Practice-oriented Film Education and Its Institutions: Values, Methods, Transferable Models

Funding:

• GRF (RGC Ref No.340612)
  HK $309,266

Introduction

• Although practice-based film education has a crucial impact on the values and practices of filmmakers and thus on the communities and industries in which they work, film schools—be they conservatoire-style institutions or innovations on/departures from that model—have received virtually no attention from film scholars. This project sought to rectify this situation. The focus was on departures from the conservatoire-style model and on the opportunities that globalization and new technologies have afforded parts of the world traditionally thought of as “small” or peripheral. Attention was paid to the reasons for seeing capacity building in the area of film and moving images as crucial in the context of a commitment to the building of sustainable communities. Attention was given to practice-based initiatives aimed at children and young people, and at communities considered to be variously “at risk,” for reasons having to do with their status as minorities, or with the effects of war and disease. The focus was on talent development on a Global South/Global North basis, more specifically on partnerships involving organizations/institutions in Denmark and in Tanzania/Zanzibar, Uganda, Mali, and Burkina Faso.