FILM AS ART, FILM IN ART

Film Education and media education generally have been wholly neglected in formal Irish education…Over the past sixty years film has emerged as a major art form in its own right, an art form which is specifically a product of the twentieth century. Yet the Department of Education has given no indication of recognising it as such…We would be very anxious to see media studies generally, and film education particularly, introduced into the post-primary curriculum. [1]

The Case for Film Studies in Secondary Education

The Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon argument for the inclusion of film in formal education, published exactly 20 years ago, is now, happily, a rather redundant one. There are presently in the region of 50 courses relating to film and media on offer at universities, colleges and Post Leaving Certificate institutions around Ireland [2]. At secondary level Film/Media Studies are mentioned as an area of enquiry in Junior Certificate, Leaving Certificate Applied and the new Leaving Certificate English syllabi. In the current draft syllabus for Leaving Certificate Art [3], film is proposed as a section in one of three ‘study areas', one of which ‘must be selected by the student and studied in depth over the two years' (of the senior cycle course). Media Studies, including Film, also form central components of the new Primary curriculum. Only ten years ago, when My Left Foot made Irish film history by winning two Oscars, ten years after the publication of the Benson Report, cited above, this situation was unimaginable. The Film Board had been disbanded after 6 years, the Irish Film Centre had not yet been established and many of the organisations which now constitute the landscape of the sector such as the Screen Commission, the Irish Film and Television Academy and Film Makers Ireland had yet to come into existence.

But if film is now widely accepted as a legitimate subject for study at all levels of our education system, there remains a dearth of critical debate on its focus of enquiry in second level education. That is to say, few doubt that it should form part of some subject but there is less confidence in articulating what an analysis of film might constitute on a practical level. Perhaps this is inevitable. The development and nature of an indigenous film industry has occupied most critics and commentators in Ireland over the last twenty years. This debate now shows signs of maturity in the broadening of critical horizons evident in magazines such as Film Ireland, Film West and CIRCA and at recent conferences at the Irish Film Centre (Nationalisms: Visions and Revisions, November 1998) and University College Dublin (Cinema and the City, March 1999). But if this growth in confidence is to be built upon and move beyond apparently endless questions of representation—however important these are—there is an urgent need to broaden the scope of enquiry. This places an enormous onus on educators in second level education. Teachers of English and Art in particular are acutely aware that film is the most potent narrative and visual medium at work in the lives of their students and many have responded by incorporating film into their teaching in a variety of ways. This has led to an exciting range of contexts in which the medium is studied, inspired and maintained by personal commitment and experience. However, such an approach, for all its freshness and innovation, can only go so far. Some teachers, after initial enthusiasm, have already stopped teaching film after a few years, unsure of where to take it, painfully aware of their own critical and pedagogical limitations. We find ourselves therefore at a critical juncture in educational planning. There is a need for clear articulation of pedagogical aims in relation to the medium before the Leaving Certificate Art syllabus takes final shape. This has already happened in relation to the new Leaving Certificate English syllabus and an overview of its concerns and priorities may be helpful in identifying the critical avenues which the study of film in art might pursue.

Film in Leaving Certificate English

Despite calls for the creation of a distinct subject area, Media Studies/Film Studies seems unlikely to exist in the foreseeable future for two principal reasons: (a) successive curriculum committees have gradually incorporated the study of media/film into a wide variety of courses, and (b) the manner of their inclusion reveals a well meaning but generally conservative approach to addressing what their study actually constitutes. This means that film will be assimilated into existing subject areas, with the consequence of critical examination beginning with the ways it is similar to what is already being taught.

The revised Leaving Certificate English syllabus (to be implemented from September 1999) examines film as a narrative form, which shares similarities with the literary texts with which it is to be compared. The syllabus does not provide for films to be studied on their own—students must consider them under a number of ‘comparative modes' such as ‘Hero', ‘Cultural Context' and ‘Literary Genre'. This approach effectively limits the meaning of films to what happens on a narrative level—style (form) would appear to be considered adjacent rather than integral, to substance [4]. This is borne out in the choice of films chosen for study: A Room with a View, The Third Man, Dances With Wolves, Much Ado About Nothing, Cinema Paradiso and My Left Foot. Of these Cinema Paradiso and The Third Man (scripted by novelist Graham Greene) have literary sources. All are produced according to the production values and conventions of mainstream Hollywood cinema and all are narratives in the classic, three-act structure mould, driven by a central male character.

