Sunedria Nicholls-Gärtner
Sunedria Nicholls-Gärtner started her career on international film sets in Vancouver, Canada, before moving to Germany in 1993 and into the editing room. She has taught at the RTL School for Journalism and the IFS, the international film school of Cologne and since 2012 is Head of Studies at the ifs pioneering research & development and international strategies. She completed her MA in Leadership in 2021 (Royal Roads University, Canada) and is a member of the Standing Committee for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (SCEDI) of CILECT since 2018. Currently she heads the future.film.education international research project for the ifs.
Future Film Education
Narratives, audiovisual representations, films and digital media strongly affect our understanding and interpretation of the social world. To support gender equality and more diversity in contemporary film and media productions, a reassessment of the curricular in film and media education worldwide is pressing.
Future.film.education is a collaborative research project aiming to contribute to a more innovative, inclusive and diverse film and higher education environments in Europe, both on- and offline. The joint project brought together three European film and art schools, namely ifs Internationale filmschule Köln (Germany), Moholy Nagy University of Art and Design (Hungary) and Universidade Lusófona (Portugal), that over two years developed specialised toolkits and a MOOC for teaching diversity. The project aimed at helping students navigate critical thinking in film and media in relation to equity, diversity and inclusion as well as support educators to incorporate these into their curricula.
The results of the project showed teachers exploring the minorities and deprived environments in our communities as well as raised questions around how to increase the literacy of audiovisual audiences through diversity. The presentation will show the outcomes of this project to promote discussion for considering diversity and inclusion as core aspects of film and media literacy now and in the future.