Concerns of Young People Represented through Documentary Films : The Possibility of Filmmaking Education as a Medium of their Expression

The innovation of information technology such as digital video and the Internet requires “media literacy”, which means the ability to communicate with others interactively and the ability to judge information subjectively, and demands training through university education. Reflecting this social demand, St. Andrew’s University is providing media literacy education as part of the faculty of International and Liberal Arts. In my previous draft of this paper [Minamide 2013 in Japanese], I introduced my educational practice for “cross-cultural understanding through filmmaking” from the standpoint of visual anthropology. In this paper, I particularly focus on my practical documentary filmmaking classes aiming to provide students with the capability to express themselves through this visual media. As well as introducing the details of the classes, I would like to analyze their visual products to clarify current students / youths’ concerns. Teaching of video production in our university started in 2010 when I joined in the faculty, and sixty films in total have already been produced by the students in these five years, 20102014. These works, with the image right consent of the subjects and the copyrights of the filmmakers / students, have been uploaded to the YouTube site under university management. This paper is going to analyze these sixty works to examine the students’ points of view and their concerns. Visual media has the possibilities and features which allows them to associate with society and to express themselvesdepartmental bulletin pape