Screen Education: From Film Appreciation to Media Studies PDF
Preview Screen Education: From Film Appreciation to Media Studies
screen education T E R R from film appreciation to media studies Y B TERRY BOLAS O L A S Screen education – from film appreciation to media studies provides Terry Bolas was active in the not only the first but also the definitive history of the development of Society for Education in Film and the study of film and television in Britain through most of the twentieth Television during the 1960s and century. In particular, when drawing on European intellectual thinking early 1970s. For some of that fs during the 1970s, its theorists influenced significantly the work of time he was SEFT’s Secretary and ro educators in North America and Australasia. one of the two founder editors of mc The book also offers a robust critique of some of the conventional its journal Screen. During part of fir ‘wisdoms’ of this complex history. In particular it focuses on the that period he also worked as a lme transitional period of screen education during which film appreciation teacher advisor in the Education evolved into the study of all media forms. Department of the British Film a e Institute under Paddy Whannel. p Ubenefonr tlousnta bteulyt, bmy uac cho omf bthinea dtioocnu omf egnatinarinyg e avicdceenscse t ofo rp ethrisso hniaslt oarryc hhiaves s Dr Bolas has subsequently prn worked in secondary, higher e and of interviewing many of the key personnel of the period Dr Bolas hhaissto pryie.ced together a fascinating account of this often turbulent abnedg aand dulot cetdouracla rteiosne.a Irnc h2 0in0t2o hthee cia e unexplored history of the UK film tio The book opens in 1930, just after the introduction of sound cinema, and media education movement d n examines the succeeding six decades and closes at a key moment from its beginnings in the 1930s. in the 1990s when a major new area of academic enquiry – Media tu o Studies – had become firmly established at secondary, further and higher education levels in most of the UK. At the primary level interest mc was simultaneously developing in a broader curriculum engagement e with Media Education. da ia t s i ‘Terry Bolas tells the story of British film study with a rich comprehensive tuo taste for detail matched by a sharp interpretive perspective that offers d cogent, telling insights about this important modern discipline of popular ien culture investigation.’ s Dana Polan, Professor of Cinema Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University ‘In this exemplary intellectual history, Terry Bolas has used meticulous primary research to tell the story of how film studies emerged in the UK. A complex mix of individuals, institutions and ideas, the book traces the interlocking but often clashing contexts that produced the 1970s Screen.’ Laura Mulvey, Professor of Film and Media Studies at Birkbeck, University of London ISBN 978-1-84150-237-3 0 0 9 781841 502373 Foreword by Toby Miller intellect / www.intellectbooks.com Screen education from film appreciation to media studies Screen education from film appreciation to media studies Terry Bolas (cid:94)(cid:99)(cid:105)(cid:90)(cid:97)(cid:97)(cid:90)(cid:88)(cid:105)(cid:1)(cid:55)(cid:103)(cid:94)(cid:104)(cid:105)(cid:100)(cid:97)(cid:33)(cid:21)(cid:74)(cid:64)(cid:21)(cid:16)(cid:1)(cid:56)(cid:93)(cid:94)(cid:88)(cid:86)(cid:92)(cid:100)(cid:33)(cid:21)(cid:74)(cid:72)(cid:54) For Marcos Marcou First published in the UK in 2009 by Intellect Books, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK First published in the USA in 2009 by Intellect Books, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA Copyright © 2009 Intellect Ltd All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Cover Design: Holly Rose Copy Editor: Holly Spradling Typesetting: Mac Style, Beverley, East Yorkshire ISBN 978-1-84150-237-3 EISBN 978-1-84150-286-1 Printed and bound by Gutenberg Press, Malta. Contents Acknowledgements vii Foreword xi Prologue 1 1 Cinema under Scrutiny 11 2 Film Appreciation 37 3 Searching for Room at the Top 69 4 Discrimination and Popular Culture 99 5 Film in Education – The Back of Beyond 131 6 The University in Old Compton Street 163 7 The Felt Intervention of Screen 197 8 Screen Saviours 227 9 SEFT Limited 259 10 A Moral Panic Averted 293 11 Comedia delves arbitrarily 319 Epilogue 347 Screen education: a timeline 1930–1993 357 Expansion of media studies – the statistics 371 Bibliography 377 Index 401 Acknowledgements This book has greatly outgrown the original venture that initiated it: a dissertation I wrote as part of an MA in Visual Cultures awarded in 2003. The dissertation, ‘Projecting Screen’, considered the journal Screen during the early and mid 1970s. References from that source may be found here in Chapters 7 and 8. Encouraged by the potential I had discovered for further investigations, I then ventured to attempt PhD research into the history of the evolution of media education, specifically as manifested in the Society for Education in Film and Television. It became apparent that the scale of my research was such that the resultant writing-up far exceeded the required amount for doctoral award. Consequently five chapters of the text that now makes up this book were extracted and modified in order to form the basis of that PhD thesis ‘The Academic Accession of the Abject Art’ which was awarded in 2007. My thanks go to my external examiners, Christine Geraghty and Ed Buscombe, whose helpful interrogation of that text led to subsequent modifications from which this version has benefited. There was one particularly relevant project which happily coincided with the period of my investigations. This was the History of the British Film Institute Research Project under Senior Research Fellow Geoffrey Nowell-Smith funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council at Queen Mary University of London. I am particularly grateful to Dr Christophe Dupin, Research Assistant of the Project, for his considerable assistance in regularly drawing to my attention archive material relevant to my research, as and when he happened upon it during his investigations. There were other occasions when, having reported to Dr Dupin that I had failed in my researches to track down a specific item, he had the happy knack of unearthing it somewhere among the BFI’s scattered storage arrangements. Professor Nowell-Smith established links with other researchers whose investigations paralleled or overlapped with the BFI Project. Through the occasional meetings that he organised I was able to make contact with others in this specialist group who were then prepared to direct me to relevant material they had uncovered. While the BFI was the focus for the investigations of the researchers at