Seventh International School On Mind, Brain And Education

2012 July 30 - August 4

Fondation La Main à la pate - Institut Jean Nicod - Institute of cognitive studies. FRANCE

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Multimedia and the teachings of Zeami
When it comes to documentary filmmaking, I am always learning from the characters in the film, from the environment I am filming in, and from the creative process of structuring a film. The process of making a documentary is really about documenting a discovery and a story. There is no teacher-student model. Although there is a director title, I am never in the position to tell the characters in my film what to do or how to act or react. Making a documentary is more of a learning experience for the filmmaker, myself, as well as the person I am filming.
I would love to see more education models where there is more of a dialogue between the ‘teacher’ and the ‘student’ and where teachers and students encourage each other to be creative, and to be critical thinkers. As a Noh Theatre actress I would also like to discuss some philosophical teachings of the founder of Noh Theatre, Zeami. The reason why the pace of Noh is relatively slow and has unrelieved gravity is because the purpose of Noh is “not to divert on the surface, but to move profoundly and ultimately” .
How do we move the students’ profoundly and ultimately in the 21st century in an era when our attention spans are getting shorter, and when many of us feel saturated with information? Alvin Toffler states, "When the individual is plunged into a fast and irregularly changing situation, or a novelty-loaded context ... his predictive accuracy plummets. He can no longer make the reasonably correct assessments on which rational behavior is dependent." It is not so much the ever-changing situation that concerns me but how we can equip students as well as teachers to be critical and innovative thinkers.