The Screen Education years 1960-1982: the academic accession of the abject art

This thesis explores approximately two decades in the history of the Society for Education in Film and Television (SEFT). During the 1960s and 1970s not only did film appreciation metamorphose into media education, but what had been a marginal discipline operating at grass-roots level in schools became established in the Academy in a variety of forms. Film study provided the • basis from which continental theory and cultural politics might be explored. During this period also the term 'screen education' came to have a particular currency where each element of its designation was separately scrutinised.
There were two organisations which oversaw the transition, the Society and the British Film Institute. In the later 1960s the BFI's Education Department operated increasingly like a university department. Such was the antipathy to this development among BFI governors that the franchise for developing theory was in effect handed to the Society and its journal Screen during the mid-1970s. But Screen's writers eschewed the role of academics. They were self-declared intellectuals seeking opportunities to try out theories acquired from European thinkers.
While much interest has been evidenced about the journal Screen in the 1970s, the institutional framework of its operation and SEFT's other involvements with the development of media education have received little attention. SEFT had started as the Society of Film Teachers (SFT) and to demonstrate its continuity as a teachers' organisation a complementary journal Screen Education grew in size and prestige. It has been the function of this investigation to begin to explore these un-researched areas and to attempt to provide a framework on to which the fragmentary record may be attached.
The investigation of these developments has been complicated by the absence of any consistent archiving of relevant materials. If only limited documentation has survived, the timing of this research has meant that many of the individuals from the period under review were still accessible. Therefore interviews with some fifty people have provided an important resource that has helped to supplement the interrupted written record.

A thesis submitted to Middlesex University in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.