Intercultural film literacy education against cultural mis-representation: Finnish visual art teachers’ perspectives

Abstract

Cultural misrepresentation simplifies cultures and their minorities, promotes racism, nationalism and eventually weakens democracies by spreading false information through audio-visual media. Intercultural film literacy education combines intercultural education and film literacy and uses a film as a starting point to discuss the cultural context, to analyse cultural representation and to evaluate how the culture is portrayed from a stylistic and formal point of view. The current study builds upon the previous research that linked intercultural education and film literacy to discuss how visual art teachers understand and practice intercultural film literacy education towards critical analyses of cultural representation in audio-visual media. The research data includes eight semi-structured interviews with Finnish visual art teachers, which were analysed using a thematic approach. The findings reveal the need to broaden the concept of intercultural education to include LGBTQ+ people and focus on their experiences. At the same time, the findings highlight the importance of critical thinking to combat cultural misrepresentation, as well as the broader view of film literacy, which includes video-based social media. Finally, the results reveal a lack of cultural representation in an already limited number of teaching materials.