Undoubtedly, film is a significant mode of communication for the overwhelming majority of school-going adolescents. Its welcome inclusion in the English curriculum encourages students to analyse and discuss a powerful medium. But in choosing ‘literary' films and analysing them from the perspective of narrative, the syllabus elides an important, some might say defining, element of cinema: our aesthetic response to its unique and (therefore) incomparable properties. Film is not an evolved form of the picture book. Where language describes, film shows. Its images are not signs and symbols which point to an external reality in the way that words do. They begin with reality, but add significance and interpretation to it in the manner in which they are presented through the deployment of camera, mise-en-scène, editing and sound. Cinema's unique resources—amongst others, the distance of the camera / spectator from the subject; the duration of the shot, the relationship of one shot to the next, the interplay of sound and image—cannot adequately be discussed only in relation to the story. It could even be argued that to eliminate discussion of these properties is to eliminate our experience of them, and purge the medium of its aesthetic essence.

Film in Leaving Certificate Art

In general, it is no more difficult to make a film than to write a novel. In reality however, the practices of making a film are a great deal more difficult. That is true first of all because though schools teach grammar and syntax, they do not seem to have heard of the aesthetics of cinema. [5]

The manner of inclusion of film in the Leaving Certificate English syllabus is of timely significance. Its locus of enquiry clearly leaves much room for the intervention of other subject areas, most particularly Art. Its putative significance in this subject area has already been acknowledged by the Department of Education for some time on Leaving Cert. exam papers. For the past ten years students have had the opportunity to respond to a question which specifically deals with the moving image. Sometimes, as in 1993, this has focused on an area such as special effects. However the question more generally asks candidates to discuss the visual aspects of a film/video/advert they have seen. The unpredictable nature of this question has meant that most teachers advise students to avoid it and the absence of any clear syllabus guidelines has meant that any teaching that has taken place has been done in addition to more ‘reliable' content areas and has been devised according to individual teachers' enthusiasm and expertise.

The examination of film in the English syllabus is as a result of enlarged definitions of narrative discourse and a desire to acknowledge contemporary modes of expression. It is obvious that a similar shift needs to take place in the new Art syllabus. The dominant form of discourse for today's students is visual, not written and senior cycle Art is ideally placed to engage with that visual awareness and influence, giving it shape and context. There is the added issue, perhaps not surprisingly absent from the present art syllabus given that it was published in 1970, that many artists now work in ‘moving image' media—film, video and digital imagery. It has become almost impossible to visit a gallery that doesn't have a monitor or projector ‘looping' something, somewhere. Although the exact nature of what is being presented ranges from simple documentary, through documentation of installations, to ‘unique' works (Walter Benjamin's ‘Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' essay poses interesting questions in relation to the ‘aura' of video art) many students and, it is supposed, some of their teachers, are not equipped to engage either critically or aesthetically with the ambitions of the form.

There are then at least three reasons for an increased role for film in senior cycle art education: its cultural significance as a means of expression and its importance in the lives of students, the limiting of the English syllabus' analysis of film to narrative concerns and the growing artistic practice of working in film/video/digital imagery. If acceptance of these justifications is widespread, and I believe it is, there is less consensus about what such a syllabus should teach. One of the reasons for this, along with the sheer diversity of ways in which film has been used over the past one hundred years, may be that there is some difficulty in separating the commercial from the artistic when discussing film. Is it possible to talk about the artistry of John Ford for example, without mentioning the huge box office appeal of westerns during the 1930s and 1940s? Ironically, the art classroom is probably the one place in the curriculum where the widest variety of films can be viewed and discussed without overstating the institutional pressures of film production, since this is not the primary focus of the subject.

