A Filmmaking Pedagogy?

I was making my way to the Subang Jaya LRT station when I started to ponder over my pedagogical methods. Ranciere came to mind with his idea that a teacher’s role is not to transmit knowledge but rather to drive the student’s will. 

Up until this point, I was convinced that education meant some kind of knowledge transference, but then I began to think that I was standing on shaky ground. Just as we learn our mother tongue (as a child) or life lessons (as we grow older) through trial and error, it is argued that what is truly needed for us teacher is to encourage, motivate, and command a student to learn. 

The basis of Ranciere’s arguments comes from a text written by Joseph Jacotot who claimed that his Flemish-speaking students managed to learn and write in intelligible French through a bilingual version of Fenelon’s Telemaque with no other help whatsoever. What a feat this must have been on the students’ parts!

I reached the Subang Jaya LRT and realized very soon that there was no way I would be able to park in the LRT’s designated parking. There was an AEON BIG nearby and I decided to park there instead. It was one of those afternoons where heat and humidity truly came together. I secretly hoped that the weather would lead to some kind of epiphany. 

And so walking under the blazing sun towards the LRT station, I continued my thoughts. I was suddenly reminded of the fact that Lucrecia Martel once stated in an interview that to study editing, she had watched Pink Floyd: The Wall 23 times in film school as Argentina was being hit by the worst economic crisis it had ever experienced to date. 

I imagine copies of films were probably rare and they had only a few films for students to watch. Her circumstance, the ongoing crisis, the lack of funding and teachers surely are important factors to consider why she went down the autodidact’s path, but to watch a film 23 times? A resolve, a will that is her own. Her own doing.

Where does this leave us? On the one hand, you have the default position: an insistence that only masters of the craft can teach a subject like filmmaking – they know everything there is to know about filmmaking and to listen to them talk about their experience is a lesson in and of itself. 

On the other hand, Ranciere’s account of emancipated learning does seem attractive – students will learn in their own time and in their own way, cultivating techniques of learning on their own terms whilst we teachers are there to encourage them to continue, to pursue their methodology. It also emancipates the student from the shackles of “the most powerful machine of indoctrination”, to quote Yves Citton.

And finally, you have incredibly strong-willed, motivated people who would do whatever it takes to immerse themselves in film or any field of study, but like the second case, on their terms. I remember hearing these words once: “To be a filmmaker, you have to be a little stupid.” A certain naivete coupled with conviction – Ranciere’s conception of the ‘will’ perhaps?

I took the train to the last stop of the Kelana Jaya line, Putra Heights. I was to meet my students there for a classroom activity. The afternoon lull of the LRT held a certain charm over its passengers, including me. The air-conditioning in the train provided us with respite from the heat and on top of that, there was a certain calm and quietude that surrounded the train that day. It was as if all of us were slipping into an afternoon nap after a heavy lunch. Immediately, my thoughts turned to our neighbour in the north and the filmmaker Apichatpong and the way he allowed us to dream in the cinema.

I found myself in front of a food stall in the station, closed. Probably one of the many small businesses decimated by the pandemic. All these thoughts about teaching and learning have left me famished. I want to continue to pursue these thoughts but in the distance, I eye a 7-11. I told myself to set aside this business of thinking for a second and charted a path for bodily nourishment instead. Making my way towards the 7-11, my phone starts ringing. My students are here, but not all of them yet. I tell them to give me 5 minutes. Let me take a sip of 100 Plus, then we’ll get back to thinking.

By Yong Keenen, Teaching Fellow, Department of Film and Performing Arts, School of Arts, Sunway University

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