Screen Education

Terry Bolas

Description

Film and media studies now attract large numbers of students in schools, colleges and universities. However the setting up of these courses came after many decades of pioneering work at the educational margins in the post-war period. Bolas’ account focuses particularly on the voluntary efforts of activists in the Society for Education in Film and Television and on that Society’s interchanging relationship with the British Film Institute’s Education Department, set up in the 1930s. It draws on recent interviews with many of the individuals who contributed to the raising of the status of film, TV and media study. Through detailed examination of the scattered but surviving documentary record, the author seeks to challenge versions of the received history.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• Película fotográfica
• General officer
• Media studies
• Higher education
• General
• Film

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781841502861
• Langue: English

Extrait

Screen education
from film appreciation to media studies
Screen education
from film appreciation to media studies
Terry Bolas
For Marcos Marcou
First published in the UK in 2009 by Intellect Books, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2009 by Intellect Books, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright 2009 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.
Cover Design: Holly Rose Copy Editor: Holly Spradling
Typesetting: Mac Style, Beverley, East Yorkshire
ISBN 978-1-84150-237-3 EISBN 978-1-84150-286-1
Printed and bound by Gutenberg Press, Malta.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Prologue
1 Cinema under Scrutiny
2 Film Appreciation
3 Searching for Room at the Top
4 Discrimination and Popular Culture
5 Film in Education - The Back of Beyond
6 The University in Old Compton Street
7 The Felt Intervention of Screen
8 Screen Saviours
9 SEFT Limited
10 A Moral Panic Averted
11 Comedia delves arbitrarily
Epilogue
Screen education: a timeline 1930-1993
Expansion of media studies - the statistics
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgements
This book has greatly outgrown the original venture that initiated it: a dissertation I wrote as part of an MA in Visual Cultures awarded in 2003. The dissertation, Projecting Screen , considered the journal Screen during the early and mid 1970s. References from that source may be found here in Chapters 7 and 8 . Encouraged by the potential I had discovered for further investigations, I then ventured to attempt PhD research into the history of the evolution of media education, specifically as manifested in the Society for Education in Film and Television. It became apparent that the scale of my research was such that the resultant writing-up far exceeded the required amount for doctoral award. Consequently five chapters of the text that now makes up this book were extracted and modified in order to form the basis of that PhD thesis The Academic Accession of the Abject Art which was awarded in 2007. My thanks go to my external examiners, Christine Geraghty and Ed Buscombe, whose helpful interrogation of that text led to subsequent modifications from which this version has benefited.
There was one particularly relevant project which happily coincided with the period of my investigations. This was the History of the British Film Institute Research Project under Senior Research Fellow Geoffrey Nowell-Smith funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council at Queen Mary University of London. I am particularly grateful to Dr Christophe Dupin, Research Assistant of the Project, for his considerable assistance in regularly drawing to my attention archive material relevant to my research, as and when he happened upon it during his investigations. There were other occasions when, having reported to Dr Dupin that I had failed in my researches to track down a specific item, he had the happy knack of unearthing it somewhere among the BFI s scattered storage arrangements. Professor Nowell-Smith established links with other researchers whose investigations paralleled or overlapped with the BFI Project. Through the occasional meetings that he organised I was able to make contact with others in this specialist group who were then prepared to direct me to relevant material they had uncovered.
While the BFI was the focus for the investigations of the researchers at Queen Mary, my interest was in the parallel and interrelated history of the teachers organisation: the Society of Film Teachers which subsequently changed its name to the Society for Education in Film and Television (SEFT). This Society existed for some four decades from its inception in 1950 during which period it became particularly influential in the development of the serious study of film and media. The advantage of my choosing to review it from the perspective of the early twenty first century was that many of the key players of those decades were readily contactable. This was crucially important because when a voluntary body ceases to exist its documentation - other than its formal publications - may disappear without trace.
