Another example of the importance of film is the fact that it incorporates so many of the major pre-existing art forms. Music, theatre, photography, painting, design, writing, and performance. Film demands the same level of quality in these areas as would be expected from each of the separate art forms individually. In my opinion, the cinematography of Vittorio Storaro is as praiseworthy as the photography of Nick Ut or David Bailey; the screenwriting of Paul Schrader or Aaron Sorkin is as skilled as the writing in the novels of Paul Auster or Kurt Vonnegut. The finest screen performances of Robert DeNiro are comparable with those in the theatre of Laurence Olivier or Michael Redgrave. Yet film has an additional task: for a film to be really great it must not only excel in the individual areas, but they must be synthesised into a cohesive whole. Film is a new visual and audio language and its greatest unique contribution is the editing process, where so much of the meaning emerges. This is also what makes film more than the sum of its parts, not just a greatest hits compilation of things we’ve seen before.

If the above is all true then it’s fair to say that film is an important area to study. If so why is it so poorly regarded in the UK educational system? The language of film is everywhere. TV, advertisements, home movies, cinema, in screens on buses, in screens on the underground. Rather than the industrialised position of the past, the technology has become available to nearly everyone. These days we have the capacity to make a film on our mobile phone, yet film is still rarely taught in school. You might find an English teacher using Polanski’s film adaptation of Macbeth because it’s more fun for kids than reading Shakespeare. However, it’s less likely that said teacher will explore the use of light, sound design, music, or mise en scene to evoke emotions, character, and thematic qualities. More likely all analysis will be drawn back to the original text. It’s a missed opportunity because the film isn’t just the text captured on a camera, it’s an entirely new artistic interpretation of the material. Sadly the image of film education in the UK remains that rather outdated idea of a lightweight and disposable subject.

There is some hope. Don Boyd was quoted in an article in the Guardian recently as saying ‘Teaching film should be as important as teaching literature, languages, history, economics and science.’ He’s right, and his hope that our society might evolve their view of film as a ‘worthy’ topic of study is a promising one. Similarly Cary Bazalgette wrote another Guardian article about the difficulties of establishing the study of films in school. As an employee at the BFI, and being involved in the UK Film Council’s 21^st Century Literacy Strategy, she knows better than many the challenges of communicating this to the government and working it into the curriculum. Though she does cite some hopeful signs of film education transforming at primary school level.

Part of the problem to be overcome is fear. Fear of allowing people to teach film in a way that links with the ways actual filmmakers approach film. It’s as if the subject is too lightweight to offer enough material in its own right and so it draws on other subjects in some misguided desire to legitimise itself. This is not to say that teaching theory or connections to separate areas of study is wrong, far from it. However, the subject would benefit from appropriate links back to the intentions (conscious or unconscious), and the critical thinking that filmmakers actively engage in. Perhaps then the subject can be more academically focused on film itself, and offer more insights into the practical realities of filmmaking.