Queen Mary, my interest was in the parallel and interrelated history of the teachers’ organisation: the viii | Screen education: from film appreciation to media studies Society of Film Teachers which subsequently changed its name to the Society for Education in Film and Television (SEFT). This Society existed for some four decades from its inception in 1950 during which period it became particularly influential in the development of the serious study of film and media. The advantage of my choosing to review it from the perspective of the early twenty first century was that many of the key players of those decades were readily contactable. This was crucially important because when a voluntary body ceases to exist its documentation – other than its formal publications - may disappear without trace. Two relevant archives do exist which provided me with a great deal of background information. There is the SEFT Archive housed in the National Arts Education Archive at Bretton Hall, Wakefield and the Screen Archive in the University of Glasgow. The SEFT Archive contains material which was retrieved from the SEFT offices during internal reorganisation at the end of the 1970s; the Screen Archive consists of the material that went to Glasgow when the John Logie Baird Centre took over the editing of Screen in 1989. In neither case was there the opportunity for scrutiny and selection of material at the time of its removal. I owe a considerable debt of gratitude to Annette Kuhn and John Caughie of the University of Glasgow who, as Editors of Screen, responded so positively to my requests for access to the Archive. In order for me to view the Screen material it was necessary for preliminary sorting work to be undertaken before my arrival, since the archive boxes had remained stored and uninspected for some fifteen years. During my researches I was fortunate to have the help and assistance of Emily Munro, the Screen editorial officer during 2005/6. At the National Arts Education Archive my thanks go to the curator Leonard Bartle who was always on hand with help and information during my several visits there. My most regular source of material was the British Film Institute’s National Library and the Institute’s Special Collections. My thanks go to all the reading room staff and in particular to Sean Delan ey upon whose skills in finding and retrieving antique documents from the Stephen Street basement I occasionally needed to call. My thanks also go to Janet Moat Head of Special Collections both for the access she ensured to materials and for her personal interest in and support of my project. Other archives contributed to the wider picture I sought to create. Sarah Aitchison at the London University Institute of Education, Mary Wood of Birkbeck College University of London and Doreen Dean of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts are all due my thanks for their help. Many other individuals have contributed at the various stages through which this enterprise has progressed, some of them very substantially. It was particularly encouraging that, as news of my project trickled out through the media education world, people came forward ready to assist both with their recollections and with the offer of access to their personal archives. Special mention must be made of the materials accumulated by Paddy Whannel during his period at the BFI which Professor Garry Whannel has retained and to which I was given access. I was also very fortunate in having sight of materials Acknowledgements | ix retained by George Foster, who remained a key voluntary officer during the final two decades of SEFT’s existence. Since the documentary record was to prove to be incomplete, I had to look elsewhere to discover the means to reconstruct the continuity of this account. Over a period of five years I interviewed many of those who had participated in this history. The first wave of interviewees were assisting in the writing of my MA dissertation; subsequent interviewees were part of my doctorate research and then of this book. Some were prepared to indulge my request for a second follow-up interview. My grateful thanks go to all of them. Those who made themselves available for face-to-face interview and in numerous instances also provided archive materials were: Manuel Alvarado, Charles Barr, Cary Bazalgette, Susan Bennett, Andrew Bethell, David Buckingham, Ed Buscombe, Richard Collins, Barry Curtis, Rosalind Delmar, James Donald, John Ellis, Bob Ferguson, George Foster, Christine Geraghty, Jenny Grahame, Brian Groombridge, Stuart Hall, the late Gillian Hartnoll, Andrew Higson, Jim Hillier, Fred Jarvis, Alan Lovell, Douglas Lowndes, David Lusted, Colin MacCabe, Colin McArthur, Len Masterman, Mandy Merck, Chris Mottershead, Laura Mulvey, Mark Nash, Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Claire Pajaczkowska, Victor Perkins, David Rodowick, Sir Roy Shaw, Philip Simpson, Roy Stafford, Ginette Vincendeau, Ian Wall, Paul Willemen, Christopher Williams, Tana Wollen, Mary Wood. I was able to put questions by telephone or e-mail to: Jim Cook, Sean Cubitt, Leslie Heywood, Val Hill, Sam Rohdie, Michael Simons. Two institutions were sufficiently convinced of the value of my project to award me studentships to support my research: first the Surrey Institute of Art and Design, University College and subsequently Middlesex University. There were key figures within those institutions whose support deserves particular mention: Manuel Alvarado at the Surrey Institute and Barry Curtis, Adrian Rifkin and Patrick Phillips at Middlesex University. They all believed in the value of my project and contributed to my progress and formal supervision. When I began to consider publication I had a double bonus in that not only was Intellect prepared to pub lish my work but I was able to maintain my contact with Manuel Alvarado who is an Associate Publisher with Intellect and was therefore my Editor for Screen education: from film appreciation to media studies. My grateful thanks go to Manuel not only for his meticulous attention to detail but also for his selective prompting as to ways in which my account might be developed and enhanced. Professor Toby Miller has generously provided a stimulating Foreword to this book. He places into the context of today’s Academy the energy and achievement of individuals within SEFT and BFI during the later decades of the last century. He is able to acknowledge from an international perspective how influential they were. Finally my thanks to the British Film Institute for allowing the reproduction of three ‘historic’ photographs: film-making at an early BFI Summer School, the Dean Street headquarters and the 1971 Young Screen reception. Terry Bolas November 2008
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