| | | | | | side of things suggested by the charter. They function as "academics" only in the sense that teaching is now their main occupation. | | | | | | | | | For someone like Mitchell W. Block, even that is not good enough. In his view, these instructors do not pass muster. If schools fail to effectively prepare students for actual careers in the field, he says, it is because "too little time is spent by faculty too underqualified in discussing an industry they are too removed from to understand." 28 The argument here is that these people are third stringers, that they are not up-to-date, that only top-notch professionals know the state of the art and, thus, they alone should be teaching students. Block is not being totally honest here, for he knows the difficulty (almost impossibility) of getting big-name professionals to commit themselves for fifteen weeks for what amounts to them as very little money. Furthermore, as evidenced in film schools that do manage to hire professionals from time to time, brilliance in the field does not necessarily translate into teaching competence. In complete disagreement with Block, I would say that if these semi-professionals can be faulted at all, it is because they do not promote vigorously enough alternatives to conventional filmmaking. Although their own taste is often refreshingly eclectic, in the end they usually come round and abide by Hollywood's norms. Far from offering a broader, manifold approach to filmmaking from a scholarly perspective, knowledge in their hands remains essentially defined by industry practice. As a result, the ideological imperative at the core of the American cinema remains largely unexamined. When all is said and done, there are no substantial differences between the two groups that teach production. | | | | | | | | | What is being taught in film school? What is the philosophy behind the teaching? What is its goal? As each school's curriculum is organized somewhat differently, the best way an aspiring filmmaker has to judge what a program actually emphasizes is to take a look at its student films. Not the exceptional films that shine through once in a while in each department but the run-of-the-mill films: What stories do they tell? How do they tell them? What techniques are they using, etc.? Thirty years ago, when both faculty and students believed they could change the system, the films tended to be daring in their subject matter, their filmic approach, their editing style, and the like. Remember: students at that time expected their | | | | |
