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FILM SCHOOL SYMPOSIUM
Report for TFTV Research Committee
Introduction
A two day symposium on the topic of film schools supported by £2,500 pump priming from
the department’s research funds was held on the 16th and 17th of October. This is part of an
evolving international research initiative on the history of film schools and their relation to
wider issues of theory/practice and education/training policy being developed by Professor
Duncan Petrie in collaboration with Rod Stoneman, director of the Huston School of Film and
Digital Media at the National University of Ireland in Galway and Professor Mette Hjort, Chair
of the Visual Studies Department at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. The event was held at
The Royal York Hotel and was attended by the following invited guests and members of
TFTV:
Professor Christine Geraghty Theatre, Film and Televison, University of Glasgow
Ben Gibson
Director, London Film School
Professor John Hill
Dept of Media Arts, Royal Holloway
Professor Mette Hjort,
Lingnan University, Hong Kong
Professor Igor Korsic
University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Dr Des O’Rawe
Film Studies, Queens University Belfast
Rod Stoneman
National University of Ireland, Galway
Professor Brian Winston
Chair of Communications, University of Lincoln
David Hickman, Professor Andrew Higson, John Mateer, Professor Duncan Petrie: TFTV
Unfortunately one attendee, Professor Robin MacPherson of the Scottish Screen Academy
at Napier University Edinburgh had to withdraw at the last minute due to illness.
The Event
After a welcome and introduction from Duncan Petrie and Rod Stoneman, the symposium
was organised into four sessions, each involving three presentations followed by a wide
ranging discussion. Abstracts for the presentations are appended to this report. Discussions
were also continued more informally during the dinner and lunch sessions on the Friday and
Saturday respectively
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Friday 16th October, 2:30pm – 5:00pm
Session One: The Historical Significance of Film Schools
Session brief: the historical significance and contribution of films schools to the development
of the art and craft of film-making with particular focus on the relationship between the
intellectual and the technical components of a film school education
Duncan Petrie, Brian Winston, Des O’Rawe
6:00pm – 8:00pm
Session Two: Film Schools Today: The International Dimension
Session brief: the international dimension of film schools, how particular schools have
developed a profile, the opportunities and challenges in fostering a collaborative approach to
education and training, the role of international organisations such as CILECT.
Rod Stoneman, Mette Hjort, Igor Korsic
Saturday 17th October, 9:30am – 12:00pm
Session Three: Education and Training: Policy and Practice in the UK
Session Brief: Assessing the current situation in moving image education and training policy
in the UK, in particular the creation of the networks of Skillset Screen and Media Academies
and the implications of this for the HE sector, opportunities and challenges to developing the
relationship between theory and practice in Universities and art colleges
John Hill, Christine Geraghty, Ben Gibson
1:00pm: 3:00pm
Session Four: Developing Research Initiatives and Collaboration
Session brief: a recap of the main issues and discussion points, the development of
research initiatives and potential collaboration on film schools, film education and policy,
both within the UK and internationally.
The Discussions
The first session laid out both the historical dimension of film schools (Duncan Petrie) and
some of the key problems around the division between theory and practice in film education
(Brian Winston) and the current tensions generated by a new emphasis on vocational
education within higher education and what a University should be for (Des O’Rawe). The
dominant themes of the following discussion included the persistence of unhelpful and
debilitating division within the sector (theory/practice, education/training, universities/
industry), the historical persistence of such division and the role of institutions in the
persistence of division.
The second session explored practice and related issues at the Danish Film School and in
Hong Kong (Mette Hjort), the Huston School in Galway, the University of Ljubljana and
across other parts of Europe (Igor Korsic). Ben Gibson also offered a brief account of
activities at the London Film School which is an independent conservatory with a majority of
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overseas students and consequently strong internationalist profile. The issue of practice
based doctorates and connections between education and public advocacy and activism
were made. In the discussion a broader sense of activity beyond the more traditional models
of the film school as both conservatory and University department emerged, as well as a
clearer recognition of the impact of globalisation on the field including the value that
developments in developing countries might bring to our understanding. But there was also a
return to some of the issues of the previous session, namely the role of institutions and the
relationship between theory and practice.
