Teaching filmmaking as a way of being-in-the-world

The philosopher Vilém Flusser characterizes the widespread use of technical images as a cultural shift equal in importance to the introduction of the written word during the neolithic. Even though cinema, one of the leading forms of technical image, has shaped our collective perception for over a century, and has caused major ontological and epistemological breakthroughs in contemporary philosophy most universities study and teach cinema in a very narrow way; a craft for the film industry, a tool for contemporary art or a subject of historical and theoretical analysis in the field of film studies.

German Prof. Thomas Elsaesser wrote of the possibility of “living cinema as a particular way of being-in-the-world and participating in its unfolding, its becoming present”(2016), could we possibly teach such a thing through academia?

The American artist and California Institute of the Arts teacher James Benning has been doing it for a few decades, setting an example of a different path for teaching cinema. His class entitled ‘Looking and Listening’ sets the students out of the classroom, making them approach otherness and contemplate with rigorous observation for long periods of time. His teaching style is closely related to his films, made within a very personal methodology that differs greatly in form and content from the Institutional Mode of Representation. By analyzing Benning’s work as a case study for Flusser (1983, 1985) and Elsaesser (2016) theories we could trace a path towards a different pedagogical approach to filmmaking, one of deeper understanding and insight that lead us into ground we have not previously covered.