Educating Film-makers

Rod Stoneman, Duncan Petrie

Description

A timely consideration of both the history and the current challenges facing practice-based film training, Educating Film-Makers is the first book to examine the history, impact and significance of film education in Britain, Europe and the United States. Film schools, the authors show, have historically focused on the cultivation of the film-maker as a cultural activist, artist or intellectual – fostering creativity and innovation. But more recently a narrower approach has emerged, placing a new emphasis on technical training for the industry. The authors argue for a more imaginative engagement and understanding of the broader social importance of film and television, suggesting that critical analysis and production should be connected. Examining current concerns facing practice-based film education in the digital era, this book is indispensable for both film teachers and students alike.

Introduction – Duncan Petrie and Rod Stoneman

PART ONE: The Development of Film Schools in Europe and North America – Duncan Petrie

Continental Film Schools: A Brief History of the 'National Conservatoire' 

American University Film Schools: A Changing Relationship with Hollywood

PART TWO: British Film Schools – Duncan Petrie

The 'Official' State Institution: The National Film and Television School

The Private Institution: The London Film School

The Art School: The Royal College of Art

Beyond London: The Struggle for a Scottish Film School 

PART THREE: Provocations – Rod Stoneman

Prologue

The Culture Industry

The Academic and the Creative

The Ethics of the Sign

The Theories We Need

Digital Examination

Towards a Different Future

Sujets

• Película fotográfica
• Reference
• History of film
• Cultural Studies
• Film
• Culture cinématographique

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 20 juin 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783202706
• Langue: English

Extrait

Educating Film-makers
Educating Film-makers
Past, Present and Future
by Duncan Petrie and Rod Stoneman

Intellect Bristol UK / Chicago, USA
First published in the UK in 2014 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2014 by Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright 2014 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This publication was grant-aided by the Publications Fund of the National University of Ireland, Galway.
Production managers: Jelena Stanovnik Heather Gibson
Cover designer: Holly Rose
Copy editor: Sebastian Manley
Index: Lyn Greenwood
Typesetting: John Teehan
ISBN 978-1-78320-185-3
ePUB ISBN 978-1-78320-270-6
ePDF ISBN 978-1-78320-269-0
Printed and bound by Hobbs the Printers Ltd, UK
Dedication
Duncan Petrie: for Rebecca and Anic
Rod Stoneman: this is for Sue, Adam, Otto and Finn, as always
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
NOTE ON AUTHORS
INTRODUCTION
DUNCAN PETRIE and ROD STONEMAN
PART ONE: The Development of Film Schools in Europe and North America
DUNCAN PETRIE
Continental Film Schools: A Brief History of the 'National Conservatoire'
American University Film Schools: A Changing Relationship with Hollywood
PART TWO: British Film Schools
DUNCAN PETRIE
The 'Official' State Institution: The National Film and Television School
The Private Institution: The London Film School
The Art School: The Royal College of Art
Beyond London: The Struggle for a Scottish Film School
PART THREE: Provocations
ROD STONEMAN
Prologue
The Culture Industry
The Academic and the Creative
The Ethics of the Sign
The Theories We Need
Digital Examination
Towards a Different Future
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
ACKNO WLEDGMENTS
Duncan Petrie would like to thank all of those who generously gave their time to be interviewed for this book: Stephen Bayly, Alan Bernstein, Henning Camre, Roger Crittenden, Brian Dunnigan, Christopher Frayling, Ben Gibson, Keith Griffiths, Mark Herman, Douglas Lowndes, Colin MacLeod, Robin Macpherson, James Mavor, Noe Mendelle, Tim Miller, Clive Myer, Steve Partridge, Nik Powell, Al Rees, Dick Ross, Ian Sellar, Caroline Spry, Howard Thompson, Barry Vince, Brian Winston and Colin Young. Thanks also to those who provided invaluable additional information and assistance at various points: Tom Abrams, Hazel Arthur, Dennis Bartok, Kate Hughes, Frederick Lang, John Mateer, Neil Parkinson, Amy Sargeant, Nick Tannis and Guillaume Vernet. I would also like to acknowledge the support and encouragement provided by various friends and colleagues at various stages of the project, including Ed Braman, Malte Hagener, David Hickman, Andrew Higson, Erik Hedling, John Hill, Mette Hjort, Julian Petley, Heidi Philipsen, Francesco Pitassio and Simon van der Borgh.
Rod Stoneman would like to thank the many who contributed insight and argument, especially those who read a draft of Provocations critically at a crucial point: Dennis Bartok, Des Bell, Alan Fountain, Malcolm Le Grice, Igor Korsic, Des O Rawe, Dan Schiller and Adam Stoneman. I have learnt much from acting as external examiner for many courses over the years - in Coleraine, Edinburgh, Belfast, Dublin, Plymouth, Beaconsfield and Exeter. Thanks are also due to all fellow students, from many years ago at the Film Unit, the Slade School of Fine Art, University College, London, to the present at the Huston School of Film Digital Media, National University of Ireland, Galway.
Both authors would like to thank those who participated in the two symposia that preceded this book. Film Schools Symposium in York, 16-17 October 2009: Christine Geraghty, Ben Gibson, Andrew Higson, John Hill, Mette Hjort, Igor Korsic, Des O Rawe and Brian Winston; Film/Making/Thinking in Galway, 28-29 May 2010: Don Boyd, June Givanni, Gaston Kabor , Colin MacCabe, Annabelle Pangborn and Brian Winston.
NOTE ON AUTHORS
Duncan Petrie is Professor in the Department of Theatre, Film and Television at the University of York. He previously worked at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, where he was head of the Department of Film, Television and Media Studies; the University of Exeter, where he set up and directed the Bill Douglas Centre for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture; and the British Film Institute, where he was research officer. Duncan s books include Creativity and Constraint in the British Film Industry , The British Cinematographer , Screening Scotland , Contemporary Scottish Fictions , Shot in New Zealand: The Art and Craft of the Kiwi Cinematographer , The Cinema of Small Nations and A Coming of Age: 30 Years of New Zealand Cinema .
Professor Rod Stoneman is the Director of the Huston School of Film Digital Media at the National University of Ireland, Galway. He was Chief Executive of Bord Scann n na h ireann / the Irish Film Board until September 2003 and previously a Deputy Commissioning Editor in the Independent Film and Video Department at Channel 4 Television in the United Kingdom. He has made a number of documentaries for television, including Ireland: The Silent Voices , Italy: The Image Business , Between Object and Image , 12,000 Years of Blindness and The Spindle , and has written extensively on film and television. He is the author of Ch vez: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised , A Case Study of Politics and the Media and Seeing Is Believing: The Politics of the Visual .
INTRODUCTION
Duncan Petrie and Rod Stoneman

