Elon’s “Film and Philosophy” course, funded through the Fund for Excellence in the Arts and Sciences and a Center for the Advancement in Teaching and Learning Mini-Grant, allows students to use older film technology and gain hands-on experience.
In a new Elon University course offered by the Department of Philosophy, students take part in a workshop that combines philosophy and analog filmmaking technology to investigate how films were created before the digital age and how films affect our thoughts and our perceptions.
The filmmaking workshop for the “Film and Philosophy” course is funded through the Fund for Excellence in the Arts and Sciences and a Center for the Advancement in Teaching and Learning Mini-Grant. The Fund for Excellence (through Elon College, the College of Arts and Sciences) awards grants to projects “that deepen the values, the intellectual community, the research, teaching, and habits of thinking that are characteristic of the liberal arts and sciences.”
The CATL Teaching and Learning Mini-grants support small-scale innovative, inclusive, and/or research-based teaching and learning projects designed to enhance student engagement and learning. Mini-grants can be used for course-related student engagement and can be used to fund materials or experiences for innovative, active or engaged learning.
“The broad vision for the project, in its most ambitious formulation, is to help put students in touch again with analog experience and get them thinking about what that is, why it matters, and how it differs from the experiential relations they usually inhabit, which in this day are exceedingly mediated by the digital environment,” said Nathan L. Smith, assistant professor of philosophy.
At the beginning of the course, students analyzed and investigated filmmakers’ choices in movies, from black-and-white films to “The Truman Show.” They connected ancient philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle and more contemporary philosophers such as Bergson and Parfit to selected films through observing the formal features of the films, including lighting, sound design, and cinematography, as well as the content and meaning of the films. Throughout the course, students worked to explore how films uniquely raise philosophical questions and how the techniques and technology behind the films can further this.
“While the digital space brings with it incredible flexibility and potential for connectedness and information generation and dissemination, it also shifts how our minds and bodies operate, and not always for the better,” said Smith. “The course aims to change the way we think, not just through discussion, viewing, and writing—the usual collegiate methods—but also through experience with the medium itself.”
Experimental filmmaking
The course integrates 16mm film viewing and making, with a centerpiece workshop led by a leading film practitioner, culminating in an end-of-semester screening. Artist Anna Kipervaser was invited to lead the Nov. 10, 2024, workshop for the course in Arts West along with Smith.
Kipervaser’s practice “engages with a range of topics including perception, human and animal bodies, ethnicity, and environmental conservation,” and she has screened her work in numerous national and international festivals. Students practiced animating images without a computer, using Kipervaser’s equipment, including a Bolex motion picture camera and a cable release.
Students brought everyday items such as fruit and Dungeons and Dragons pieces to collaborate on how to animate objects to form expressive faces, with the motion picture camera on an animation in one of the lighting studios. Capturing the items one frame at a time, they mixed and matched the eyes, mouth, and accessories with differing pieces, slowly moving each object into position.
“I am not a proponent of folks using this technology just to use it. I am more interested in folks being excited by the things that happened in their brains and hearts,” Kipervaser said
Smith wants to transform how philosophy and filmmaking are taught at Elon and how students think. Besides stop-motion animation with the Bolex camera, students drew and made designs on strips of film by hand, without a camera. This technique comes from a long history of experimental filmmakers using abstract techniques like painting, scratching and manipulated images to answer the question of “how to make a film without a camera” and explore the possibilities of creativity amid constraint.
‘A thought provoking class’
Emily Fenimore ’26 says that although she has taken many contemporary philosophy classes, not everything feels recent due to the texts and discussion questions within the course. She was attracted to the class because it incorporated film, which added a modern touch that other philosophy courses lacked.
“As a child of the 21st century, it’s beneficial to see that philosophy is everything, and what philosophers said 100 years ago still applies today,” said Fenimore, who admits that the course has pushed her “movie boundaries” because she has access to non-English foreign films and black-and-white films that she would have never watched before.
“It’s a thought-provoking class, which I love about it,” Fenimore said.
With the assistance of Smith, students spliced their designs together to create one combined reel of film. Smith then placed the reel into the 1950s Kodak Royal variable-speed projector to have a 16mm screening. The projection showed an assembly of the students’ film strips, creatively decorated with colorful Sharpies, scratched-in text and nail-polish-stained images.
Students also had the opportunity to make photograms and then process the film themselves with guidance. Using the Darkroom Film Processing and Film Rolling Room, students could expose personal items on a short film strip before placing it in the developer, then fixer, and then washing the film. The shapes and visual textures of the objects are transferred to the film. After being pinned to dry, the film is ready to be viewed on a lightbox or sent through the Kodak projector.
Through the course and workshop, Smith wants his students “to see in a way they never have before.” He believes that this course can also bring various departments together—for instance, the facilities in the Department of Art are used to make the workshop happen. Smith hopes to assemble the funds necessary for the equipment to continue the course and the hands-on learning it allows.