The draft syllabus currently under discussion places film as an area of study particular to the twentieth century alongside visual art, design and architecture. This is appropriate since film is the art form that defines, in many ways, the aesthetic sensibility of this century. Its inclusion in this way also suggests an approach which might both offer students and teachers scope in their examination of moving images in a variety of forms and contexts as well as establishing a unique and important area of critical inquiry. Setting film in an historical framework would permit the examination of formal developments, artists/directors and movements and be in keeping with current pedagogical approaches to other art forms. Contextualising film in this way would easily facilitate the inclusion of a range of cinema with direct links to art movements such as Man With a Movie Camera (the avant-garde of the 1920s and 1930s) The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (German Expressionism), Un Chien Andalou (Surrealism) or the films of Warhol. In turn, viewing films such as these would permit examination of the enduring, though infrequently viewed ‘Art cinema' of the past fifty or so years—for example the films of Maya Deren or Derek Jarman. This would not be at the expense of more traditional cinema but would, I believe, result in the cultivation of a more refined cinematic sensibility than is possible in viewing only narrative films, the majority of which are made according to the principals of the ‘invisible style' [6]. Approaching film in this way, as opposed to simply ‘reading' the codes and conventions of an arbitrarily chosen film, as is currently the case, would enable students to recognise and critique trends, influences and practices across a wide range of texts from mainstream narrative cinema, through documentary, to experimental and non-traditional expression. It would foster discussion of the direction which film has taken and expose students to work which falls outside of the extremely limited fare currently on offer in cineplexes and video rental shops [7]. Finally, an historical approach, identifying artistically and culturally significant examples of the medium—a consideration which would seem to have been ignored in the choice of films prescribed for study in the English syllabus—could be used to inspire and direct practical work by students.

An historical study of film, as outlined above, is clearly modelled on current approaches to other aspects of the Art History syllabus. In this respect it is highly conventional. But if it were to be adopted in a way that were to make reference to other areas of study in the syllabus and used as a basis for student's own production of moving images on video or film it would be the single most comprehensive engagement with the medium in any area of the curriculum. The decision to offer such a possibility clearly lies in the hands of those currently engaged in writing the new syllabus. But it is equally unlikely to gain popularity unless those with responsibility for the training of future (and perhaps, present) art teachers are willing to commit to such an endeavour. Teacher training departments of art colleges do not currently approach film with the thoroughness applied to the more traditional forms of visual art. And until they do, it is unlikely that a substantial change will result in the way in which film and video is taught in the art classroom by those who attempt to daily engage the saturated visual imaginations of the ‘MTV generation'.

[1] The Place of the Arts in Irish Education, Dublin: The Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon, 1979
[2] Based on a listing of current courses in Careers in Film and Television in Ireland, Dublin: Film Institute of Ireland, 1999
[3] An Initial Draft Syllabus for Consultation was distributed by the NCCA in October 1998
[4] The Draft Guidelines for Teachers (NCCA, 1999) nonetheless includes a lengthy section on the study of film, including an overview of its formal properties; but this cannot change the emphasis of the critical framework within which the study (i.e. examination) of film will take place.
[5] Jean Mitry, Aesthetics and Psychology of the Cinema, Bloomingdale: Indiana University Press, 1997, p. 15
[6] A term used to describe the stylistic features of films made from the 1930s onwards which use a number of devices, principally continuity editing, to drive the narrative forwards without drawing the viewer's attention to the film's formal properties.
[7] Irish consumers, according to a recent report, rent more videos per capita than any of their European counterparts and are second only to Icelandic audiences in their frequency of cinema attendance. Increasingly however, ownership of cinemas and video shops is in the hands of multinational conglomerates who seek to maximise profit through a fast turn over of high-yield, short-shelf-life titles.

Tony Tracy is Senior Education Officer at the Film Institute of Ireland, Dublin.

A booklet for prospective teachers of the revised Leaving Certificate English syllabus, Introduction to Film Studies, gives an overview of the critical concerns of the subject as well as proposing an approach to film style. It is available free of charge from the Film Institute of Ireland, tel. (01) 6795744.

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