The third session turned the attention to current policy in the UK including the development
of Film Council and Skillset initiatives (John Hill, a former board member of the UKFC), the
experiences of a particular Skillset Screen Academy (Ben Gibson) the problematic
relationship between the industry policy and Media Studies as a sector with Higher
Education (Christine Geraghty, currently Chair of MeCCSA). The discussion tended to
confirm the gulf between current industry initiatives and the values and goals of most
educationalists, although certain opportunities to influence future policy developments were
explored, particularly through working with and between institutions. During this session the
development of TFTV and the new building and facilities were explained to great interest.
The final session provided an opportunity for some reflection on the key issues that had
animated the previous sessions and every participant contributed their thoughts on the
central problems and opportunities for the development of the research initiative. There was
some agreement around that table that perhaps there were two separate projects emerging,
one a historical study of the contribution of film schools and the other an engagement with
current policy and practice. However both are linked by a shared engagement with questions
of pedagogy, practice and policy and can be developed in a mutually beneficial and
reinforcing way. The opportunities that a strong international dimension offered, including an
engagement with practices in developing countries that are ‘policy poor’, also emerged
strongly in the discussion.
The Next Steps
The symposium has provided a number of tangible benefits for the project. The discussion,
debates and advice will help to refine the research questions and will feed directly into the
formulation of appropriate funding bids. It will also inform the next scheduled event which will
place the focus on ‘thinking practitioners’ and will be held at the Huston School next spring.
The connection with the attendees will have benefits in terms of future involvement and
collaboration in the project. While the department has also benefitted, primarily from being
able to inform a relatively senior and significant group of people about our development and
future ambitions.
Over the coming few weeks the core project team will use the session to develop our
research plan including the specifying of particular areas of work for each individual to lead
on and the elaboration of research bids to appropriate UK and international funding bodies.
Professor Duncan Petrie
19th October 2009
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APPENDIX: ABSTRACTS
THE FILM SCHOOL AS A NATIONAL CULTURAL INSTITUTION
Duncan Petrie
Despite the proliferation of scholarship on questions of national cinema in recent years very little
attention has been paid to film schools as a cornerstone of either institutional interventions of the part
of the state to nurture an indigenous film industry or as laboratories of cultural formation and practice,
nurturing particular ‘schools’ of film-makers. Yet film schools have played a central role in the
phenomenon of national cinema, most notably in the context of cinemas that have defined themselves
in opposition to Hollywood. Consequently the film school can be regarded as an important
component in nurturing of Revolutionary Soviet Cinema, of post WW2 European Art cinema, of the
state owned and controlled cinemas of Eastern Europe during the same period, and more recently in
relation to emerging national cinemas in developing countries. Indeed the only major exception to this
close association has been in the United States where film schools have primarily been located in
University departments and schools.
But in Europe and elsewhere leading film schools have taken the form of explicitly national
conservatoires established as part of a policy towards cinema and supported by the state as a
cornerstone of both the local industry and the wider culture. The prototype of this kind of institution is
the Moscow Higher State Institute for Cinematography (VGIK), which was originally founded in 1919
as part of the all-encompassing process of revolutionary change and transformation. The Moscow
school proved influential on subsequent developments including the Centro Sperimentale di
Cinematografia, set up by Mussolini in Rome in 1935 and the French Institute des hautes études
cinématographiques (IDHEC) which began activities in 1943, almost a year before the liberation. The
end of the war saw a flourishing of film schools in Europe, notably in the East, with the Hungarian
Academy of Dramatic and Film Art, established in 1945, the Film and TV School of the Academy of
Performing Arts or FAMU in Prague in 1946, the Instituto de Investigaciones y Experiencias
Cinematograficas in Madrid in 1947, and the Polish National Higher School of Film, Television and
Theatre in Lodz in 1948. A second wave of activity occurred from the late 1950s and saw national
schools founded in the Netherlands (1958), Sweden (1964), Denmark (1966) and Britain (1970).
While beyond Europe, national schools appeared in China in 1950, India in 1960 and Australia in
1973.
I will use this presentation to review the historical legacy of national film schools; the ways in which
they have brought together the teaching of production practice and wider artistic, cultural and
theoretical issues; and what lessons they may have to offer in terms of the challenges facing film
education today, most notably the stark divide between ‘practice’ and ‘theory’ that has tended to
characterise the University sector.
