Concordia to enlarge film school
Concordia will be enlarging the capacity of its film school to meet demand for skilled technicians in the industry. But so much of that demand here depends on tax breaks for producers that can change as governments rise and fall and the economy prospers or withers. And educating people to be film editors as the environment collapses may look like insanity in retrospect – if we even get to have a retrospect.
Phil M 14:48 on 2022-08-15 Permalink
Seriously? No more movies because climate change? I can’t deal with this site anymore.
DeWolf 15:35 on 2022-08-15 Permalink
I have to admit, this also struck me as a rather millenarian way of looking at things.
Kate 16:48 on 2022-08-15 Permalink
Explain how you characterize millenarian, DeWolf?
DeWolf 18:09 on 2022-08-15 Permalink
In the sense of apocalyptic, but I may not have used the word accurately, because millenarian usually involves a “repent and ye shall be saved” aspect.
Kate 18:59 on 2022-08-15 Permalink
Maybe it was a silly impulse to write what I did, but the environmental situation is so bad that if I were younger I’d feel compelled to go into a field of study connected with it, even if it weren’t my personal passion. It would feel incredibly decadent and self‑indulgent at this point to study film theory while the world burns.
Blork 19:04 on 2022-08-15 Permalink
I read it as snark.
Spi 20:38 on 2022-08-15 Permalink
Kate it’s never too late for you to dedicate the rest of your life to saving the environment.
MarcG 20:52 on 2022-08-15 Permalink
Pretty much everything that humans do is a useless wank on this sinking ship. At least the film industry is taking Covid seriously? https://twitter.com/DrKateTO/status/1559142174352199683
Louis P 21:06 on 2022-08-15 Permalink
(Full disclosure: I’m a graduate of the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema and also occasionally teach there.) That’s not an entirely irrational take on the enlargement of the film school. But if you want to seize the attention of citizens living in a media-saturated environment in order to raise awareness and educate, you better have people who have mastered editing, cinematography and storytelling on your payroll. I should also add that film schools have really changed over the last few decades. The study of the great works and great auteurs of film history is now peripheral to what’s being taught. Students are introduced to a wide range of audiovisual productions, including documentary, essay films, and all sorts of contents tailored for various online platforms. Contemporary film theory (which, as an historian, I’m not an especially big fan…) also engages with essential political issues, such as identity, representation, and power relations. In other words, it’s not just about distracting the populace.
nau 21:50 on 2022-08-15 Permalink
Here the only real problem with the framing is that it wouldn’t be false to end many posts with a variation on “but what does this really matter in relation to how we’re degrading the environment”, so it’s perhaps a bit unfair to burden only this particular topic with that unfortunate reality.
Blork 22:17 on 2022-08-15 Permalink
Following up on Louis P’s excellent comment above, what jumped out for me was the idea of Concordia’s FFA being turned into a technical school. You don’t need a BFA to do “skilled labour.” That’s what technical schools like Mel’s are for (where you can get that training a lot faster and more directly).
Maybe I’m old fashioned, but when I was going through the BFA program at Concordia (photography), the idea that we were being “trained” for technical or commercial work just wasn’t there. The focus was on the “fine arts” aspects, which included a lot of agonizing over history and theory and interpretation and all that.
The expectation was that a few of us would go into journalism or documentary photography, fewer still would spend the rest of their lives living off arts grants and teaching (these would be considered the most successful, purely speaking), and the rest would dodder off into various jobs where a certain amount of visual literacy was an advantage. Going into commercial photography was seen as the ultimate sellout, and a waste of a good fine arts degree.
DisgruntledGoat 02:38 on 2022-08-16 Permalink
Best thing we can do for our carbon footprint is not have kids, Kate.
Kate 08:33 on 2022-08-16 Permalink
No kids here, Goat. No kids, no car, public transit all my life. I know there are still things I could do, like going vegan, but I’ve tried being vegetarian and found it ultimately depressing.
Interesting discussion, especially the arbitrary distinction between being trained in fine arts as self‑expression at university vs. being taught technique in order to find work as a skilled technician at CEGEP.
Louis P: How many of the graduates go into PR work where they put their skills to use selling whatever it is their company or their customer is selling? Yes, the environmental movement (is that what it is?) needs communicators. Most communicators are not working in that area. They can’t afford to. They get work communicating what the customer wants to communicate. We can’t all live doing the right thing by our consciences.
denpanosekai 10:24 on 2022-08-16 Permalink
If you want to freak out about something, how about private jets. You could dedicate your whole life to the environment and it would still be offset by some dude flying 30 minutes from A to B by himself.
dhomas 11:48 on 2022-08-16 Permalink
I was reading up on Drake doing just that:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/29/drake-defends-short-private-jet-flights
He flies, in a private jet (“Air Drake”), from Toronto to Hamilton (!!!). That’s like an hour drive. He produces more carbon emissions in 15 minutes than most of us produce in a whole year. What a douche. And he’s not alone. We should all do our best to reduce our effects on the environment, but part of that should be to get our governments to create regulations to make such wasteful and harmful forms of travel illegal.
EmilyG 12:41 on 2022-08-16 Permalink
There’s currently a petition against private jets: https://you.leadnow.ca/petitions/ban-private-jets-in-canada
Louis P 15:45 on 2022-08-16 Permalink
I don’t have any figures about grad placement. But I can testify to the fact that many if not most of the film students that I’m teaching to are more passionate about issues like social justice and global warming than Scorsese, Coppola or Tarantino… But I’m not naive: I know that most of them will never get the opportunity to use their skills to fight for these essential causes. Still, there’s a lot of emphasis on analysis, critical thinking, and even activism in university film programs, which are not the same as tech schools. When these programs work as they should, they produce more than competent technicians: they produce enlightened citizens equipped to tackle the big issues.