TWO important initiatives are set to transform the way that people are educated about film with Scots leading the way.
The Film Education Journal – the world’s only journal dedicated to exploring film education – will be launched on Wednesday, and from then onwards it will be published twice a year.
The journal will be published by University College London’s Institute of Education Press, in association with the British Film Institute and Creative Scotland.
It will be published online, and will be free to read.
The journal will be launched at the Scottish International Film Education Conference, the second initiative. In this inaugural year of the conference, guests from all over the world will attend to share their perspectives on film education. Key among these will be the celebrated Burkinabe filmmaker Gaston Kabore, who runs the Imagine Film Institute in Burkina Faso. The event will also feature a presentation from Scottish primary school teachers, from Granton Primary School in Edinburgh, who will be sharing some of the films they have made with children in the classroom over the past three years.
Founder of both initiatives is Jamie Chambers, a Scottish filmmaker, film educator and academic who emphasises that the journal’s development was funded by Creative Scotland.
He said: “One of the most important things about the Film Education Journal for me, is that – whilst it is peer reviewed, which means that for every piece we publish, we will look for other film educators who have experience and expertise in the area the contributor is writing in, to review it for us.
“Anyone involved in film education can write in it – whether they’re a teacher, a filmmaker or an academic.
“I think it’s fitting that an international film education initiative like this is emerging from Scotland. For a small country, Scotland has an energetic and passionate film education sector, as you can see in projects like Centre for the Moving Image’s Understanding Cinema.
“For me, the Film Education Journal expresses Scotland’s both cultural ambition but also it’s internationalism.
“At the Scottish International Film Education Conference, we’re inviting perspectives on film education from across Europe and further afield. Our guest of honour is the brilliant Burkinabe filmmaker Gaston Kabore from Burkina Faso, who founded the Imagine Film School in Ouagadougou.
“Gaston is going to be present at our afternoon event at the conference, which is a case study of the filmmaking work that two brilliant primary teachers from Granton Primary School in Edinburgh have been doing in their classrooms over the past three years through the Understanding Cinema project.
“I love that sense that, in this way, we are bringing together global perspectives on film education that otherwise would not have met each other. A Scotland that’s in conversation with the cultural expertise of Burkina Faso, of Denmark, of Austria – that’s exactly the sort of Scotland that I personally want to live in.
“We’re also interested in challenging the fact that our perspectives on film education here in Scotland and the UK tend to be very European.
“We want to disrupt that Eurocentrism and look at what is happening in film education in the incredible film cultures of West Africa, where Gaston is based, but also in Iran, Central America, Palestine and beyond.”
Tickets for the conference can be obtained on Eventbrite.
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