Children and Education in World Cinema

Introduction: Vocabulary and Approach

For this unit, I’ll use the word cinema to refer to the larger project of the moving image.  A film will be an individual work but with the connotation of a more reflective style of filmmaking.  In contrast to films, movies carry the connotation of a pure entertainment with a cultural value that outweighs its artistic value. 

As you read the programmed experiences of our unit, you’ll recognize that just as there are different modes of writing, there are different modes of cinema.  If you want to study “film as film” alongside studying film as a meaning-maker, you’ll find here ways to navigate both concerns. 

Comparing theater and film is a fine place to start because it is already common practice in English class.  When watching a film adaptation of a play, for instance, we observe how films are action-oriented, change locations deftly, and show us exactly what the director wants us to see through the eye of the lens.  Plays emphasize dialogue and character relationships in front of sets that require suspension of disbelief.  Theater audience members have some autonomy in terms of where they look across a stage.  This unit invites students to question how free they are as viewers.  Images on-screen can invite or they can quash; they can inspire thought or spell out meaning.  A truly democratic shot in a film gives us many sites to rest our gaze.  This makes for a more taxing viewing experience but perhaps, also, a more rewarding one.  When making viewing choices, are we at all times expected to submit to the spectacle of a consumer-focused cinema?  Or can we consider films that are more thoughtful and that question their relationship with reality by way of distortion or disclosure, or play with how time and space are navigated?  Then we can contribute to the meanings of films through interpretation, analysis, and through the introduction of theory (codes from culture that may or may not explain cinema).  We do want films to take the lead in how we talk about them, so “What stands out to you?” is a great question to jump in with students.¹  Dudley Andrew, in his article “The Core and the Flow of Film Studies,” helps us think broadly before we dial in:  “How shall information become knowledge and inquiry be disciplined?”²

I converse with my students about films and shows they enjoy, and we can even value films that throw weight primarily due to relationship-building in the public sphere.³  Andrew is fond of quoting Serge Daney, a French film critic, who said that cinema was born on two legs, entertainment and art.  These legs can walk together, but we want to expose students to films that they would be unlikely to encounter on their own and that provide a counterpoint to other viewing habits.  Important films are not easily forgotten, and they connect students to the origins of cinema.⁴  If we model returning to strong films and strong thinkers with our classes, students can gradually develop evaluation skills on the way to cultivating an informed taste, un-dominated by what marketers tell them is desirable every time they enter the internet.⁵  Students deserve to be given opportunities to encounter the otherness and personal shock of a piece of art.⁶  Alain Bergala’s pedagogy of watching in his The Cinema Hypothesis includes being willing to see something in all its mystery before attaching meaning to it.⁷  In addition, using foreign films, as this unit will, not only builds empathy for other cultures, but also allows us to focus on general human problems, apart from how social issues manifest in the U.S.  Characters in films become our buffer against the incomprehensible and difficult things of the world, and we glean possible responses.⁸  As art is, by its nature, seeking its own liberation, it is automatically counter-cultural, and as such it might take attention training and recalibration to get involved.  But at the same time, a superpower of cinema is the intensity and focus it demands.⁹  Film:  “the first in a series of technological media aiming for transparency, whereby the spectator would be co-present with what is displayed.”¹⁰  Cinema is immersive, a complex enough medium to contribute to student understanding of whatever new media emerge.¹¹