PAST EVENTS - CMIR Talk - Duncan Petrie
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On 3rd February 2014, Professor Duncan Petrie of York University, came to Bower Ashtton Campus to give a CMIR talk on the subject of the construction of FIlm training in the UK
CMIR seminar series
The History of Film Schools and Current Challenges in the Formation of Moving Image Professionals
Professor Duncan Petrie
(Department of Theatre, Film and Television; University of York)
In this talk I will present some of the major findings from my recent research on the history of film schools and the development of moving image education in the UK, continental Europe and the United States. I will also consider what relevance such a history might have for the formation of film and television practitioners today.
The current context has for more than a decade been dominated by a policy agenda, presided over by Creative Skillset, prioritising an industrial imperative of practical skills training and vocational relevance. Yet in the past film schools have operated in relation to very different kinds of understandings and aspirations in which the cultivation of creative and artistic expression to the building of vibrant national cinemas have been highly significant.
Moreover, despite widely divergent institutional arrangements, industrial needs and pedagogic emphases, the most successful and dynamic periods of film school history – on both sides of the Atlantic - have been those characterised by a strong interconnection between ideas and techniques, art and craft, theory and practice. In other words, moving image education and the formation of new practitioners has thrived at moments when institutions were guided by a range of needs and considerations that necessarily included the intellectual and the cultural as well as the industrial and the practical. The present narrow and instrumental training agenda is notably impoverished by comparison. And while this in part reflects the wider industrial/vocational imperative increasingly guiding higher education, it also reveals an almost wilful ignorance of history on the part of policy makers and the lessons that the past can offer the present and future. This is the core problem that my research attempts to address and challenge.
This work will be published in May in the book Educating Film-makers: Past, Present, Future, co-written with Rod Stoneman, head of the Huston School of Film and Digital Media at NUI, Galway.
CMIR seminar series
The History of Film Schools and Current Challenges in the Formation of Moving Image Professionals
Professor Duncan Petrie
(Department of Theatre, Film and Television; University of York)
In this talk I will present some of the major findings from my recent research on the history of film schools and the development of moving image education in the UK, continental Europe and the United States. I will also consider what relevance such a history might have for the formation of film and television practitioners today.
The current context has for more than a decade been dominated by a policy agenda, presided over by Creative Skillset, prioritising an industrial imperative of practical skills training and vocational relevance. Yet in the past film schools have operated in relation to very different kinds of understandings and aspirations in which the cultivation of creative and artistic expression to the building of vibrant national cinemas have been highly significant.
Moreover, despite widely divergent institutional arrangements, industrial needs and pedagogic emphases, the most successful and dynamic periods of film school history – on both sides of the Atlantic - have been those characterised by a strong interconnection between ideas and techniques, art and craft, theory and practice. In other words, moving image education and the formation of new practitioners has thrived at moments when institutions were guided by a range of needs and considerations that necessarily included the intellectual and the cultural as well as the industrial and the practical. The present narrow and instrumental training agenda is notably impoverished by comparison. And while this in part reflects the wider industrial/vocational imperative increasingly guiding higher education, it also reveals an almost wilful ignorance of history on the part of policy makers and the lessons that the past can offer the present and future. This is the core problem that my research attempts to address and challenge.
This work will be published in May in the book Educating Film-makers: Past, Present, Future, co-written with Rod Stoneman, head of the Huston School of Film and Digital Media at NUI, Galway.
During the September 2013 Encounters Festival , Centre for Moving Image Research brought Roberto Schaefer ASC AIC to Watershed Media Centre in Bristol for a retrospective of the films on which he has been Director of Photography. Click for playback.
The Look, From Capture to Display - Digital Cinema Aesthetics and Workflows was a one-day symposium that discussed the effect of digital technology on cinema production. The symposium featured a number of speakers of varying disciplines, including academics (Professors Duncan Petrie & Sean Cubbit) and industry professionals (Ben Smithard BSC and Geoff Boyle FKBS). Apr 2011
Please go to this URL to access videos from that symposium:
http://www.visualfields.co.uk/KTThelook.htm
Please go to this URL to access videos from that symposium:
http://www.visualfields.co.uk/KTThelook.htm