THEORY FOR PRACTICE: CECI N’EST PAS L’ ÉPISTÉMOLOGIE
Brian Winston
The very possibility that theory must be inevitably irrelevant to practice is an Anglo-Saxon absurdity –
a riff on the ‘those who can do, those who can’t teach’ crassness than which little is as stupid.
The clue to the wide-spread hostility to theory in our culture is in the definition of the very word. In
English, one meaning of ‘theory’ is that it is the extraction from practice of a body of ‘rules, ideas and
principles and techniques that applies to a particular subject’ (to quote the OED); and these (the
obvious result of analysis) are distinct from the practice itself. Alternatively, a second meaning has it
that ‘theory’ can be divorced from practice and relates to abstract thought or contemplation; but in
Anglophone realms theory that can be abstracted from practice, the first meaning, is somehow not
considered ‘theory’ at all. It becomes, merely, what is gleaned from ‘experience’.
So all practice-based teaching of writing, directing and producing any film is necessarily theory-based
in the first sense I am suggesting.
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But that isn’t what happens. Instead we have an historic situation where the practitioners pour scorn
on the scholars and hold their analyses to be incomprehensible irrelevances. The academy barely
tolerates practitioners and thinks their more abstract musings are inadequate inanities. And the
students, ‘great artists’ in the making, are in the middle and, all too often, hostile to traditional
academic demands and concerns.
So is the answer then the free-standing film academy? Well, not entirely. These can often seem to be
intent on twisting the concept of the conservatory into a trade school so firmly do they turn their face
from offering anything other than practical training ++ (if you are lucky) screen history.
What, then, is to be done?
Well, first, the entire Anglo-Saxon structure of the theory/practice divide needs to be acknowledged
for the debilitating distraction that is. This does not mean, of course, the wholesale acceptance of the
entire corpus of film-studies. One is more than entitled to pick-and-choose, accepting one opinion or
approach while rejecting another.
Then the curriculum must be redesigned. Nobody in the administration need be told about this,
though. The clue is to make the sequence of practica the backbone of the course and to introduce
theory as and when needed (++ some history).
It is, therefore, a question of achieving ‘just-in-time’ integration in a systematic way; and in the belief
that there are few things more useful to a student filmmaker than a pertinent theory.
THE PRICE OF PRACTICE
Des O’Rawe
The spread of ‘practice-based’ teaching in Film and Media Arts programmes has inevitably been
accompanied by buoyant rhetoric about ‘skills’, ‘centres of excellence’, ‘knowledge transfer’,
‘economic impact’, ‘creativity’, and so forth. Even the more modest practice-orientated departments
now require the pretence of being on intimate terms with the supposedly real world of film production.
Left unchecked, these developments – and the discourse generated to justify and promote them – will
only serve to jeopardise the future of film education. They will place those who believe that film and
media arts departments should be centres of ideas – offering students genuine opportunities to
experiment and develop their creative and critical faculties – in an entirely vulnerable position.
However, the difficult questions remain: how compatible are these practice-based objectives with the
aims of critical thinking, with the study of film culture? How damaging is the universities’ uncertainty
over the status of ‘practice’, and how it relates to research, and the evaluation of creative work? In a
world where these institutions now readily appropriate the traditional functions – and language – of
‘film schools’, what is the point of maintaining such ‘schools’ with public money? Who really benefits
from this new vocationalist dispensation?
In my view, the increased availability of new technologies and the rapid democratisation of filmmaking may well sound the death-knell for film practice teaching as a core activity within Film and
Media Arts curricula. The students coming through increasingly display levels of technical
competence that render superfluous much of what they study in practice modules (particularly, in the
initial stages of a BA programme). In other words, thanks to the array of cheap cameras, phones, and
editing packages (not to mention the growing emphasis on the moving-image within the schools)
today’s students are already experienced image-makers before enter higher education, image-makers
more in need of an intellectual context for these skills than further tuition in basic film practice. This is
an opportunity for Film Studies to transform itself, and to develop modules and programmes of study
that can now successfully incorporate practice into theory. In my presentation I would like to explore
some of the ways in which this might be achieved.
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FILM SCHOOLS TODAY: SCHOOL’S OUT!
