The DVD: A Tool of Film Pedagogy and Film Studies
The DVD opened up new perspectives for film pedagogy: instead of prescribing a linear discourse of knowledge that damns the spectator to passivity, it allows the user himself to place various film sequences in relation to one another in the shortest time. This finally allows for a comparative approach where active thinking about the cinema results from complex linkages of film clips. After exploring this method for several years in the framework of a DVD collection for the French educational system L’Eden cinema, I then developed a DVD Le point de vue on “point of view” in the cinema. Point of view is one of the most difficult questions of film theory, one that all too often adheres to concepts from literary analysis. As I worked on choosing and ordering the 43 film clips for the DVD, I became aware that I was in the process of developing the basic outlines for a theory of point of view based only on the films themselves and their linkage to one another, and not on a priori theoretical concepts. In this way, a different method of film studies is conceivable: by organizing a pragmatic typology based on film clips in light of a certain question, and then proceeding to the concepts..
Alain Bergala: teaches film analysis at Fémis and the Sorbonne, and is the co-editor of the educational DVD-Collection Eden cinéma; in 2006–2007 he was curator of the exhibition Correspondances: Kiarostami-Erice in Barcelona (CCCB) and Paris (Centre Pompidou). From 2000 to 2002 he advised the French Minister for Education on film, and from 1978 to 1988 he worked for Cahiers du cinéma as writer, editor, and director of the book series.
Latest Publications include: L’hypothèse cinéma. Petit traité de transmission du cinema à l’école et ailleurs (Paris 2002); Monika de Ingmar Bergman (2005); Godard au travail, les annés 60 (2006); Mais où je suis? (2007); Luis Buñuel (2008)..
Saturday | Jan. 17 | 5:30 pm
