5 | Educational Film Practices
Recent Submissions
- ArticleWholeness and Nature: School Cinema and Reform PedagogyDewald, Christian (2023) , S. 1-25“Federal Educational Institutes” (Bundeserziehungsanstalten) represented the avant-garde of state school reform after WWI in Austria. How does the school cinema of the Bundeserziehungsanstalt Vienna-Breitensee inscribe itself in the reform-pedagogy complex of “wholeness” and “naturalness”? And: What does this mean for teaching practice or the pedagogical dispositif of educational films? As the author will argue, the concept of holistic education puts a wrench into the concept of an educational performance dispositif as narrowed by Frank Kessler to the space and time of educational media performance.
- ArticleIn Defense of Culture: The Vienna Urania and the Cultural FilmÖhner, Vrääth (2023) , S. 1-30In the interwar period, the Vienna Urania, one of the leading institutions of adult education in Austria, developed a model of cultural education through cinematic entertainment that built on pre-World War I ideas of the cinema reform movement about the bourgeoisification of film culture. At the center of this model was a screening practice that surrounded the cinematic text with a whole series of paratexts, whose primary goal was not enlightenment but the purification of the audience's emotional life.
- ArticleThe Raw Materials of Celluloid Film: Wartime Economy, Educational Animation, and Film’s PlasticityHaid, Jonathan (2023) , S. 1-43Based on the propagandistic educational film DIE WELTGESCHICHTE ALS KOLONIALGESCHICHTE (1926), the article explores animation techniques as a specific form of knowledge transfer and shows how these were intertwined with the material properties of celluloid. Focusing on the raw materials of celluloid film, the article further examines the eco-political circumstances of film stock production in the context of the wartime economy of World War I.
- ArticleScreening Propaganda: Film Documents of Contemporary History and Educational Practice, circa 1970Sattelmacher, Anja (2023) , S. 1-33The Institute for the Scientific Film (IWF) in Göttingen produced scientific and educational films from 1952 to 2010, including the series Film Documents of Contemporary History, containing historical footage and film portraits of postwar personalities. In 1970, a seminar at the University of Tübingen featured a lecture by Theodor Eschenburg on speeches by politicians from the Social Democratic and National Socialist parties between 1930 and 1933. The resulting film G 151-THEODOR ESCHENBURG SPRICHT is available online, but the historical footage is not. This essay examines the film’s history and the challenges of digitizing educational films containing controversial content.
- ArticleNo Instructions, Just Some Advice: Agricultural Film and the Pedagogy of Consulting in 1950s and 1960s AustriaSchätz, Joachim (2023) , S. 1-45What are the roles of film in consulting, and how do so-called ‘consulting films’ (Beratungsfilme) manage and massage the relationship between expert knowledge and its addressee? By studying the use of film in agricultural counseling in 1950s and 1960s Austria, I highlight the slippery pedagogical aspects of consultancy which have been underexplored in recent media histories of ‘consulting knowledge’.
- ArticleThe Austrian Province as Subject and Space of Action in Educational Film PracticesYazdanpanah, Marie-Noëlle (2023) , S. 1-41The article traces the relationship of – urban – centre and province focusing on measures to anchor film as a teaching tool in the 1920s and 1930s: First, the centre’s cinematic view on the periphery is examined with the example of the film LIFE IN A BURGENLAND PEASANT VILLAGE (1925); secondly, the relationship between centre and province at the level of organisations and actors is investigated (concerning the negotiation of competences between institutional centre and independent local bodies and actors and reactions to deviant practices become apparent.) The implementation of educational film should be achieved with the help of teachers. Using the Burgenland-film as well as investigating activities of regional educational film organisations and independent foundings in Austrian provinces, this article will look at processes of negotiation and institutionalisation, focusing on the scope for action and eventual subversive practices.
- ArticleThe Development of Educational Cinema for Schools in the Soviet Union in the 1930s: From the Cinefication of Schools to the Film LessonSerov, Lena (2023) , S. 1-48This article gives a comprehensive overview over the lesser-known history of the institutionalization of educational film in the Soviet Union. While Soviet cinema in general was conceived as an educator of the masses according to a communist vision, at the end of the 1920s a movement propagated the use of educational film in compulsory education and vocational training which coincided with reforms in the film industry and in education. Harnessing cinema for educational purposes in the Soviet Union had similar roots as in the West: The idea was to counter the harmful effect that according to psychologists and educators was inflicted on children by commercial cinema. Yet, there were also important differences: In the Soviet Union, the movement to bring cinema to schools was primarily a state-coordinated activity that required a large material infrastructure for distribution, rental and exhibition under the slogan of ‘cinefication of schools.’ Cinema in Soviet schools was endowed with hopes to modernize teaching by developing into a regular teaching aid. This required the participation of scientists, psychologists, pedagogues and film professionals who participated in the effective deployment of film in the classroom – turning teaching with film into genuine ‘film lessons.’
- ArticleIssue 5: Educational Film Practices. EditorialPilz, Katrin; Schätz, Joachim (2023) , S. 1-8
- ArticleEducational Film in East Germany (GDR) in 1950–1990 in Perspective of the “Grammar of Schooling”von Engelhardt, Kerrin (2023) , S. 1-41This article explores, on the one hand, the hopes that were associated with the use of educational films and investigates, on the other hand, reasons for their possible failure in East Germany (GRD). From an economic point of view, GDR pedagogues considered “films, light pictures, sound picture series, projection transparencies and television broadcasts” to be the “most rational means” for programming teaching and learning processes. But, by emphasizing this appeal, a problem as old as the debates on educational film in school appeared: the seemingly opposing position of teacher and technical teaching aid. Thus, in the history of the GDR educational film and its usage, two perspectives open up a potentially revealing field of tension: The production-side expectations published in brochures by the responsible institutions and in manuals are contrasted with the results of practical studies commissioned since the 1970s on the effectiveness of audio-visual teaching materials in the GDR. Even if the central role of the teacher was always rhetorically unquestioned, it can be assumed that the technical equipping of the classrooms in GDR’s schools can be reasonably understood as an irritation of teacher-centeredness und thus, also as an irritation of the established grammar of schooling.