The analogy to literature study is clear: our pupils are exposed to a modicum
of literary theory, they study some of the Great Works of Literature, and do
a little writing of their own, not in order to become Great Writers, but so
that they might begin to recognise and appreciate greatness  in literature,
and in the  immediate world around them.

The Achievement of the Conference

The organisers are to be congratulated on having brought together some of the
major film-teaching institutions  in the country.  Major areas of difficulty
and disagreement have been identified.  This experience will  undoubtedly form
the basis of future Festivals at which answers will  be found to the questions
raised at this first, and very significant conference.

Reference

1.  Grove, J.  1980: "Film and the Short Story - A Medium for Teaching English.

MA. Thesis, University of Witwatersrand

View Two :  Conflicting  Paradigms and Ideologies

Keyan G. Tomaselli and Graham Hayman

The purpose of the Festival was to provide student directors and video/film
makers with a platform to exhibit their work and a chance to assess it against
a critical and informed audience.  It was hoped that the Festival, while not
being able to affect the conservative direction of the South African film
and television industries, would at least be able to intercept and encourage
the growing intellectual debate on the media, a phenomenon which has only
recently begun with the introduction of broadcast television  in  1976 and the
consequent introduction of film and television courses at local  universities,
and media studies (mainly short films) at school  level.

The films and video productions shown  did not fall  into the well-known
categories or genres of the orthodox broadcasting and film industries.  They
tried instead to make connections between things, events and processes which
are usually kept separate.  Most were made in an atmosphere of relative
freedom:  freedom from the imperative of efficiency at the expense of tontent
demanded by commercial  television stations; freedom from the chains of profit
maximization; and freedom from the cliche" which governs the entertainment
industry - "give the public what it wants".

The Festival  began with a public screening of the Australian award winning
film, Breaker Morant (1980), which revolves around an incident which occured

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during the Anglo-Boer War in 1903 in South Africa.  This was only the third
preview screening of the film before it went onto general  release two weeks
later  Visiting lecturer, Susan Gardner of the University of Queensland,
Australia, followed with an in-depth historical  and ideological  analysis of
the film.  She argued that, although set in South Africa, it reveals more
about the  ideology and myths of Australian  society than  it does about the
War itself, or South Africa.  Richard Haines, history lecturer and co-contributor
to this  section discussed how the film had been used  in England to teach
Anqlo-Boer War history (in terms of a School  Study Guide put out by the
distributors).  He showed how reality had been distorted in both history text
books and the film in order to meet ideological  demands and, in the case of
film, cinematic conventions as well.

The daily sessions revolved around the screening of short student films
followed by discussion.  The screening of the films made by first year students
(1980) of the School of Dramatic Art of the University of Witwatersrand  (under
the supervision of Keyan Tomaselli), which initiated the conference, stimulated
an immediate polarization between the way film and video production was taught
at the liberal  English speaking universities and the  Pretoria Technikon,
which houses the best equipped film school  in the country.  This polarization
widened during the subsequent deliberations.  On a broad level, the differ-
ences revolved around four recurring themes:  (1) the function of tertiary
education in capitalist society;  (2) a perceived over-concern with technical
expertize in  (3)  isolation from the relationships which pertain between
technique, technology, content and structure; and  (4) how these are permeated
by ideology.

More specifically, differences revolved around the rejection of cliches and
conventional  techniques of story-telling by the Wits students who  investigated
themes and connections rather than developing narratives.  Members of the
Technikon's film school  argued, in contrast, that film involved only the
telling of simple stories -  like Little Red Riding Hood.  "Even the news",
observed lecturer Ben Theunissen, "is a story - therefore film should follow
the same pattern".  Claiming that a strict control  over the content and
method of student production was necessary,  he maintained that a student must
learn technique and film grammar before he should be allowed to make a film.

While disagreeing on every other point made by the Technikon, Greg Garden
(Wits) in his address, "Film and TV Production Skills as Environmental
Response Mechanisms", did agree that the flouting of continuity and conventions
in film making could only be eliminated through a structured control  exerted
by the lecturer over the content and method of production employed by
students.  To the left of this view stood John Hill  (University of Cape Town),
whose discussion on "The Aims, Operations and Problems of the Young Film-
makers Workshop" involving school  children, pointed out  (reluctantly)  that
a degree of control was necessary to ensure that projects were completed.
He saw such supervision as mainly of an administrative nature rather than
strictures on content and structure.

Rhodes University's Keyan Tomaselli  and Graham Hayman took a much more radical
stance and warned of the ideological  implications of lecturer imposition and
the use of convention and established  film grammar for their own sake.
Drawing on experience fostered by ethnographic film makers,  and particularly
the ideas of Sol  Worth, they pointed out how a rigid teaching approach to
film and TV production could alienate  the student's  potential  and be coopted
by the state to reproduce the status quo in South Africa.  Tomaselli  and
Hayman argued that students should be encouraged rather to use film and video

81

to strip away the accepted way of seeing things that the orthodox use of the
media present so repetitively and insidiously.  Countering Garden's argument
that some of the Wits films made under Tomaselli's supervision lacked sharp
focus in places and that continuity was loose in one of the films,  Hayman
pointed out that focus and continuity were themselves conventions which needed
to be questioned.  He offered an example of how Radio Bantu, a film made by
the South African Department of Information,  used hard focus/soft focus to
entrench perceptions of the dominant  ideological  hierarchy in South Africa.
In this film, whites are always shown in sharp dominant focus while blacks move
'rhythmically'  in the background blur.  Such techniques or continuities, he
argued, are designed to serve the interests of capital  and perpetuate an
image of the prevailing class structure.