Rod Stoneman
This presentation will initiate discussion of some areas of my recent institutional experience which
explore praxis in taught courses and the process we call research.
At the Huston School we have developed an interaction between two separate MA programmes:
Production and Direction and Public Advocacy and Activism. Teams from Public Advocacy research
and prepare a briefing about an issue for production teams to realise in a short film. Part of the
rationale of this specific initiative is to address the absence of the audience in the academic sphere; to
move out from a tertiary institution and work with communities of interest outside.
At the Ph D level we are beginning to see how art practice can work with / against critical analysis in
the new institutional intervention of practice-based PhDs in film, television and digital media. A “selfreflective supervised project of enquiry leading to new knowledge or understanding”.
At both the MA and doctoral level there is an attempt to extend the conjunction of creativity and ideas,
art and analytical practice in this place, at this time.
OFFICIAL AND UNOFFICIAL FILM SCHOOLS: THE NATIONAL FILM SCHOOL OF DENMARK
AND SUPER 16
Mette Hjort
Founded in 1966 the Danish Film School floundered for a decade but went on to develop into one of
the world’s most successful film schools. Research on the National Film School of Denmark, by
scholars such as Eva Novrup Redvall, Mette Hjort, and especially Heidi Philipsen, suggest a number
of key issues for discussion:
the role of leadership in the context of film schools: the current success of the Danish film
school is directly traceable, by all accounts, to the appointment of an alumnus, the
cinematographer Henning Camre, as the school’s president in 1975, and to his appointment
of Mogens Rukov (now known as the “Dogma” doctor) shortly thereafter.
the institutional environment in which a film school is established and operates: the National
Film School of Denmark falls under the Ministry of Culture, rather than the Ministry of
Education. As a result it has been spared, as current President Poul Nesgaard, puts it, “the
effects of the Bologna agreement.” The Ministry of Culture allows the school to retain its
emphasis on film art, and allows it to retain its status as an elite school, with a competitive
admissions process, and sustained training over a 4 year period, all features that would be
lost were the school to become the responsibility of the Ministry of Education.
the sources for curricular inspiration: when Camre and Rukov took over, the emphasis was on
workshop-like arrangements that allowed students to teach themselves. Camre and Rukov
insisted that students were to be taught rather than self-taught. The strengths of the school
are typically attributed to its emphasis on: creativity under constraint, collaboration, and
storytelling. Creativity under constraint, a core element of the school’s philosophy (and now,
thanks to Dogma, one of the defining features of Danish filmmaking as a small national
cinema), was one of the guiding principles of the ABCinema collective founded by Ole John
and Jørgen Leth, both of whom would become teachers at the film school.
the relation between the film school and the film industry: when the National Film School was
first created, the film industry was largely hostile to it. At this point the Danish film industry is
dominated by graduates from the National Film School. As a result the film industry has itself
changed, with concepts of creativity under constraint and a deeper understanding of
collaboration making their way into the professional milieu.
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the role of film school graduates: the National Film School of Denmark thrives, in part, on
account of the loyalty of its graduates, many of whom return to the school as teachers for
limited periods of time. These graduates not only teach but improve the curriculum. Lone
Scherfig, for example, is widely credited with having introduced much needed courses for
directors, focusing on how to work with actors.
the role of film schools as regional magnets for talent and as sites for transnational
networking: the National Film School of Denmark has become a magnet for Nordic talent, and
thus an institutional site where Nordic networks are established. While the Nordic Council and
Nordic Film and TV Fund have often called for such networks, they have proven difficult to
establish in a top-down manner. By contrast, such networks have grown organically in the
context of the film school.
the film school’s capacity to reach beyond national borders, in a structured way: the
documentary stream at the National Film School has launched a Middle East project that
takes the logic of creativity under constraint into the sphere of documentary practice, where
the capacity to adapt to and cope with unfamiliar environments is key.
synergies between the film school and related institutions, such as the Danish Film Institute:
in her dissertation on the National Film School, Heidi Philipsen draws attention to the role
played by the DFI in legitimating the curricular role differentiation at the film school, through
focused feature articles on scriptwriters, directors, and producers in such publications as
FILM.
the official film school’s role in spawning unofficial schools: as admission to the National
Film School became more and more competitive, more talented and highly motivated
applicants were turned away. Rather than accepting defeat, some of these disappointed
applicants created their own unofficial film school, Super 16. This school functions according
to the logic of gift culture, has a structured curriculum, and genuine cohorts. At this point
Super 16 collaborates with the official film school, having clearly established its seriousness
and worth.
