Not only was capitalism deemed by the “realists” to be the only game in town, but the gaze of its central phantasmatic subject, the evergreen “middle class”, was now taken to be the default subject position available as well […] The message, though implicit, is familiar: there is no alternative. 

                     (Fisher, 2020: p.18) 

Indeed, there are alternatives but the questions this paper seeks to ask, in the specific context of filmmaking education, are: 1. what are they [the alternatives]? and 2. how might we go about encouraging them, through our pedagogic practice? Few tools seem appropriate to the current climate but there are options that are important to imagine (or better still, to enact!) One of those is the notion of ‘radical hope’. For Bloch (1996), as for our purposes here, a condition of art is hope. Conversely, art is also a condition of hope. As Gannon proclaims in the closing of Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto: ‘remember the “radical” part of radical hope: our teaching and learning is informed by a root-level, fundamental commitment to hope. That commitment is borne out in our everyday practices, and in the learning spaces and interactions with students those practices shape.’ (2020: p.150).  

How are educators, themselves working in capitalist-realist spaces of education, supposed to embody such mighty principles? Are we not also cogs caught in the same neoliberal machines that our students are? In a way, yes, and this is in part what leads to the second concept explored here: developing group consciousness. For Fisher: ‘All you need is the members of the group together, and when they talk together, honestly and openly, they’ll start to see they have common problems and common interests, and also the cause of those problems is not them but something else’ (2020: p.115). Our degree courses, including the lecturers providing education, are the spaces in which the consciousness development that Fisher is describing can begin to take place.  

What’s left then, is to consider what impact such radical hope, combined with group consciousness development, might encourage in aspiring film and television makers. Indeed, how might this pedagogic approach impact the screen industries and wider cultural landscape in years to come? Hjort claims that ‘the priorities and philosophies of institutions devoted to practice-oriented film education have a decisive impact on filmmakers’ creative outlooks, working practices, and networks, shaping not only the stylistic (visual and narrative) regularities that define distinctive bodies of cinematic work but the dynamics of a given film industry’ (2013: p.34). We concur, and to that end, seek to readdress the ways in which the work educators are doing in higher education spaces, is genuinely shaping the future of our creative industries, cities and cultures.  

​​Bibliography 

​​Bloch, E., 1996. The Principle of Hope: Volume I. Cambridge: MIT Press. 

​Fisher, M., 2020. Postcapitalist Desire: The Final Lectures. London: Repeater Books. 

​Gannon, K. M., 2018. Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto , Morgantown: West Virginia University Press. 

​Hjort, M., 2013b. The Education of the Filmmaker in Africa, the Middle East and the Americas. 1st Edition ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 

Dr Chris Nunn (Assistant Professor of Film, University of Birmingham)  

Chris Nunn is the former Festival Director of Screentest: The UK’s National Student Film Festival, and has been championing aspiring filmmaking talent for nearly a decade. Passionate about filmmaking education, he has extensively tackled related issues through his PhD entitled Towards a New Film Pedagogy: Recrafting Undergraduate Filmmaking Education for an Expanded Field (2019) and plans to continue and broaden research in this area. In 2021 Chris became co-convenor of ‘Film/making Pedagogy’ a new ‘Special Interest Group’ as part of the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS). He is also currently Associate Editor of the Film Education Journal. 

Dr Lee-Jane Bennion-Nixon (Senior Lecturer in Film Practice, University of Portsmouth) 

Lee-Jane is Senior Lecturer in Film Practice at the University of Portsmouth. As a practice-based researcher, film director and producer she has made funded short films that have received international festival recognition. Her research draws from multiple disciplines including visual ethnography, cultural theory, and film studies. Lee-Jane has taught at university level for over 20 years in the area of filmmaking and enjoys teaching at the intersection of theory and practice. This dual condition is intertwined with a range of issues, including the extent to which future artists are moved to make radical work that can have a revolutionary impact on those engaging with it. Her creative work includes short drama, The End and Back Again (funded by the UK Film Council), short romantic comedy, Shopping for One (made in collaboration with Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School), and The Nightwood Society about a collective of female foodies and artists, in a predominantly male-industry in Portland, Oregon. Currently, she is finishing a short film/research project called About The Night based loosely on Ernest Hemmingway’s short story A Clean, Well-Lighted Place (1933). She is also investigating the use of creative collaboration to bring about radical change using storytelling. Lee-Jane has been the President of Women in Film and Television, Wellington, New Zealand and is currently the Education Officer for the Women’s Film & Television History Network UK/Ireland.