Peter Hort

Fairness in Film Education

Workshop

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What is fair from one perspective can seem unfair from another.  In film education what constitutes fairness and justice in collaborative creative endeavour? How do perceptions of fairness and unfairness arise? Teachers making every effort to be fair can be perceived as acting unfairly if their reasoning is not understood.

I will use my teaching experience to focus on tensions around fairness in pitching, project choice and role allocation. Young people tend to have an intense sense of fairness and justice, and perceived unfairness can have a huge and lasting emotional impact, yet there is the risk that “to become a complainer is to become the location of a problem” (Ahmed 2021).

I will draw on Kees van den Bos’s concept of ‘the fair process effect’, and on his idea that ‘fairness is where the individual meets the group’, and also on Rawls’ essay ‘Justice as Fairness’.  I will share my findings at the beginning of a 40-minute workshop, aiming to stimulate volunteer ‘testimonies’ about instances of perceived fairness and unfairness; this will lead into an exploration of strategies to increase students’ trust in processes we ask them to engage in. An outcome might be the beginnings of a ‘fairness lab’ to complement Dan Geva’s ‘ethics lab’.
 

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After 20 years in film and television as a producer, editor and director, Peter Hort started teaching, and was Course Director of the Film Production BA at Westminster University from 2006 to 2019. He studied English Literature at UCL before working as a production manager on language teaching dramas, and as an assistant film editor at the BBC. This was followed by 15 years as an independent producer, making TV documentary and drama with co-production partners including Channel 4, NDR German Television, France 2, Eurimages and the Berlin Film Fund. He is currently making a personal documentary about memory, race and empire.