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MAS.965 :: Nature of Constructionist Learning

Writing in the 1960’s, Mekas astutely points out the paucity of opportunities for children to creatively engage and explore with the process of filmmaking [Mekas 1963]. This situation is perhaps not entirely surprising given the expensive and specialized nature of equipment up until this time. However, Mekas’ Village Voice article was published on the cusp of a wave of tremendous changes in the field of moviemaking as the advent of the home-movie dawned. He predicted that “films will soon be made as easily as written poems, and almost as cheaply.” Writing in 1997, Seymour Papert uses cinema as an example of how it takes time for “a new culture to emerge with new categories of people – in the case of cinema, the great directors, stars, and special-effects wizards – performing functions that were unimagined and largely unimaginable” [Papert 1997]. Where are Mekas’ “moviemaking for everyone” sentiments here? In Papert’s invocation, cinema is still a big-industry enterprise where highly specialized people perform breathtaking tasks, thus placing moviemaking outside the realm of ordinary folk. Perhaps it is time to reevaluate and enlarge our understanding of the categories and functions of people engaged in moviemaking given the developments within this field not included in Papert’s description?