The ABCs of Cinema:
The State of Film Education
In a word, the cinema is “written” with the letters of myth, politics, and popular culture. The “language of film” has thus always been a metaphor, albeit one that is fiercely maintained, especially in educational contexts. This reveals the legitimate and fundamental desire to make film experience understandable. This notion also implies that film can be learned like a language, and also means that film education is something that needs to begin in school, like the ABCs or arithmetic.
This is complicated by the fact that film and the cinema are a hybrid complex. In the audiovisual moving image, film and the cinema have produced an aesthetic with many facets, one that feeds on existing traditions of image, text, and music. In addition, the technological reproduction of sound and image has appropriated many other cultural productions and our everyday life, creating a heterogeneous mixture. This is both a starting point and a challenge for film education.
This lecture will serve as an introduction to the conference as a whole, and provides a current account of the state of film education.
Kurzfilme:
Wie sich das Kino rächt
D 1912/13, Regie: Gustav Trautschold, 15 minutes
Annem Sinema Örgeniyor
(Cinema Course for my Mother) Nesimi Yetik, Turkey 2006, 3:25 minutes (with German subtitles)
Winfried Pauleit is professor at Universität Bremen, and works in the areas of film studies, media aesthetics, and art pedagogy. Publications include: Filmstandbilder. Passagen zwischen Kunst und Kino (2004) Das ABC des Kinos. Foto, Film, Neue Medien (2008). He edits the series Bremer Schriften zur Filmvermittlung: Alain Bergala: Kino als Kunst (2006); Filme sehen, Kino verstehen (2008) (both volumes edited with Bettina Henzler), he is cofounder of the internet magazine www.nachdemfilm.de.
Friday | Jan. 16 | 10 am
