Film Education’s founder and director of education Ian Wall was recently in Malta. Paula Fleri-Soler heard how he is hoping to engage interest for a similar project in Maltese schools.

Film Education UK came about in 1984. Cinema attendances in the UK had reached their lowest level, and a ‘British Film Year’ was organised to celebrate film and cinema.

Ian Wall explains that “whenever you have a ‘year’ of something, you have to have an education programme”.

Wall was still a teacher at the time and he had been writing study materials for various film distributors to send to schools, so the organisers of British Film Year called.

Some teachers were trained on how to use film to teach various subjects.

“At the end of the year the phone rang and it was (British film producer) David Puttnam, who basically said ‘I want you in my office tomorrow because this has to carry on. Be there with a budget.’

It took about six months to get the money together, and that’s how Film Education was born.

Film Education is funded solely by the UK film industry, which sees it as audience development for the future. In essence it’s learning about film and learning through film; it’s developing study of film and also developing how film can be used across a range of subjects.

“We started running courses for history teachers, who study their source material – say a document or a painting from a particular period,” says Wall.

“So we asked them what questions they ask about that material and we discovered they are the same questions we ask about film: what values are implicit in this source? How is it representing what happened and who is it written for? And it’s the same with literature and so on.”

Wall goes on to say that what they are trying to do is to get ‘creative criticism’ going. Students can look at film clips, manipulate them and analyse them, so if they are given a video camera to film something, they are informed by their critical abilities.

“So we have what we call the three Cs. We’ve got the critical and the creative; you bring those together and you widen children and young people’s experience of film thereby creating a film culture.”

The charity produces a wealth of source materials, including ‘teaching trailers’ for both primary and secondary students, which enable students to analyse the trailer format, explore different elements of trailers and evaluate concepts such as audience and genre.

There are also a number of educational and interactive CDs based on popular films, consisting of clips and interview footage and ideas and projects for the students to work on.

“In the end it all boils down to what stories are being told, how they are being told, what the stories are representing, what the values of the stories are. At the same time, when you go into other subjects beyond film study you ask, how can this benefit this subject and the questions that they ask within that subject?”

It’s not just Hollywood blockbusters that Film Education tackles.

Wall explains that some blockbusters tell a story and tell it really well, but with Film Education, students are encouraged to look at other types of films, because they have been given the critical tools and understanding to start dealing with something different, including black-and-white films and subtitled ones.

“We used to say we won’t start introducing kids to subtitled movies until they’re about 14 or 15,” Wall reminisces.

“But we’ve changed that opinion. Take The Story of the Weeping Camel, a film for nine- and 10-year-olds. It’s about a baby camel whose mother rejects him and the baby camel cries... and you see these little primary school kids in floods of tears... at a Mongolian film with subtitles. Yes, there is that writing at the bottom, which they can or can’t read, but film really is a universal language, hackneyed thought that phrase may be, and they get it.”

Even for older children, whose prejudices against certain types of films may be ingrained, Film Education has proven that if you choose the right film, then they are hooked.

As an example, he cites the documentary Man on Wire, because it’s about a rebel breaking the rules, while films like Goodbye Lenin and The Lives of Others grip them because they are telling good stories.

For any film screened, there are sufficient educational materials available, so when the teacher goes back to the classroom there is something structured there for them to use.

Wall emphasises that Film Education is not about discovering the next Steven Spielberg – it’s about teaching kids how to appreciate a popular art form and once they develop certain analytical skills they can use them in every aspect of life.

Looking back on Film Education UK’s work over the past 25 years, Wall says he never thought they would last so long. The charity has made TV programmes for BBC and Channel 4 schools. They continue to develop CD ROMs, interactive ROMs, and keeping up with the latest technology, while carrying out their training in UK schools.

Film Education works hand in hand with teachers in the UK, and has contacts in about 90 per cent of secondary schools, and about 60 or 70 per cent of primary schools.

The work is ongoing, and when Wall gets to the UK he and his team will carry on building on what they have achieved so far and continue to develop new ideas, “and yet as soon as I get back”, he says with a sigh, “I have to sit on a panel at a conference justifying why film is important – so even after all this time, we still have work to do.”

As for what the charity and KRS Distributors are planning for Malta, Wall says discussions are still at the exploratory stage. “When I first came to Malta 18 months ago we talked to some teachers from government and private schools, and our approach was: these are our experiences and this is your curriculum – how can we fit them together?

“Charles (Pace, KRS managing director) commented that when you talk to schools and ask what they want to see, they say ‘something to make the children laugh’. So we need to start challenging kids – this is how we do it in the UK; how is it adaptable to Malta?”

KRS and Wall, together with the help of Mario Azzopardi (Directorate of Lifelong Learning) want to get that debate going, and of course, explore ways how the project can be funded over the long term. There is the hope that they can get the European Commission behind it as a project.

“So although there is nothing official as yet,” Wall says in conclusion, “Charles and Alex Pace, Mario and I have got off to a good start, and the plan is to come up with a programme that hopefully the Maltese Education authorities and head teachers will see the benefit of.

“We made a start, have some allies on the island, so it’s a matter of putting it all into practice. Which we will do...” he says.