Introduction: More than Film School—Why the Full Spectrum of Practice-Based Film Education Warrants Attention

Abstract

Adapting Simone de Beauvoir’s well-known phrase, one is not born a filmmaker but becomes one.1 To ask about the nature of practice-based film education as it has emerged around the globe and exists today, is to begin to understand how filmmakers become filmmakers. Inquiry along these lines sheds light on the process not only of becoming a filmmaker, but also a particular kind of filmmaker, where “kind” encompasses skills, as well as narrative and aesthetic priorities, preferred modes of practice, and understandings of what the ideal roles and contributions of film would be.