Idea
Moving minds with moving images: Peace education through film
The prerequisites for peace include both the absence of direct violence (‘negative peace’) and the presence of social justice (‘positive peace’). Accordingly, peace education seeks to equip learners with the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values needed to resolve conflicts, create conditions for individual and collective emancipation from any form of oppression, and thereby fashion more equitable and inclusive societies.
But educationalists face a major challenge. After all, peace cannot simply be decreed or preached into existence. Peace education is not a matter of technical know-how or recipes. Rather, it entails the application of emotional intelligence to nourish a culture of peace.
Indeed, given the multidisciplinary and somewhat evanescent nature of peace education, various peace pedagogies can be implemented or continuously reinvented to suit local contexts.
As part of an arts-based pedagogy, the medium of film can help students cultivate mindful attention and reflection conducive to empathy and intercultural understanding.
But why do films wield such power?
Early examples of using films to educate
The educational value of film has long been recognized. In 1912, the New York Evening Journal published an editorial with the headline, ‘The Power of Moving Pictures: They Will Educate, through the Eye, Hundreds of Millions of Children.’ Essentially, films can capture and dramatize the flux of time, thereby affording viewers a captivating opportunity to interrogate experience and question assumptions.
Peace studies have taught us that peace is a diverse and relational phenomenon that must accommodate images and efforts from diverse cultures, as well as from the marginal strata of society. Films capture images and efforts, weaving them into plots, characters and aesthetic experiences that engage our sensitivity in an irresistible manner.
The January 1955 issue of the UNESCO Courier hailed the potential of films in fostering intercultural dialogue, stating, ‘One can visit a cinema in Greece, for example, and see a Japanese film spoken in Japanese and carrying Greek subtitles—an unheard of thing a few years ago.’
In a 2011 opinion survey, 98 per cent of surveyed teachers across the United Kingdom responded that ‘film is a useful teaching tool’, and all respondents agreed that ‘exposure to a wide range of films helps to broaden children’s understanding of the world and other cultures.’
African filmmakers educate on the continent’s heritage
Let us consider one especially noteworthy initiative in this regard. In 2021, UNESCO and Netflix launched the competition African Folktales Reimagined with the aim of supporting young African filmmakers and promoting the continent’s cultural heritage and creative diversity on the global stage. Production grants were awarded to six finalists, resulting in a multilingual anthology of short films released on Netflix in March 2023.
Nigerian filmmaker Femi Odugbemi, who was on the panel of judges for the competition, underscored that this project was important because ‘the greatest education anyone receives is to travel into the unknown worlds of history, so we can grow the respect and understanding necessary to maintain and preserve mutual respect and peace in the world.’ These short films are also notable for featuring strong female protagonists and unflinchingly tackling issues like gender-based violence, suicide and child marriage.
With MaMlambo, South African filmmaker Gcobisa Yako wanted to subvert the ‘typical and patriarchal portrayal’ in folktales, whereby women are often ‘vilified and shamed.’ In doing so, the film simultaneously draws attention to modern structural violence against women that persists in hampering positive peace in South Africa and beyond.
Films to empower today’s learners
Even though peace cannot be decreed, its presence—as well as its absence, the unfortunate reality for many—can certainly be perceived, felt, and experienced in our emotional lives and through the rich imagination that we develop thanks to films.
If we think that young people today, as the media insists, are no longer interested in politics because they are not capable of believing in ideologies or ideals, let us observe them watch a movie.
The French social theorist Jean-François Lyotard may have been right in noting that postmodern youth are characterized by ‘incredulity towards metanarratives’, but films can nonetheless sensitize today’s youth to the gamut of transformative emotional experiences.
In an age of ubiquitous audiovisual content, peace education should leverage the vivid multisensorial experience of films to engage and stimulate students.
Indeed, psychological research suggests that systematic film-based courses can foster personal responsibility and positive behaviours. And more broadly, the plurality of fictional and non-fictional narratives we encounter, or author and choreograph in the course of our lives, contribute to shaping the characters of our subjectivity.
In building a culture of peace, what could be more essential than nurturing subjectivity and intersubjectivity? Ultimately, film literacy may hold the key to empowering learners to flourish as creative agents of peace.
This is a lightly adapted version of a post that first appeared at the Education for All Blog of the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) website, on 2 August 2023.
#SocialTransformation #YouthEmpowerment
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About the authors
Chairat Chongvattanakij is a Thai-Canadian consultant specializing in content creation for the Public Information and Outreach team at UNESCO Regional Office in Bangkok. He supports UNESCO in reporting, translation, media development and related projects in Asia and the Pacific.
In addition to his experience as a professional translator, Chairat is an accomplished pianist and music educator who holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Toronto, where he taught music theory and piano literature at the Faculty of Music. He has presented research papers at international academic conferences and delivered guest lectures and masterclasses at Mahidol University and Yamaha Music Academy Bangkok.
Philosopher by training, Phinith Chanthalangsy is the Regional Advisor for the Social and Human Sciences at the UNESCO Regional Office in Bangkok, Thailand. His fields of specialization are Comparative Philosophy, Ethics and Cultural Studies. His work focuses on ethics of science and technology, social inclusion and human rights, gender equality, youth civic participation and intercultural dialogue.
He joined UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, France, in 2007 under the Philosophy, Democracy and Human Security Programme. From 2012 to 2019, he was appointed as Programme Specialist at the UNESCO Office for the Maghreb region in Rabat (Morocco). From 2019 to 2022, he served as Head of the Social and Human Sciences Unit at the UNESCO Regional Office for Southern Africa, Harare (Zimbabwe).
Prior to joining UNESCO, he worked as Research Fellow at the École française d’Extrême-Orient and the National Library in Vientiane, Lao PDR.