This discussion highlighted deep differences between the various delegates
in their awareness of ideology.  It was clear that some were unconscious of
the role of ideology in the mass media, and of the need to counteract such
influences.  Where the Technikon desired to groom diploma graduates for "a
job", the universities generally aimed to equip their graduates with a
theoretical  background to enable them to question their expected roles in
the media industry.  Because of the traditional  ideological  position of the
universities, which look askance at the over-emphasis on technical  skills
and courses  (even today practical  courses and teachers coordinate very un-
easily in Arts Faculties), time and facilities for teaching of technique are
limited.  At such a conference then, each of the polarized approaches to
film/video production has a strong point of criticism which neutralizes
the other's  strengths; the technically proficient scorn the theoretically
conscious productions which lack technical  'polish', and the university
producers criticise the items which are made in the conventional mould.

This division at the level of education reproduces the later management/
worker split in the industry, and must be seen as a hinderance to innovation
in the South African film/TV industry.  It is the first step in the inter-
nalization of orthodox conventions and work roles, which are then seen
together as part of 'professional'  practice, adherence to which guarantees
progress and higher wages in the industry.  Both producers  (usually university
graduates) and technicians then find themselves in mutually exclusive
fields of work.  A more common approach between  producers 
and technicians, down to the level of education, would reveal the job
classifications created and maintained by management for what they are; the
best conditions for the accumulation of capital, because the products made
by the specialists are then in line with the dominant ideology in the
industry and the nation.  This avenue of possible change was not explored
overtly at the conference, but hopefully, further such conferences will  help
to breakdown this watertight concept of roles and techniques.

(or directors)

Those options which were suggested ranged from challenging the status quo
from an external  base on the one hand, to working within the capitalist system
from the inside, on the other.  While the former was revolutionary in
character, requiring alternative production facilities, finance and distribution
networks (mainly universities, film festivals etc), the mnre liberal-humanist
approach outlined by Dr John van Zyl  in his perceptive paper,  "Beyond
Graduation:  Jobs for Whom?" argued for working within the burgeoning closed
circuit networks and commercial  educational  technology departments of large
companies.  Programmes of relevance here would be, for example, those made
made by the Wits School  of Dramatic Art on child-minding and health care in
places like Soweto.  Such programmes, termed "developmental media" by van Zyl

82

o HppmPd to provide immediate benefits for individuals caught up in the

h ^h realities imposed on them by apartheid.  Van Zyl  was quite clear as
ar t i t oV  lack of commitment  to  the established  commercial  industry,
n^ticiilarlv the state controlled South African Broadcasting Television
w« re  (SABC-TV) 
discussion on "Broadcasting Media and the Community".  Arguing within
cassical  development theory, she called for a new media structure to serve
t hf community on a much broader and equitable basis  than was presently being
HnnP bTthe SABC and other state departments.  Her reformist zeal, however,
was tempered by her acknowledgement that this "if only"  argument had little
chance of being enacted in reality.

Of a more theoretical  nature was  Sally Ann  Benn's  (Wits)

Tn rfirpct contrast to the reformist position proffered by van Zyl  and Benn,
l^ the radical  contribution of Harriet Gavshon, a Wits  School  of Dramatic
Art graduate now working in the film industry.  In an address entitled,
"Uncovering Ideology in Cinema aimed at Black Audiences", she outlined how
the dominant ideology coopts the film industry in not unsubtle ways to
reproduce the existing relations of production.

The Festival  ended with the screening of Gavshon's video production, Women
in Process (1980),  which examines issues of male exploitation of women
Through the actual  experiences of three actresses who have rejected their
tvnecastinq in stage bedroom farces.  This programme, which observes and
records' rather than directs, has since been screened at the 1981 Cape Town
International  Film Festival  and the  Aarhus University Film Festival,
"Projecting Women" held in November 1981.

n+hpr naDers offered included a discussion of SABC radio and TV soap operas.
"Trauma bv Installment" by Leandra Elion (Wits) marks the first time that
this tvpe of programme has been the subject of a semi otic analysis.  Remain-
ina productions screened included a number from Rhodes University (both
Drama and Journalism Departments), Durban-Westville and the Pretoria Technikon.
(The latter seemed to bear little relation to the Technikon's philosophy
stated earlier).
Whether the Festival was successful  or not is hard to ascertain.  In ideo-
logical terms, it identified and stimulated a polarization between those
adhering to the dominant ideology of conventional  film/video making, who
followed the hallowed path of first teaching technique as if this had no
ideological connotations, and hoping that content and structure would follow.
At the other end of the pole were those who took a more holistic view, one
which was designed to exploit and liberate the specific qualities of the
medium  properties which have been hidden under the weight of convention,
linear as opposed to lateral thinking, and bourgeois notions of aesthetics.
It was, however, clear that these more radical notions were not appreciated
bv many of the lecturers present and a number expressed concern that
analysis of content should be taken beyond the film itself.  "A film stood
on its own was the counter argument1  - it was unnecessary to investigate
the social, political or economic influences which brought it about in the
first place

Yet  despite these ideological differences, a certain degree of groundwork
has'been laid from which the development of film and video studies in South
Africa can grow.  While ideological  differences will  remain, at least ideas
previously not articulated between film departments have been aired, and
these might ultimately lead to a reassessment of notions of theory, technique,
content and ideology, and how these all  interact with the political economy
to support it, criticise it or challenge it.

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