THE week marks the beginning of a new semester of the filmmaking programme I teach in university.

I eagerly anticipate the start of each new academic semester, as it signifies the resumption of classes for the next 14 weeks. During this time, I get to do what I do best: teach and engage with students. It also offers some reprieve from the administrative paperwork and deadline-chasing that come with the job.

A subject I am teaching this semester is media ethics, for which I also developed the syllabus. This subject can be considered interdisciplinary as it applies the principles of journalism to research.

Although many of my colleagues argue that filmmaking is already an interdisciplinary vocation, being the relatively youngest art form that combines concepts from literature, theatre, visual arts, music, and photography, “interdisciplinarity” in practice is another matter.

According to the student’s trusty friend, Wikipedia, the term interdisciplinary is “applied within education and training pedagogies to describe studies that use methods and insights of several established disciplines or traditional fields of study”.

Teaching undergraduate students about research is one of the biggest challenges in a creative arts programme like ours. Students are more naturally drawn to the hands-on aspects of filmmaking.

As a result, we often end up with visually stunning short film projects that lack substance or have a shallow and clichéd storyline. This is a common gripe in the discussion of local mainstream films.

Undergraduate studies also emphasise specialisation, with most programmes focusing on a particular field of study. Specialisation is the norm in university programmes because, within the broader academic ecosystem, the higher you climb, the more specialised you are expected to become.

This influences students’ expectations of university learning, especially in an age in which phrases like “guaranteed jobs” and “university” are often falsely advertised.

This is why I often describe the first year of a creative arts undergraduate programme as “rehabilitation” – clearing the air for students about what learning a craft entails and why research, not just creative talent, matters. However, the term “research” can sound heavy and unexciting.

As educators, we must find ways to guide students out of these preconceived expectations and engage them in activities that pique their interest in the world we will eventually hand over to them.

This is why I believe that the basic 5Ws and 1H principles used in – but not owned by – journalism are the best introduction to research. The final project for this class is a photo essay based on a topic or issue they identify and research.

For the first class, I gave them a simple tutorial to “buka panggung” (set the stage), as they say in mak yong. They had to download the Google News app, which none of them had on their phones. As expected, film students rarely, if ever, read the news.

Next, I asked them to scan for news using the keyword “Klang Valley”, from which they narrowed the subjects down to air quality, traffic congestion, and rent hikes.

They voted on which of the three topics affected them the most. The results are in the following order: traffic congestion, rent hikes, and air quality.

Of course, this exercise had a hidden purpose: it allowed me to gauge their social class Most of them drove and were single occupants. It is a private university in the Klang Valley, after all.

A quarter of the students were from out of state or abroad. The words “landlord” and “rent” are significant in their lives. They were aware of air pollution although most of them were probably in denial about their contribution to it.

After a short discussion, one student posed an excellent question: Why should I care?

While it was hardly a Newtonian moment, I was happy to respond, emphasising that this will be the recurring question they will face not only as future filmmakers but also as citizens.

The answer lies in the research these students will undertake this semester, and I look forward to watching them grow not only as responsible filmmakers but also as Malaysians.

These are the small victories of an educator. – April 26, 2024.

* Azmyl Yunor is a touring underground recording artiste, and an academic in media and cultural studies. He has published articles on pop culture, subcultures and Malaysian cultural politics. He adheres to the three-chords-and-the-truth school of songwriting, and Woody Guthrie’s maxim “All you can write is what you see”. He is @azmyl on Twitter.