Two relevant archives do exist which provided me with a great deal of background information. There is the SEFT Archive housed in the National Arts Education Archive at Bretton Hall, Wakefield and the Screen Archive in the University of Glasgow. The SEFT Archive contains material which was retrieved from the SEFT offices during internal reorganisation at the end of the 1970s; the Screen Archive consists of the material that went to Glasgow when the John Logie Baird Centre took over the editing of Screen in 1989. In neither case was there the opportunity for scrutiny and selection of material at the time of its removal.
I owe a considerable debt of gratitude to Annette Kuhn and John Caughie of the University of Glasgow who, as Editors of Screen , responded so positively to my requests for access to the Archive. In order for me to view the Screen material it was necessary for preliminary sorting work to be undertaken before my arrival, since the archive boxes had remained stored and uninspected for some fifteen years. During my researches I was fortunate to have the help and assistance of Emily Munro, the Screen editorial officer during 2005/6. At the National Arts Education Archive my thanks go to the curator Leonard Bartle who was always on hand with help and information during my several visits there.
My most regular source of material was the British Film Institute s National Library and the Institute s Special Collections. My thanks go to all the reading room staff and in particular to Sean Delaney upon whose skills in finding and retrieving antique documents from the Stephen Street basement I occasionally needed to call. My thanks also go to Janet Moat Head of Special Collections both for the access she ensured to materials and for her personal interest in and support of my project. Other archives contributed to the wider picture I sought to create. Sarah Aitchison at the London University Institute of Education, Mary Wood of Birkbeck College University of London and Doreen Dean of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts are all due my thanks for their help.
Many other individuals have contributed at the various stages through which this enterprise has progressed, some of them very substantially. It was particularly encouraging that, as news of my project trickled out through the media education world, people came forward ready to assist both with their recollections and with the offer of access to their personal archives. Special mention must be made of the materials accumulated by Paddy Whannel during his period at the BFI which Professor Garry Whannel has retained and to which I was given access. I was also very fortunate in having sight of materials retained by George Foster, who remained a key voluntary officer during the final two decades of SEFT s existence.
Since the documentary record was to prove to be incomplete, I had to look elsewhere to discover the means to reconstruct the continuity of this account. Over a period of five years I interviewed many of those who had participated in this history. The first wave of interviewees were assisting in the writing of my MA dissertation; subsequent interviewees were part of my doctorate research and then of this book. Some were prepared to indulge my request for a second follow-up interview. My grateful thanks go to all of them.
Those who made themselves available for face-to-face interview and in numerous instances also provided archive materials were: Manuel Alvarado, Charles Barr, Cary Bazalgette, Susan Bennett, Andrew Bethell, David Buckingham, Ed Buscombe, Richard Collins, Barry Curtis, Rosalind Delmar, James Donald, John Ellis, Bob Ferguson, George Foster, Christine Geraghty, Jenny Grahame, Brian Groombridge, Stuart Hall, the late Gillian Hartnoll, Andrew Higson, Jim Hillier, Fred Jarvis, Alan Lovell, Douglas Lowndes, David Lusted, Colin MacCabe, Colin McArthur, Len Masterman, Mandy Merck, Chris Mottershead, Laura Mulvey, Mark Nash, Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Claire Pajaczkowska, Victor Perkins, David Rodowick, Sir Roy Shaw, Philip Simpson, Roy Stafford, Ginette Vincendeau, Ian Wall, Paul Willemen, Christopher Williams, Tana Wollen, Mary Wood. I was able to put questions by telephone or e-mail to: Jim Cook, Sean Cubitt, Leslie Heywood, Val Hill, Sam Rohdie, Michael Simons.
Two institutions were sufficiently convinced of the value of my project to award me studentships to support my research: first the Surrey Institute of Art and Design, University College and subsequently Middlesex University. There were key figures within those institutions whose support deserves particular mention: Manuel Alvarado at the Surrey Institute and Barry Curtis, Adrian Rifkin and Patrick Phillips at Middlesex University. They all believed in the value of my project and contributed to my progress and formal supervision. When I began to consider publication I had a double bonus in that not only was Intellect prepared to publish my work but I was able to maintain my contact with Manuel Alvarado who is an Associate Publisher with Intellect and was therefore my Editor for Screen education: from film appreciation to media studies . My grateful thanks go to Manuel not only for his meticulous attention to detail but also for his selective prompting as to ways in which my account might be developed and enhanced.
Professor Toby Miller has generously provided a stimulating Foreword to this book. He places into the context of today s Academy the energy and achievement