Perspectives: A dialogue upon the question of value in film education

Abstract

The question of aesthetic value remains a source of tension within diverse film education environments. While film-makers and audiences have visceral experiences of the value of cinema, these experiences are troubled by a contemporary film studies that tends to adopt a more relativist approach, suggesting that the experience of value is reflective of sociocultural subjectivity. Speaking from two different perspectives, Alan Bernstein and Andrew Burn explore the role of value in film education, and film culture more widely, in 2019. While Bernstein argues for a reinstatement of value as a fundamental aspect of how film is experienced and understood in educational contexts and beyond, Burn contextualizes questions of value within a wider framework of semiotic and aesthetic theory, arguing for a multimodal approach that takes into account the multifaceted nature of film.