Community Engagement and Film: Toward the Pursuit of Ethical Goals through Applied Research on Moving Images

Film scholarship has a well-established tradition of being attuned to moral, political, and social values. Contributing to such values has often been a matter of developing interpretations of films, many of them highly critical of a given social order. While such critiques may have a certain efficacy within the classroom or amongst scholars, it is not clear that their effects extend into the spheres where change is actually being worked toward or achieved. It is well worth asking whether the aspiration to promote ethical values and social progress through film scholarship requires a different approach, one involving interdisciplinary research teams, partnerships with practitioners of various sorts, and institution-building across the boundaries of academe. Such an approach may not evoke the sorts of dramatic changes that are sometimes wished for in film interpretation, but it might be able to deliver concrete change of the sort that counts as ethically worthwhile.