Screen education : from film appreciation to media studies

434 Pages·2009·5.23 MB·English

by  Terry Bolas

screen education T
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from film appreciation to media studies Y

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Screen education – from film appreciation to media studies provides Terry Bolas was active in the
not only the first but also the definitive history of the development of Society for Education in Film and
the study of film and television in Britain through most of the twentieth Television during the 1960s and
century. In particular, when drawing on European intellectual thinking early 1970s. For some of that fs
during the 1970s, its theorists influenced significantly the work of time he was SEFT’s Secretary and ro
educators in North America and Australasia. one of the two founder editors of mc
The book also offers a robust critique of some of the conventional its journal Screen. During part of fir
‘wisdoms’ of this complex history. In particular it focuses on the that period he also worked as a lme
transitional period of screen education during which film appreciation teacher advisor in the Education

evolved into the study of all media forms. Department of the British Film a
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Institute under Paddy Whannel. p
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The book opens in 1930, just after the introduction of sound cinema, and media education movement d
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examines the succeeding six decades and closes at a key moment from its beginnings in the 1930s.
in the 1990s when a major new area of academic enquiry – Media tu
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Studies – had become firmly established at secondary, further and
higher education levels in most of the UK. At the primary level interest mc
was simultaneously developing in a broader curriculum engagement e
with Media Education. da
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‘Terry Bolas tells the story of British film study with a rich comprehensive tuo
taste for detail matched by a sharp interpretive perspective that offers d
cogent, telling insights about this important modern discipline of popular ien
culture investigation.’
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Dana Polan, Professor of Cinema Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts,

New York University
‘In this exemplary intellectual history, Terry Bolas has used meticulous
primary research to tell the story of how film studies emerged in the UK.
A complex mix of individuals, institutions and ideas, the book traces the
interlocking but often clashing contexts that produced the 1970s Screen.’
Laura Mulvey, Professor of Film and Media Studies at Birkbeck,
University of London
ISBN 978-1-84150-237-3
0 0
9 781841 502373
Foreword by Toby Miller
intellect / www.intellectbooks.com
Screen education
from film appreciation to media studies

Screen education
from film appreciation to media studies
Terry Bolas

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For Marcos Marcou

First published in the UK in 2009 by
Intellect Books, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2009 by
Intellect Books, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago,
IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2009 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without
written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover Design: Holly Rose
Copy Editor: Holly Spradling
Typesetting: Mac Style, Beverley, East Yorkshire
ISBN 978-1-84150-237-3
EISBN 978-1-84150-286-1
Printed and bound by Gutenberg Press, Malta.
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Foreword xi
Prologue 1
1 Cinema under Scrutiny 11
2 Film Appreciation 37
3 Searching for Room at the Top 69
4 Discrimination and Popular Culture 99
5 Film in Education – The Back of Beyond 131
6 The University in Old Compton Street 163

7 The Felt Intervention of Screen 197
8 Screen Saviours 227
9 SEFT Limited 259
10 A Moral Panic Averted 293
11 Comedia delves arbitrarily 319
Epilogue 347
Screen education: a timeline 1930–1993 357
Expansion of media studies – the statistics 371
Bibliography 377
Index 401

Acknowledgements
This book has greatly outgrown the original venture that initiated it: a dissertation I
wrote as part of an MA in Visual Cultures awarded in 2003. The dissertation, ‘Projecting
Screen’, considered the journal Screen during the early and mid 1970s. References from
that source may be found here in Chapters 7 and 8. Encouraged by the potential I had
discovered for further investigations, I then ventured to attempt PhD research into the
history of the evolution of media education, specifically as manifested in the Society for
Education in Film and Television. It became apparent that the scale of my research was
such that the resultant writing-up far exceeded the required amount for doctoral award.
Consequently five chapters of the text that now makes up this book were extracted and
modified in order to form the basis of that PhD thesis ‘The Academic Accession of the
Abject Art’ which was awarded in 2007. My thanks go to my external examiners,
Christine Geraghty and Ed Buscombe, whose helpful interrogation of that text led to
subsequent modifications from which this version has benefited.

