2007

Documentary film is a visual document. Its authencity is its biggest quality. Whether it is longer or shorter it is not important, since it is irreplaceable testimony on times, people and events, both current and past ones. It is a highly-usable in modern teaching practice and it should be its irreplaceable part. Besides, the fact that new generations have been growing up with a screen, firstly the television one and then the computer monitors, the image has for them become closer than words, and from the earliest age has become a part of their everyday life. The image, especially the electronic one, present in every home, is faster than the word and the speed is the main distinction of contemporary civilization in which we not only live in but we should be successful too.

In order for the education to be more active and creative, the film as a teaching tool can help in many ways. Besides, it has become easier to show the film: there is no need for a cinema, because beside a computer screen, there is also a DVD technique. It is also not fully required to make educational (intended) films since, in a process of active teaching, an educational characteristic can be found in every film and every single one can be used in teaching only if the teacher, mentor, professor shows enough resourcefulness and playfulness and transfer them to his students. This is even indispensable in the approach towards a documentary film in order to explain, animate and divide into layers often precise, clear and accurately expressed topic, and thus better remember it. The process of "explaining game", and by it, a process of getting a knowledge, is necessary in a contemporary teaching, and film might give the most concrete stimulus for that. Documentary film is even a real challenge in a bid to re-imagine its concreteness, clarify it and fill into drawers of our knowledge.

A documentary simply challenges a conversation, commentary, clarification, opposed opinions. Its concreteness is a real challenge. But an emotional level, in which it acts, as every other film, should not be neglected. It is always welcome to discuss this dimension too. The worst is to end with only facts presented, remember or "copy" only them in a memory of certain image. This leads to a development of reproductive teaching process, while the goal of the contemporary teaching process is, above all, a development of creativity, individual and specific talent of each individual to notice, combine and, by rearranging accumulated experience, create something new.

Another element, "a knowledge pact" that can develop between a student and a teacher, since often both of them obtain new knowledge from the film, is also interesting. It creates a relation of equality between a teacher and a student, almost inconceivable in the process of learning known until now, the relation of closeness and pervasion in learning, which is an absolute innovation in the teaching process.

After all, in the era marked with the reign of media, which are seizing their opportunity everywhere, to omit a film during the teaching process is surely a loss in steps. (Visual) Media provide the fastest possible access to knowledge, while the analysis of the material offered, critical rethinking and evaluation of certain matters is in a basis of communication in the most different forms.

How many times have we read and remembered data, facts, entries, definitions, maxims and pulled them out from our "knowledge drawers" when needed? Can the brain accepts more of these, but in images, whether it can zip them and later use the accumulated knowledge in images still remains to be seen. But the challenge is already there, offering itself from everywhere. So why not try it, the question is now, or for more than hundred years since the film has been present in our civilization circle. What are we waiting for or why have we been waiting for so long?