THEORY FOR FILM SCHOOLS – THE NEED OF EPISTEMOLOGICAL INVERSION?
Igor Korsic
Years ago, in 2001-2003 I have organized for CILECT a series of conferences in Europe on teaching
theory at films schools for professors . One conference on this topic generally (Ljubljana), one on
theory of scriptwriting (Prague), on theory of editing (Helsinki) and one on teaching film theory proper
at film schools(Cardiff). Theory was understood in a general manner, as everything that was not craft,
including history of film, also including, implicit, assumed theory in craft subjects. Somebody
suggested the title for the project and it was Kalos k'Agathos.
My indicial assumption was that the theory that is taught and the way it is thought was not most
suitable for film schools, that besides industry are supposed to teach or develop also art. This vague
hypotheses was based on symptoms that experienced or heard about from different schools. Also
what I was curious about was the fact, that generally in Western Europe theory and history was
mostly both absent from curricula and not wanted by the students. The difficulty to make students see
»old« films in Italy and England and the tricks used to force them on students were telling. In Central
and Eastern Europe the complaint was often the opposite: too much theory.
The conclusion that I drew from these gatherings that drew participants from majority of film schools,
and assembled maybe ca 150 professors altogether was, that my assumption was by and large
correct. There was one eastern school for example that taught everything: formative theories, realist
ones, structuralism, cognitivist, Marxist, psychoanalytical, Lacanian, gender, phenomenological and of
course semiotic. But there were important exceptions. There were quite a few people that taught
theory in original ways. Usually this meant exercises, or for example explaining cinema via music.
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To me it seemed that it is rarely that the question what is to be achieved with teaching theory is
asked.
Theory is borowed from academic studies and from neighboring arts and disciplines. I concluded that
the main difficulty with this theories is that they would be »scientist«, objectivist in their approach, and
thus incommensurable with necessarily subjective creative process in film making. The feeling of
theory being useless can be understood in this context as well as the tendency to get rid of
theoretical subjects in film school curricula. Because not only that they do not relate, they may be
counter productive.
The principle problem in general is stated graphically by psychiatrist R. D. Laing:
To split what is the case into the duality of subjective and objective is to make a distinction,
very useful, even essential for many purposes. But believed, the world is a broken egg.
/…/When we turn to experience and learn what it may have to teach us, we cannot do so by a
methods constructed to exclude it. Equally, our experience cannot dictate the objective
science on matters of objective fat./…/ This attitude can go so far as to generate the illusion
that there is no such reality as experience. It is the illusion of reality that cannot help but
continually transgress reality. It is diabolical. Its very existence demands its negation /…/ An
object cannot realize that we are not merely objects.
Great majority of film theories, also implicit ones are making and believing in this split. And this is why
its usefulness for creative people and with it its attraction for students are limited. Everything changes
when there is epistemological inversion present, of the kind that is described by French
epistemologist of sciences and teacher of aesthetics Gaston Bachelard:
A philosopher who has evolved his entire thinking from the fundamental themes of the
philosophy of science, and followed the main line of the active, growing rationalism of
contemporary science as closely as he could, must forget his learning and break with all his
habits of philosophical research, if he wants to study the problems posed by the poetic
imagination. For here the cultural past doesn't count. The long day-in, day-out effort of putting
together and constructing his thoughts is inefectual. One must be receptive, receptive to the
image at the moment it appears: if there be a philosophy of poetry, it must appear and reappear through a significant verse, in total adherence to an isolated image; to be exact, in the
very ecstasy of the newness of thee image: The poetic image is a sudden salience on the
surface of the psyche, the lesser psychological causes of which have not been sufficiently
investigated. Nor can anything general and co-ordinated serve as a basis for a philosophy of
poetry. /…/Little by little this method, which has in its favor scientific prudence, seemed to me
to be an insufficient basis on which to found a metaphysics of the imagination. The "prudent"
attitude itself is a refusal to obey the immediate dynamics of the image I have come to realize
how difficult it is to break away from this "prudence." To say that one has left certain
intellectual habits behind is easy enough, but how is it to be achieved?