There was one particularly relevant project which happily coincided with the period
of my investigations. This was the History of the British Film Institute Research Project
under Senior Research Fellow Geoffrey Nowell-Smith funded by the Arts and Humanities
Research Council at Queen Mary University of London. I am particularly grateful to Dr
Christophe Dupin, Research Assistant of the Project, for his considerable assistance in
regularly drawing to my attention archive material relevant to my research, as and when
he happened upon it during his investigations. There were other occasions when, having
reported to Dr Dupin that I had failed in my researches to track down a specific item, he
had the happy knack of unearthing it somewhere among the BFI’s scattered storage
arrangements. Professor Nowell-Smith established links with other researchers whose
investigations paralleled or overlapped with the BFI Project. Through the occasional
meetings that he organised I was able to make contact with others in this specialist group
who were then prepared to direct me to relevant material they had uncovered.
While the BFI was the focus for the investigations of the researchers at Queen Mary,
my interest was in the parallel and interrelated history of the teachers’ organisation: the
viii | Screen education: from film appreciation to media studies
Society of Film Teachers which subsequently changed its name to the Society for
Education in Film and Television (SEFT). This Society existed for some four decades
from its inception in 1950 during which period it became particularly influential in the
development of the serious study of film and media. The advantage of my choosing to
review it from the perspective of the early twenty first century was that many of the key
players of those decades were readily contactable. This was crucially important because
when a voluntary body ceases to exist its documentation – other than its formal
publications - may disappear without trace.
Two relevant archives do exist which provided me with a great deal of background
information. There is the SEFT Archive housed in the National Arts Education
Archive at Bretton Hall, Wakefield and the Screen Archive in the University of Glasgow.
The SEFT Archive contains material which was retrieved from the SEFT offices during
internal reorganisation at the end of the 1970s; the Screen Archive consists of the
material that went to Glasgow when the John Logie Baird Centre took over the editing
of Screen in 1989. In neither case was there the opportunity for scrutiny and selection
of material at the time of its removal.
I owe a considerable debt of gratitude to Annette Kuhn and John Caughie of the
University of Glasgow who, as Editors of Screen, responded so positively to my requests
for access to the Archive. In order for me to view the Screen material it was necessary
for preliminary sorting work to be undertaken before my arrival, since the archive boxes
had remained stored and uninspected for some fifteen years. During my researches I
was fortunate to have the help and assistance of Emily Munro, the Screen editorial officer
during 2005/6. At the National Arts Education Archive my thanks go to the curator
Leonard Bartle who was always on hand with help and information during my several
visits there.
My most regular source of material was the British Film Institute’s National Library
and the Institute’s Special Collections. My thanks go to all the reading room staff and

in particular to Sean Delaney upon whose skills in finding and retrieving antique
documents from the Stephen Street basement I occasionally needed to call. My thanks
also go to Janet Moat Head of Special Collections both for the access she ensured to
materials and for her personal interest in and support of my project. Other archives
contributed to the wider picture I sought to create. Sarah Aitchison at the London
University Institute of Education, Mary Wood of Birkbeck College University of
London and Doreen Dean of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts are all
due my thanks for their help.
Many other individuals have contributed at the various stages through which this
enterprise has progressed, some of them very substantially. It was particularly encouraging
that, as news of my project trickled out through the media education world, people came
forward ready to assist both with their recollections and with the offer of access to their
personal archives. Special mention must be made of the materials accumulated by Paddy
Whannel during his period at the BFI which Professor Garry Whannel has retained
and to which I was given access. I was also very fortunate in having sight of materials
Acknowledgements | ix
retained by George Foster, who remained a key voluntary officer during the final two
decades of SEFT’s existence.
Since the documentary record was to prove to be incomplete, I had to look elsewhere
to discover the means to reconstruct the continuity of this account. Over a period of five
years I interviewed many of those who had participated in this history. The first wave of
interviewees were assisting in the writing of my MA dissertation; subsequent interviewees
were part of my doctorate research and then of this book. Some were prepared to indulge
my request for a second follow-up interview. My grateful thanks go to all of them.
Those who made themselves available for face-to-face interview and in numerous
instances also provided archive materials were: Manuel Alvarado, Charles Barr, Cary
Bazalgette, Susan Bennett, Andrew Bethell, David Buckingham, Ed Buscombe, Richard
Collins, Barry Curtis, Rosalind Delmar, James Donald, John Ellis, Bob Ferguson,
George Foster, Christine Geraghty, Jenny Grahame, Brian Groombridge, Stuart Hall,
the late Gillian Hartnoll, Andrew Higson, Jim Hillier, Fred Jarvis, Alan Lovell, Douglas
Lowndes, David Lusted, Colin MacCabe, Colin McArthur, Len Masterman, Mandy
Merck, Chris Mottershead, Laura Mulvey, Mark Nash, Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Claire
Pajaczkowska, Victor Perkins, David Rodowick, Sir Roy Shaw, Philip Simpson, Roy
Stafford, Ginette Vincendeau, Ian Wall, Paul Willemen, Christopher Williams, Tana
Wollen, Mary Wood. I was able to put questions by telephone or e-mail to: Jim Cook,
Sean Cubitt, Leslie Heywood, Val Hill, Sam Rohdie, Michael Simons.
Two institutions were sufficiently convinced of the value of my project to award me
studentships to support my research: first the Surrey Institute of Art and Design, University
College and subsequently Middlesex University. There were key figures within those
institutions whose support deserves particular mention: Manuel Alvarado at the Surrey
Institute and Barry Curtis, Adrian Rifkin and Patrick Phillips at Middlesex University.
They all believed in the value of my project and contributed to my progress and formal
supervision. When I began to consider publication I had a double bonus in that not only

was Intellect prepared to publish my work but I was able to maintain my contact with
Manuel Alvarado who is an Associate Publisher with Intellect and was therefore my
Editor for Screen education: from film appreciation to media studies. My grateful thanks go
to Manuel not only for his meticulous attention to detail but also for his selective
prompting as to ways in which my account might be developed and enhanced.
Professor Toby Miller has generously provided a stimulating Foreword to this book.
He places into the context of today’s Academy the energy and achievement of individuals
within SEFT and BFI during the later decades of the last century. He is able to
acknowledge from an international perspective how influential they were.
Finally my thanks to the British Film Institute for allowing the reproduction of three
‘historic’ photographs: film-making at an early BFI Summer School, the Dean Street
headquarters and the 1971 Young Screen reception.

Terry Bolas
November 2008