Film Anthologies

You know, I wonder if there are any textbook-like film anthologies. Not anthologies of writing about film, but of actual film. Like, if you take a literature survey class, you usually get a Norton Anthology or a Longman Anthology or some such that has a collection of important poems and short stories and sections of novels. But if you take a film class, either the films are all watched in class from the teacher’s copy, or you’re pretty much on your own to get hold of them to see. Granted, it’s easier in literature because you can build an anthology out of short works, while most of the films you would want to see in a film class are full-length. But in a survey class, you’re probably better off showing clips from films that illustrate what you’re talking about rather than the whole film anyway, so why not anthologize those? Put together a DVD of all the clips.

Of course, you can’t actually do that, because we don’t have copyright laws that allow for taking clips from films. Virtually all films are still under copyright protection and the fair use laws that are generally well-understood regarding the use of written works in the classroom are completely NOT understood when it comes to film and digital media. And I can’t see the MPAA being too keen on granting permission for films to be edited for anthologies–obviously the book publishers figure out some way to do it though, because not everything in literary anthologies is public domain. Which leads me back to wondering if anyone’s ever tried, or if it’s not seen as valuable to film professors. Seems like if you could package a good text, like Film Art: An Introduction or Understanding Movies or How to Read a Film with a DVD with the relevant film clips to illustrate what’s being talked about in text…that’d be a good thing, and worth paying extra. Like, you can get the paperback How to Read a Film for $25. Pay $50 and get the DVD too. It’s a textbook; $50 is not exorbitant. I think I spelled “exorbitant” wrong, but I got Firefox’s spellchecker to stop underlining it, so maybe not.

I’ll leave this as a fragmentary thought for now. I was just going through a Longman Anthology I got at a conference last year (seriously, publishing companies are DYING to give these things away to people they think might be teachers someday–totally worth going to conferences for), and it hit me how cool it would be to have a DVD that had all the most iconic film scenes on it.

edit – I take this back. Both Film Art and another McGraw-Hill text, Film, Form, and Culture, come with accompanying CD/DVD-ROMs in their latest editions. Presumably other companies are doing or will do the same thing. I guess I just missed the digital revolution by a few years when I was taking these classes in college. Although, DVD-ROMs aren’t as helpful as regular DVDs, because you can’t play them on your TV, just your computer. So there’s still room for improvement. And of course, the next step is an authorized web repository. Good luck getting the MPAA to agree to that.