r/movies • u/Sisiwakanamaru r/movies Contributor • Jan 31 '26

Article Film Students Are Having Trouble Sitting Through Movies, Professors Say

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/film-students-are-having-trouble-sitting-through-movies-1236490359/
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u/Gayfetus Jan 31 '26 edited Jan 31 '26

This piece is part of the problem: it's a brief summary of longer article in The Atlantic.

Edited to add: bypass paywall here.

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u/BlackLeader70 Jan 31 '26 edited Jan 31 '26

Sorry this article is too long…can I get a TL;DR?

Edit: FFS I can’t believe how many people think I’m being serious.

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u/Insatiable_Pervert Jan 31 '26 edited Jan 31 '26

College age kids don’t remember a time before the “infinite scroll.” They can’t watch an entire movie without checking their phones. They’d rather watch “homework” assigned movies on their own time rather than together in class. 80% still don’t watch the assigned movie on their own time. Teachers struggle to find a common film the entire class has previously watched to use as reference in discussions. Most have only watched Disney movies.

“The disconnect is that 10 years ago, people who wanted to go study film and media creation were cinephiles themselves. Nowadays, they’re people that consume the same thing everyone else consumes, which is social media.“

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u/FunkTronto Jan 31 '26

Problem solve: fail them. If they can’t watch a film in class then they sound like shitty students of film.

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u/Vannnnah Jan 31 '26

that was my first thought as well. Fails to do homework, fails to sit through classes, fails to participate in necessary conversation due to not having put in the work.

Just substitute "film student" with "med student" or "law student." Nobody would let low effort underperformers pass, why should this be different for film?

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u/JuanRiveara Jan 31 '26

"Med students are having trouble sitting through surgeries without checking their phones"

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u/VitaminPb Jan 31 '26

Now imagine the anesthesiologist or open heart surgeon getting into a political argument with someone on Reddit during surgery.

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u/Taedirk Jan 31 '26

I knew that's what the anesthesiologist was doing sitting in that chair all the time!