The world's first film school: the State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) in Moscow, founded in 1919.
The significance of film schools
Since the middle of the twentieth century, a substantial number of moving image professionals have been educated in film schools, a formation that has important implications for the historical development of film and television as creative and industrial processes. The first such schools were created to provide new recruits for nationalized film industries and therefore were funded and controlled by or in the interests of the state. The story begins in 1919 with the Vserossiyskiy Gosoudarstvenni Institut Kinematographii/All-Union State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK), founded in Moscow by the new Bolshevik regime to train cadres of film-makers who would help further the aims of the revolution. But for the next quarter century this remained a small club, with only the addition of the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, established by Mussolini s Fascist administration in Rome in 1935 with a similar propagandistic aim, and the Institute deshautes tudes cin matographiques (IDHEC), set up in 1943 by a group of independent French cinephiles in German-occupied Paris. But following the end of World War II, film schools began to proliferate rapidly in Europe and elsewhere, gradually replacing the studio-based, on-the-job training that had previously ensured the reproduction of skilled labour for film production. Explicitly national schools became the predominant form of institution in Europe and were based on the conservatoire model operating in the spheres of music, dance and drama. In the United States, meanwhile, moving image education developed primarily within universities, with the first department of cinematography being established in 1932 at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
Many of the schools founded after 1945 followed the lead of the Soviet and Italian institutions, established as part of a wider policy to rejuvenate or create vibrant national film industries and moving image cultures. This was informed by a direct acknowledgement of both the economic and the cultural value of cinema and was to have major consequences for the development of the medium in Europe, particularly during the astonishing period of innovation that ran from the 1950s to the 1970s. Through the evolution of innovative curricula that combined practical instruction and contextual study, film schools provided the seedbed not only for individual creativity, but also for many of the key film movements of the twentieth century, beginning with the revolutionary Soviet montage cinema of the 1920s and followed by Italian Neo-Realism of the late 1940s, the Eastern European new waves of the 1950s and 1960s, the New Australian cinema of the 1970s, Fifth Generation Chinese Cinema in the 1980s and the Danish Dogme 95 initiative around the turn of the new millennium. In the United States the development of film education took a different path but was ultimately to have a similar impact via successive generations of cine-literate, university-film-school-educated graduates, including the movie brats who spearheaded the New Hollywood of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the subsequent cohorts that became the leading lights of independent cinema of the 1980s and 1990s.
The international roll-call of talent produced by film schools includes such luminaries as Sergei Eisenstein, Michelangelo Antonioni, Andrzej Wajda, Andrei Tarkovsky, Louis Malle, Alain Resnais, Roman Polanski, Milo Foreman, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Francis Coppola, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Zhang Yimou, Ridley Scott, Mike Leigh, Michael Mann, Gillian Armstrong, Wim Wenders, Haile Gerima, Lars von Trier, Jim Jarmusch, Spike Lee, Ang Lee, Claire Denis, Jane Campion, Terence Davies, Tim Burton, Kathryn Bigelow and John Lassiter - to pick out just a handful. 1 But the success and reputation of film schools have also depended heavily on the expertise and talent of the administrators and teachers who set up and developed these institutions (and their pedagogic philosophies and curricula), most of whom remain lar