When Zoom Replaces the Cinema: Reimagining Film Studies Online During COVID-19 Through Collaborative Teaching and Community Building

ABSTRACT

The progression of real world circumstances in Australia enforced a series of rapid and significant transformations from a face-to-face teaching model to an entirely digital learning experience for our cohort of 340 students. [...]we will consider the fundamental impulse behind these remaking processes how to create a dynamic film culture online to make film studies meaningful (personally, politically, intellectually, socially) and also a site of relief for our students during this catastrophic moment. While this is an efficient system as a secondary port of call, finding a format that replicated the feel and function of inperson synchronous lectures while mediating the online space as the primary delivery for weekly material required us to experiment with form and style. Anecdotally, students responded extremely positively to this format, noting that it provided conceptual and theoretical challenges with the advantage of greater flexibility and control (the ability to pause, return to an earlier part), and opportunities to absorb the material (the relationship between the direct lecture and additional resources).