International Politics through Film Practice: A Pilot Project in Experimental Learning

Film practice as a research method 

Students increasingly experience world politics through audio-visual media. Yet our teaching of international relations (IR) has ignored this evolution, confining it to traditional text-based education and passive training in media literacy. This project proposed to challenge international relations students ‘outside their comfort zone’ by offering a program in filmmaking practice as a research method. Over the course of the project, students were first challenged to think about the articulation and complementarity of multiple ‘ways of knowing’ (experiential, practical, presentational, and propositional) through practice-based experimentation with filmmaking tools and theoretical discussions in a tutored, collaborative environment. In a second step, in partnership with the Netherlands Film Academy, they lead a small-scale professional film crew, developing their individual film-based research project which results in a film and a written thesis.  

Grounded in the principles of experiential learning, the aim of the project was to develop student’s cognitive and non-cognitive skills which will be instrumental in their personal development as well as professional life: experimenting with rational, sensory and emotional forms of knowledge production, critical media literacy and thinking through concrete creative practice; experience of failure as a condition for innovation and development of collaborative and leadership skills in a professional environment. In the longer term, the project aims at laying the groundwork for a practice-based specialization in Visual World Politics within the Institute of Political Science at Leiden University. 

Audio-visual group work and thesis 

The project consisted of two phases. First, a course entitled Visual World Politics was offered to about 20 students in the beginning of the academic year. The course was composed of two meetings per week; one weekly meeting dedicated to discussing assigned readings and films and to derive the main framework for the practical assignments. The second part of the weekly meetings was dedicated to viewing and discussing the practical audio-visual work done over the weekend. Students were asked to produce weekly audio-visual ‘experiments’, and to produce text exercises evaluating their intentions and the results of the experiment. Mid-way through the course, students were distributed in groups and asked to prepare a proposal for a final group work, which resulted in a longer audio-visual work and an individual paper. In the last session of the course, the students presented their audio-visual group work and handed in their final paper a few days later. 

The second part of the project consisted in individual supervision of ‘audio-visual theses’. Students first wrote a proposal, following the traditional requirements in political science theses: Research question, literature review, theoretical framework, methods of data collection, and methods of data analysis. Students involved in the project were asked to specifically formulate their research question in a way that required an audio-visual treatment – and thus developed their audio-visual methodological approach in the methods sections. The second sub phase consistent in the carrying out of the research and the publication of the results in both a thesis of 8,000-10,000 words and a 20-minute film. All of them successfully passed, with grades ranging from 7,5 to 8,5. 

Successful experiment 

Overall, the conclusion of the pilot is that teaching/researching through film practice is an experiment that worked. Students understood and put to use the notion of thinking through the tools of filmmaking, producing original and compelling projects. From an experiential learning perspective, students expressed the feeling of having participated to a truly unique project. Projects are being selected for festivals, and there is overall a sense of having engaged political science differently and productively. There is thus a great pedagogic and scientific potential in institutionalizing the pilot project at the Institute of Political Science. 

Relevante publicaties  

• Bleiker, R. (2018) Mapping Visual Politics. In R. Bleiker (ed.) Visual global politics. London: Routledge. (PDF) Visual Global Politics
• Vuori, J.A., & Andersen, R.S. (2018) Introduction. Visual Security Studies. In J. A. Vuori & R.S. Andersen (eds.) Visual Security Studies: Sights and Spectacles of Insecurity and War. London: Routledge.
• van Munster, R., & Sylvest, C. (2016) Introduction. In R. van Munster & C. Sylvest (eds.) Documenting world politics: A critical companion to IR and non-fiction film. London: Routledge, pp. 3–22.
• Callahan, W.A. (2015) The visual turn in IR: documentary filmmaking as a critical method. Millennium 43(3): 891–910.
• Taylor, L. (1996). Iconophobia. Transition, (69), 64-88.
• MacDougall, D. (2006) The Corporeal Image. Princeton: Princeton University Press.