Artistic and Communicative System in Cinema

The main feature of modern screen culture is the transformation of all links in the chain from the author and the work of art to the viewer. Some technical innovations affect the process of filming, showing films and distributing copies. We consider three major shifts in the artistic and communicative system of cinema. Firstly, it is a transition from the author (film director) to cinematic thought. Today, the concept of imagination comes first. There are also almost limitless possibilities for visualizing imaginary worlds, such as George Lucas’ Star Wars. Secondly, it is the transition from film to cinematic reality. Moreover, this is the part of media reality that surrounds us everywhere in the modern world. Thirdly, this is a shift that affects the viewer, and this allows us to talk about the literacy of the film as universal literacy. Today, most of the data that we work with daily is visual data. The ability to work and live in a constant stream of visual, as well as to develop their own films determines the success of communication between modern people in society. Keywords: author; cinemagoer; cinematic reality; cinematic thought; film literacy

Film Literacy, Visual Culture, and Film Language

This chapter, in the age when we experience the supremacy of the visual dominance, sustains the assumption that political power has infiltrated the lives of the individual as a subject in visual representations, and that films, which can be a medium where the individual may oppose the domination against the struggle for power, produce both hegemonic discourses and counter rhetoric. Based on this assumption, it aims to explain the content required for film literacy in general terms. For this purpose, the concept of media literacy covering the mass media and the historical development process are summarized, followed by a brief overview of the history of film and the scope of film literacy. Then cinematographic image and film analysis methods are explained, and finally, the results of the content in the context of film literacy are evaluated and suggestions are offered.

Teaching cultural literacies with films: Using the online platform Education on Screen in secondary school classrooms

This case study presents the Estonian open access online platform Education on Screen. So far, the platform features two educational projects: Literature on Screen and History on Screen. Both projects are aimed at secondary school students and are balanced between a thorough treatment of a single film and a universal framework for discussing the topics of film adaptation of literary texts and the mediated construction of historical memory. The focus is thus both on film literacy and on film as a means for developing cultural literacies. The projects combine accessibly written theoretical discussions from the perspective of cultural semiotics, excerpts from films, materials relating to their production and reception, analytical tasks, and assignments for implementing individual creativity in multimodal forms. Finally, this paper includes some conclusions drawn from testing the platform with 230 students during 2017/18.

Education, Pedagogy and Literacies: Challenges and Horizons of Film Literacy

The contemporary society has given rise to the profound need to introduce in the fields of pedagogy and didactics the work with literacies and the transmutation capacity of the teacher as a new actor in these themes, facing them as challenges that allow a more adequate formation in contemporaneity. Our aim is to reflect on the potential of teaching emerging literacies, based on studies on education and literacy, in order to update teachers for the 21st century, that is, with new skills that are now needed to deal with a new public, an information society increasingly full of data, platforms and languages. Between the most relevant literacies we find the film literacy that has a transversal, interdisciplinary and multicultural nature, as well as a double requirement: the knowledge of its identity as an autonomous matter of study and its teaching, allowing the transmission of semiotic instruments and tools, adaptable to different audiences and characteristics. Film literacy requires an axial place in Higher Education, along with other Literacies, in order to allow the acquisition of an adequate semiotic response to the ever more complex and omnipresent universe of information.