University of Virginia Library

Seeing Through The Maze

By BARRY LEVINE

(Mr. Levine, a former film
critic for The Cavalier Daily,
has spent the last semester
studying film-making with a
group of documentations in
Boston. This summer, he will
be editing films for
Documentary Educational
Resources in Somerville, Mass.
–Ed.)

Despite the present
openings in the curriculum, it
is not difficult for a college
education to be academic.
Even, the most ambitious
student can fall into a course
structuring where external
requirements tend to guide
interests, and education
becomes confused with
evaluation procedures.

Several extracurricular
projects for credit, and my
present work-study program in
Boston, have dispelled many of
my doubts as to whether an
imaginative educational
program is possible within the
educational structure at the
University. However, the real
question is whether most
students will be able to see
themselves through the
bureaucratic maze and into the
openings.

As far as I can see, there are
at least two causes why
self-generating programs here
are more the exception than
the rule, and why, when a
student is motivated, it is
usually in a career slot.

The first and perhaps most
important for those interested
in creative activity is that, for
all purposes, there is virtually
no creative community at this
University for undergraduates
(although I like to think that
something of the sort exists for
graduates and some faculty
members). One of the few sane
reasons I chose to continue
writing for The Cavalier Daily
is that it is the only way I
could produce writing that
might be read by non-teachers,
and that might reach others
with similar interests. Most
student work here is
necessarily directed toward
teachers.

The other reason is that,
although it sounds dangerously
fashionable, too many course
offerings and programs are the
outlines of the print-oriented
world of a faculty member.
"Relevance," as far as I'm
concerned, is meaningless, but
perception is still the most
valuable quality of an
education, and, even more than
literature, film is what today
makes people think about their
lives.

Like the other arts, film can
help us to see: it can be
heuristic, it can be evocative, it
can be encompassing. What it
contains more than any other
form, however, is that
mysterious involvement known
as "immediacy." It projects a
fluid series of impressions
whose surface accessibility may
be open to anyone with senses,
but whose significance and
beauty may be as selective as
insight.

And, despite those who
think that film is easy to make
or digest because it involves a
mechanical and chemical
process, and despite those