For a rationalist, this constitutes a minor daily crisis, a sort of split in one's thinking which,
even though its object be partial - a mere image - has none the less great psychic
repercussions.
This is not to say that scientific research of cinema is not necessary. No, the question is what is useful
for a filmmaker. Therefore the main task of a theory teacher at a film school is the selection of
theoretical sources. And practice “epistemological inversion”
THE LONDON FILM SCHOOL
Ben Gibson
The London Film School has existed since 1956 and has been in continuous redevelopment since
2001. In most respects it is now as it has always been: an industry oriented deliberately international
conservatory based on filmmaking with the study of history and style but otherwise no academic
content. It now has 100 students on a non-specialised all department filmmaking Masters degree
which takes 2-3 years to complete. Only 25% of its students are from the UK. It is run as an industry
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training organization with university validation but outside the formal structure of UK tertiary education
– it is a charitable foundation dedicated to its core training aims.
Mike Leigh who is a graduate of the School from the 60s and taught there in the 1970s became
Chairman in 2001 and Ben Gibson who has been a producer, distributor, exhibitor and film journalist
joined as Director in that year also.
The consolidation of the School’s philosophy in the last 8 years has been based on technological
upgrading alongside a reiteration of the oldest principles:
1)
2)
3)
Craft excellence – all the teaching is through exercise films and students have to work in
every job. The exercises are tightly programmed so that before graduation participants
cannot, for instance, buy extra stock or timber or shoot for more days. Work is made in
16mm and 35mm and the second year exercises demand scripts which are 75% studio
based with built sets. To insist on craft excellence depends on industry level equipment,
a good number of full time staff who are present through all of the exercises and a big
group of visiting lecturers who are working in the industry.
Creative freedom – in the last 9 years the School became a graduate school and the
average age of students rose to around 25. Drawing out a sense of an individual
filmmakers’ creative personality in the manner of a British arts school is a core function of
the training. One great challenge of such a programme is that you ask the same student
to conceive of work in a sophisticated cultural dialogue, while infantilizing them routinely
with demanding craft based tests on their understanding of the equipment. Practically,
creative freedom is also established by making certain that the School does not act as a
commissioning body in any circumstances. LFS mounts advisory panels on the many
projects offered for a few slots, but the choices are made by the fact of a student project
leader recruiting colleagues who commit to it.
Fostering of innovation – LFS has the advantage as an international institution of not
being subjected to any short term and parochial debates around the needs of the national
audio-visual production sector, and this is its first guarantee that innovation is a part of the
agenda. Being in the centre of the city the School aims to combine its status as a
conservatoire which is a safe place to fail with an openness to the whole of the UK
independent sector trained wherever and in whatever way. There is a strong emphasis
on professional development workshops, Q&A nights and collaborations with cultural
institutions which bring all of these people together in as challenging way as possible.
The argument between those with conventional Hollywood aspirations and others with
quite different independent backgrounds and ambitions is staged in each unit around
each film with the faculty offering models of good practice to all sides in the debate. It is
very important in the UK to recruit students with a background in drama, literature,
photography and fine art as well as those obsessed with film exclusively.
Continuing problems:
Industry schools get caught in the middle of the funding debate without much security from either
the universities, the industry or the industry funders such as Film Council. The LFS struggle is to
hold these together and to get a better proportion of its turnover from funding away from fees.
Bridge Programmes – in the last two years the School has begun to take very seriously the
combination of professional experience, networking and further learning which will allow its
graduates to make a career some time in the decade after they graduate.
International Collaboration – LFS is very active in this area with a particular interest in creating
combined practical workshops/public screening debate events. Examples would be the AngloFrench Scenario! festival of screenwriting incorporating a workshop, the Abbas Kairostami
residency two years ago and the current European low-budget film forum workshops with
graduates from France, Denmark and Hungary, A Fistful of Euros and For A Few Euros Less.
