spoke to her
teacher for the first time to ask to audition for a place in a film they were
making, and who has since proved a star performer.
Film clubs are being
run in more than 7,000 schools, with 220,000 young people watching, discussing
and reviewing film. This service provides, for free, a curated catalogue of
DVDs, curriculum-linked guides, film-making tutorials and a members magazine.
It also offers masterclasses in film-making, reviewing and programming, and
gives film club members the opportunity to post reviews on its website.
It merged with the
young people's filmmaking charity, First Light in September to form Film Nation
UK and is funded by a number of organisations including the British Film
Institute, which awarded £26m lottery funding
Jane Fletcher, schools
support director at Film Nation UK, said film watching, understanding and
making was a fantastic opportunity, and also a cultural entitlement. "At
the end of four years of funding we are hoping to show the validity of that, so
film becomes accepted alongside literature, art and music in schools and in the
broader world."
A key value of film in
education, the roundtable agreed, was that it was a leveller. Samantha Evenson,
who runs two primary school film clubs, said: "We have children who have
no books at home but immediately have confidence talking about film because it
is something they have engaged with already. With a book, they may think they
don't have the level of experience needed or feel they aren't bright enough to
talk about it."
Even children with
severe learning difficulties and disabilities who struggle with any kind of
academic curriculum can often relate to film, said Andy Terrington, post-16
team leader at Beacon Hill academy: "Film is a universal language."
As a result, it can be
used to spark discussions about issues that could be difficult to tackle, such
as racism or homophobia said Joe Goff, a year 11 pupil who runs the film club
at Lawnswood secondary school, Leeds.
And Malcolm Richards,
a tutor at New River college, a pupil referral unit in Islington, north London,
said there was a small group of films, such as Bullet Boy and Kidulthood,
telling stories that young, urban kids strongly related to. "Those films
are really, really important and can act as a gateway to film literacy," he
said. While many explored adult themes, so had to be handled sensitively, it
was nevertheless valuable to show they were as valid and open to analysis as a
film directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
Denise Rose, a
facilitator for Mouth That Roars, which helps young people who would not
usually have access to media equipment make their own films, said many were
misrepresented in the media and saw themselves as victims, or in terms of
negative stereotypes. Critiquing the way films were constructed and the decisions
made by producers could therefore be empowering, whether it involved analyzing
the news or EastEnders.
Popcorn was important
as a way of creating a real cinema experience and enticing children to engage,
agreed those who ran film clubs, as was giving pupils some kind of ownership of
the club, which often meant allowing them to help decide what to watch. But it
was also valuable to encourage them to try films they were not automatically
drawn to – and feel free to be critical or won-over. Children at one film club
were persuaded to watch The Truman Show by the mantra "risk it for a
biscuit" – but once the biscuits were finished, they found themselves
gripped by the story.
Many cited examples of
how skills and teaching techniques employed in film clubs had spilled over into
the curriculum, whether it was getting students to produce animation
storyboards in literacy lessons or using films to introduce a lesson topic.
This is something the
new merged charity plans to develop further, along with training teachers,
face-to-face and online, to help them make better use of the film resources
available to them.
But the roundtable
agreed it was about more than education. Fletcher said the British film
industry was booming, and it was important that young people from all
backgrounds became involved, for the sake of the industry as well as
themselves. "What we are hoping to do is open up the film industry so less
traditional young people look behind the scenes and think 'Maybe I could do
that,'" she said.
Noel Goodwin, an
education programmer for young people at the British Film Institute, said it
was also about careers beyond films. "There will be more and more jobs out
there that involve the creation of digital content and require basic
film-making techniques," he said.
Roundtable
participants recognised that unpaid internships remained a problem and that
deeper outreach was needed if young people from all backgrounds were to access
the opportunities available.
Resources were also an
issue for some. Richards said that while he had a projector and a room to show
his students films, he had nothing for film-making – something that the new
charity hopes will be a bigger part of school life in future.
He said it was
important to gather evidence of how valuable watching and making films could be
in order to strengthen the case for support. "We all know how Filmclub is
fantastic," he said. "But having to convince an executive head
teacher or someone from the local council is more difficult."
Goodwin argued that
the government also needed lobbying to ensure that film was embedded in the
curriculum and that film studies were considered as viable an option for pupils
as music and art.
But Abigail Moss,
deputy director of the Literacy Trust, pointed out that with the end of both
the numeracy and literacy strategies, film was now the only national strategy
programme to be supported in schools.
There was another
reason for optimism too – the natural film-making talent of many young people.
Some of the films posted online by teenagers who had made them with minimal
equipment in their bedrooms were of astonishingly high quality, noted several
roundtable participants.
Nick Foxell, an
independent film-maker, said that regardless of its value for acquiring skills
or a future career, film-making could be hugely empowering. "We all know
the big screen has a magic," he said. "It bestows authority and
validates people's experience."
And if any lobbying
needed to be done to persuade potential supporters of this fact, there was a
really good medium available for it, he argued – film.
To
participate in Film Nation UK's Filmclub programme, which offers free access to
thousands of films and education resources, visit: filmclub.org; email
support@filmclub.org
Key discussion points
• Film is a leveller – children can
relate to it no matter what their family background or learning abilities.
• The UK film industry is booming
but it needs to be open as a career to a more diverse group of young people.
• Teachers may not have the time
or confidence to use film effectively in lessons so training and support
are important.
• Film can be a gateway to exploring
complex ideas and open children's eyes to other ways of looking at the world.
• Young people are increasingly
visually literate and the curriculum needs to reflect this
Works Cited
The Gaurdian.
<https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2013/nov/19/film-education-learning-tool-inclusion>.
