'FILMED – Laboratory for Film Education. From discourse to practice'

FilmED provides teaching staff the much-needed time, space and community to develop their own pedagogy. Our collaboration with Łódź Film School in Poland and HDK-Valand in Sweden invites teachers to work together and inspire one another in order to produce new methods, assignments, workshops and curricula. 

Why FilmED? 
Our world is dominated by images and sounds; with the rise of social media, TikTok, memes and YouTube, the production of audio-visual content has become the primary way we learn, communicate and exchange. As educators, we need to adapt to this shifting landscape and respond to the changing needs of our students. It is crucial that we recognise the role pictures, gestures, sounds, shapes, body movements, rhythms, or object manipulation play in the process of knowledge production.

We now know that individuals differ in how they learn and that there are various forms of intelligence, including bodily-kinesthetic, linguistic, or visual thinking. Research has shown that visual thinkers constitute a far greater proportion of the population than previously believed – and these numbers continue to rise due to the everyday use of audio-visual digital media. Cognitively speaking, the ‘visual’ and ‘verbal’ are used to occupy opposite ends of the thinking spectrum, but research and our pedagogical practice prove that they not only coexist in everyone’s mind but some of the best creative thinking is achieved when the two interact.

Yet higher education still primarily relies on linguistic methods of knowledge transfer – even if that knowledge came from practice or was originally produced in the medium of video, sound or image. While this statement is also true for many academic disciplines, in film schools it rings even more true as our primary medium of study is different from language. Due to the rigid separation of practice and theory, our students most often learn the theory of their unique audio-visual medium through text. This mediation abandons the power of direct presentation, flattening it into a description on a page.

The Research Process
In the process of building FilmED, we traced the problem back to its origins, identifying the challenges we face as institutions who want to innovate to figure out what kind of structure is needed to dream up what the solution/s may be. The medium of film is a source of unique epistemology and we cannot simply tap into the pedagogical tradition of academia rooted in language to mine it. So how can we explore and share the riches of this source? What kind of innovative, daring and reflexive models could we come up with? 

We need to find and develop ways to translate philosophical, theoretical and scientific knowledge into multimodal, interactive and embodied assignments in order to teach our students how to apply it in their own professional practice. Film schools occupy a unique position. We have ample equipment, facilities and staff – we have the means to directly engage in the applied process of audiovisual knowledge production. However, we have no existing interdisciplinary pedagogical frameworks to follow. In the absence of pedagogical aids, models, and available support structures, the burden of this crucial innovation falls on teachers and their spare time. Workshops teaching practice-based, embodied theory cannot be conceived on paper alone – they need to be developed with actual participants. 

What is it?
FilmED creates the conditions for change and innovation by creating a new working structure for teachers to research and innovate their pedagogical methodology. The three-year programme provides teachers with the time, means, and consistent support of a diverse international peer group. Through this consortium of educators, a collective pool of expertise will be on offer helping participants to work on lasting solutions for the sustainable improvement of teaching methods. Our aim is to create better inclusive learning environments and more innovative curricula to train students to be more competent, critical and responsible in their use of audio-visual media.

How does it work?
Running from 2024 - 2027, teachers from the three participating institutions will be given the time and resources to expand their pedagogical practices, supported by a structure we have carefully developed. Working across different layers of engagement – from internal labs within each institutions to international bootcamps where all participants will meet and share their findings – FilmED refreshes the traditional art school models to create a European hive-mind of educators. 

Through practice-based experimentation that seeks to cultivate a synergy between theory and practice using audio, visual, kinesthetic tools, participants will shift gears towards embodied and experiential learning. The outcome of this intense, collective work process will be the publication of innovative practice-oriented pedagogical guides to syllabuses with the necessary documentation such as recordings, videos, sketches, and resources such as templates and audio-visual material.

Who is it for?
The foundation of FilmED will be teachers from the three partner institutions who will be directing the content produced in the labs with the support of a diverse group of experts from the field. But the ripple effect of the project will affect:

• The entire teaching staff of the three institutions who can participate in selected activities of the labs and will get a chance to join after the pilot run of FilmED
• PhD candidates in training, expected to start engaging in pedagogy
• BA, MA, and PhD students who will participate in the selected working sessions of the labs, and pilot runs of the workshops developed in the labs and implemented in their study programmes
• The wider community of BA, MA, and PhD students who will continuously benefit from the new workshops and curricula.

Who is it by?
Mieke Bernink and Stanislaw Liguzinski of the NFA Research Department are working with researchers at the following two European institutions. 

HDK-Valand – Academy of Art and Design at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden conducts education and practice-based research in Design, Film, Photography, Fine Art, Crafts and Literary Composition. In terms of film, HDK-Valand focuses on enquiry-led education and stimulates critical thinking through image-making practices. The programme does not follow the technically-driven divide between departments, based on vocational crafts, but instead focuses on film language and practice as tools of practice-based research. They develop pedagogical formats which correspond to the growing level of technical expertise of incoming students and their use of new image-making technology and social media, coupled with the simultaneous lack of critical engagement with images as carriers of ideological, political and social stereotypes.

Jyoti Mistry, a professor at HDK-Valand, works with film as a research tool and mode of artistic practice. Author of critically acclaimed films in multiple genres and installation works. You can read more about Jyoti here. 

Łódź Film School in Łódź, Poland has 75 years of experience training filmmakers-practitioners in film directing, cinematography, editing and screenwriting. Traditionally focused on classic narrative cinema and the filmmaker-author model, the Łódź Film School has in recent years subjected its tradition to critical reflection and is actively seeking new paths for artistic film education that correspond to contemporary aesthetic, technological and ideological changes. In this regard, they also bring determination and motivation to the project to work out answers to the questions posed by the project may significantly affect the school’s future.

Kuba Mikurda is a filmmaker, film scholar, academic teacher, Head of the Institute of Art Studies and the Essay Film Studio at the Łódź Film School. He has worked as a film critic, journalist and publisher. You can read more about Kuba here. 

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FilmED is funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or Erasmus+. 
Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

Year

2024