International Journal of Film and Media Arts

Critical Pedagogies of Otherness: Rethinking Ethics and Inclusiveness in Film Education

Miriam Martínez-Villar, Antonio Francisco Alaminos-Fernández — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 15:06:09 +0000

In contemporary film education, ethics and inclusiveness are central to creative practice, yet curricula still tend to privilege aesthetic mastery and professional competence over sustained reflection on representation, difference, and responsibility. This article elaborates on a theoretical framework for critical pedagogies of otherness that integrates ethical, affective, and epistemic dimensions of film learning. Drawing on Freire’s critical pedagogy, Hooks’s engaged teaching, Noddings’s ethics of care, Levinas’s philosophy of responsibility, Bhabha’s third space, decolonial critiques by Mignolo and Walsh, and feminist accounts of empathy as a situated and politically ambivalent relation, it argues that teaching film today entails learning how to see, feel, and represent responsibly. Empathy is understood here not as immediate access to another’s experience but as a critical and mediated disposition shaped by power, affect, and reflexive accountability. Otherness operates not only within screen narratives but also within pedagogical relations—teacher/student, image/subject, culture/gaze—where power is negotiated. Ethics is reframed as an embodied and situated practice inherent to image-making. The article concludes with curricular strategies for embedding reflexivity in production, assessment, and institutional practice, positioning film schools as laboratories of care, critical imagination, and socially responsible authorship.

Redesigning Undergraduate Directing Curricula Beyond The Auteur Model

Roberto Franco Moreira — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 11:33:17 +0000

This article reports on the redesign of a curriculum in the undergraduate directing course of the Audiovisual Studies Program at the University of São Paulo (USP). Drawing on theories of emerging adulthood (Arnett, 2000), flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990), and productive constraint (Haught-Tromp, 2017), it argues that project-based film pedagogy — inherited from the auteur tradition of the 1960s — is misaligned with the developmental needs of students between eighteen and twenty-three years old. The text documents how the previous model, organised around a sequence of increasingly ambitious personal short films, produced authorship conflicts, recurring technical errors, and superficial feedback. It then describes the intervention that replaced those projects with structured scene exercises using The Book of Sides II (Kost, 2017), designed to increase the density of learning through constraint, repetition, and immediate feedback. The account is based on practitioner observations over several iterations of the course. Future work should incorporate systematic assessment data. The article concludes by discussing the implications for film education, including the potential role of artificial intelligence as a tool for multiplying cycles of practice and feedback within this pedagogical framework.

The Fictional Contract And The Contemporary Dramaturgy

Jorge Paixão da Costa — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 11:31:59 +0000

Dramaturgy and the fictional contract are closely linked in the act of fictionalising and dramatising. This action is revealed through writing, representation in the dramatic game, and the preparation work of the actors.

Dramaturgy, and its creation, development, and behaviour, must be considered in the teaching of different forms, genres, and models.

The Faults Of Documentation. Migration Through An Experiment In Film Pedagogy

Edwin Culp, David Grimaldo — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 11:30:19 +0000

This article reflects on the paradoxes of representing exclusion through a pedagogical encounter that investigates the faults of documentation in migration. Dominant representation manages exclusion through figures, where a life’s contingencies are condensed into transferable forms — the victim, the dreamer, the resilient subject — in a manner that is compact enough to circulate at the cost of what they leave behind. Through theoretical inquiry and dialogue, we explore how images can resist the circulation of exclusionary figures without abandoning the terrain of representation.

Rather than critiquing the act of looking alone, the article focuses on how the image’s materiality resists complete figuration. Drawing on surfaces as sites where this friction operates, we work with figuration’s faults — darkness, silence, or blur — as openings where a shared capacity of imagination can emerge.

The dialogue is offered here as an experiment in film pedagogy. David speaks from the experience of being a returning migrant and artist, interviewed by journalists and scholars seeking predetermined narratives; Edwin, a film scholar, questions whether a documentary can avoid reproducing the exclusion it sets out to document. This exchange does not come to a conclusion. The friction between the two positions — and the documentary that remains unfinished — is the method and the finding.

The article suggests that when film pedagogy is faced with exclusion, it can embrace material limitations as invitations for imagination: a shared capacity emerges precisely where mediation is made visible and representation cannot come to a closure.

Photography, Critical Thinking And Pedagogy: Thinking The City With Gabriele Basilico

Joana Nunes, Henrique Soeiro Andrade, Lorenzo Stefano Iannizzotto — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 11:27:49 +0000

Photography has long been used as a privileged tool to represent and engage with cities. It is not just a tool of documentation, but also a medium through which critical perspectives on space are developed. In the act of photographing, the author acts as both inhabitant and interpreter of the urban space. The photographic medium enables a reflective and analytical form of inquiry.

Photography can become a tool to challenge dominant narratives and propose new counter-narratives. For instance, by representing areas and spaces that are usually overlooked or nearly invisible. When combined with pedagogical practices, photography can provide a valuable foundation for developing critical thinking methodologies that encourage citizens to question how cities are represented, structured, and experienced.

This article aims to explore the potential of urban photography as a tool for urban inquiry and critical pedagogy through the intersections between photography, critical thinking, and education. The article uses a well-known photographic project to examine its potential as a critical pedagogical exercise capable of questioning conventional narratives and fostering urban exploration using Gabriele Basilico’s Lisboa 2006 as an example.

The article is structured into three main sections: i) a theoretical introduction to the concepts and frameworks examined; ii) an analysis of the case study, considering both Basilico’s methodology and the experimental testing of the photovoice approach; and iii) a discussion outlining a possible pedagogical exercise developed from the study and the analysis of the selected photographic project. The article employs several qualitative methodologies, including the mapping and localisation of the photographs contained in the book, as well as a test using the photovoice method. Finally, the article contributes insights to the design of pedagogical assignments, in which students can engage in mapping, photographing, editing and critically analysing photographs of the city, based on Basilico’s work and its analysis.

The Limits Of The Image: Ethical Responsibility And Film Education In The Digital Age

Da Vu Hoang — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 11:25:41 +0000

This article examines the ethical limits of cinematic representation when portraying vulnerable groups such as ethnic minorities, LGBT communities, and people living with life-threatening illnesses. Drawing on theories of the ethics of the gaze (Levinas, Mulvey, Nichols), the limits of representation (Lyotard, LaCapra), and contemporary debates on digital and AI ethics, the paper argues that filmmakers and film students must recognise both the power and dangers of images in the twenty-first century.

Through case studies ranging from Diễm‘s Children of the Mist (2021) to Thảo and Dubus’s Finding Phong (2015), as well as contemporary documentary practices on illness representation, the article highlights the tensions between artistic creativity and ethical responsibility. The discussion extends to the digital environment, where AI-generated images and deepfakes further complicate questions of consent, authenticity, and social impact.

In the context of film and media schools, particularly within CILECT member institutions, this article emphasises the urgent need to integrate visual ethics into film curricula. It proposes pedagogical strategies such as case-based debates, inclusive storytelling practices, and the systematic use of consent and dialogue with participants. The article advocates for a redefinition of film education as a moral as well as artistic practice, where students are encouraged to balance creativity with compassion, and representation with responsibility, in an era when images can so easily be manipulated or misused.