Vom Kino Lernen

This was the title of the 14th International Bremen Film Conference, which I attended on Friday and Saturday. I went because I was invited to give a talk about studying film as part of literacy, and also to present a screening of 10 of the short films published by the BFI in their "shorts" series of DVDs for film study in primary and lower secondary schools (for details of these see http://www.bfi.org.uk/education/teaching/). I've hardly ever been to Germany: I was in Munich once for the Prix Jeunesse, and in the winter of 1971 (I think) I drove across Germany in a blizzard to deliver items to the Czech group that later became Charter 77. More of that some other time.

The event organisers were considerate enough to get English translations done so that I and the only other Anglophone speaker could follow the other presentations: something I can't imagine a lot of conference organisers going for! The sessions all ran pretty much to schedule, there was a bar close to the conference room, with pizzas and snacks available all the time, and a comfy green room for speakers with coffee, tea and soup. What's more, in every conversation I had with more than one German person, they took care to talk English even to each other, as well as to me. That's taking politeness a good deal further than most people do (including me, I'm afraid).

Even so, linguistic divides and shortage of time at events like these mean that it's never possible to have all the conversations one would like. I particularly wanted to continue discussion with Marc Reis from the University of Vienna about why he thinks the meanings of animation films are always fixed and limited (for which reason, he said, why did we want children to study work like El Caminante or The Monk and the Fish when they could study South Park or The Simpsons, given that they are "at least closer to real life"). It was also a real shame that I couldn't ask Alain Bergala from Femis and the Sorbonne to explain just what he meant by saying that in the opening shot of Alicia Duffy's The Most Beautiful Man in the World "the camera is paedophile". After all, as someone who can say that a film is good simply because he says it is, his opinions must be worth while.

Most of the discussions were pontification-free, however, and I did get a lot of good, searching, hard questions about the work I'd described, which is always the best part of going to new places and meeting thoughtful people. It was also a real treat to hear Nathalie Bourgeois from the Cinematheque Francaise talk about their film workshops and to see Jeunes Lumieres, her compilation of 60 one-minute films by children, which I'd heard about but never seen till now. Although I'd differ from her in wanting to show children complete short films rather than clips, and to use DVDs in the classroom for close analysis rather than rely on the memory of a cinema viewing, I thought her account of starting critical work wth editing exercises, her arguments for broadening children's access to historical and world cinema, and her insistence on listening to children's responses and centering pedagogy upon these, were all spot on. I hope we'll be able to continue our dialogue online.

Some photos of my trip to Bremen are available online at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/staplegette/Bremen09#.