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TRAINING POLICT AND THE UK FILM COUNCIL
John Hill
This presentation will consider the evolution of the training policy of the Film Council (subsequently
UK Film Council) established in April 2000 as the strategic body responsible for the development of
both ‘a sustainable UK film industry’ and the support of UK ‘film culture’. It will indicate how ‘training’
was conceived primarily as an ‘industrial’ matter involving the filling of a ‘skills gap’. This resulted in
the publication of A Bigger Picture: The UK Film Skills Strategy in 2003 which led to the establishment
of the Film Skills Fund and the rolling out of a number of measures, including the establishment of a
kite-marking scheme and the funding of Screen Academies in FE and HE. The presentation will
conclude with some reflections on the factors impacting upon this policy, including the funding of
‘training’ in HE and the ambivalent position of the National Film and Television School in relation to
other HEIs.
EDUCATION AND TRAINING
Christine Geraghty
I would like to put the role of film schools into the broader context of debates about university
education, vocationalism and the establishment of film, television and media studies as a discipline.
Film Schools have only been one way into ‘the industry’ and universities have been and still are a
traditional source of recruitment into television, the film industry, journalism etc.
Traditionally, in the arts and humanities, students and teachers have valued a broad education
providing certain kinds of knowledge and a capacity for independent thought; it was a way of gaining
cultural capital and, in some cases, enabled class mobility. With the development of Media Studies
courses, there was an emphasis on new areas of study (of which film was the most respectable) and
on practical work though this often aimed to produce work which challenged rather than conformed to
industry norms. During this period, many departments established informal relationships with
‘employers’ who were often ex-students. The development of Sector Skills Councils, however, was
based on the assumption that universities and employers were either unable to speak to each other or
were at odds over the role of education. The last few years have seen a continuing emphasis being
placed in the university curriculum on the acquisition of specific skills, the cultivation of entrepreneurial
attitudes and on the need to identify across all programmes the way in which they prepare students
for work. Universities in some sense are being asked to take on the training programmes which good
employers have traditionally offered.
In this situation, what is the balance between employers and teachers in assessing the needs of
students? How does the apparent demand for specific skills relate to jobs markets and overproduction
of potential employees? Are universities training people for their first job or their fourth? What should
we do if the needs of the students and the employers are at odds?
If it is accessible to you, you might like to look at my article ‘ “Doing Media Studies”: Reflections on an
unruly discipline’ Art, Design and Communication in Higher Education, 2002 ‘ Vol 1, no 1, pp37-49, for
some earlier thoughts on this.
TERRITORIAL DISPUTES IN FILM PRACTICE EDUCATION – A CASE STUDY IN
CONSTRUCTIVE ENGAGEMENT
Robin Macpherson
The perceived conflict between the screen industry, personified by Skillset, and Higher Education in
the UK arises because of an overlapping interest in the field or ‘space’ which both groups seek to
occupy (whether exclusively or not) and to (re)define. The ‘space’ in question is the
formation/reproduction of screen practitioners through the inculcation of values/transmission of skills
and it has become a territorial conflict, with both symbolic and material resources at stake, resolution
of which may or may not be a ‘zero sum game’.
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The tensions arise because, like state intervention in childrearing, this is an arena of disputed
competence in which an energetic quasi-state entity, whose legitimacy is derived from both private
and Governmental sources, has challenged the (self declared) autonomy of educators and their claim
to an autonomous competence in determining the form and content of (screen practice) education.
If the relevant agents in the HEI field did not aspire specifically to influence the practice elements
within the educational experience of would-be filmmakers, there would be no obvious conflict with ‘the
industry’ over the specialised modes of education or training that the institutions have developed and
offer alongside prima facie non-practice education in e.g. film studies. Moreover it is precisely the
very structuring of such modes of learning into an increasingly discrete ‘specialised’ activity within
HEIs that is one of the most hotly disputed territories.
Equally if Skillset, claiming to authoritatively represent the ‘reproductive’ needs of ‘the industry’, as
directly mandated by that industry and indirectly by Government (though its industry and education
policy arms), did not aspire to specifically influence the form and content of education
institutions/programmes which hold themselves out to be concerned with practice, they would have no
legitimate interest in the locus of course content, resources, staff etc.
So what are the territorial possessions, resources or other rewards at stake in this conflict?
Is it really a zero-sum game or is there a win-win solution and if so, which areas are negotiable and
which are deal-breakers?
The experience of Screen Academy Scotland between 2004 and 2009 provides an opportunity to
consider the costs and benefits of constructive engagement in the redrawing of territorial boundaries.