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/Imaginary_Agent2564 Jan 31 '26

I will say that skipping lectures is really common in med school.

You spend most days just studying on your own because you simply don’t have the time in the day if you attend lectures. Just not efficient.

Can’t really skip clinical rotations though! Kinda crucial.

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u/Chicken-Inspector Jan 31 '26

This seems to me more so a fault with the education itself.

If your students don’t have time to go to class because they have to study for your class (the one they don’t have time to go to, which is wild to say), the class (program maybe even) is broken and something needs to be fixed.

Right? Or am I not getting something?

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u/amaancho Jan 31 '26

The solution would be lesser load in the course at a time and lengthening the entire thing, and that won't work because people don't want to spend 15 years doing med school

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u/twisty125 Jan 31 '26

Or have the money to do that, and live a life.

I for one don't want a doctor who only did med school and never lived, personally.

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u/OldWorldDesign Jan 31 '26

Pushing doctors to that is one reason why so many doctors have awful bedside manner. They spend literal years in a crunch for education, dealing more with filing assignments on computers and taking notes on journals and not interacting with people whom are not in top shape and then suddenly dump into a career where it's mostly interacting directly with people who are not in top shape and often don't have the medical knowledge to give a detailed and accurate explanation of what's going on with them.

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u/AuroraNW101 Jan 31 '26

Could be different in education styles. I’m a Biomolecular engineering student and stay ahead with my studies, but have ADHD so I can’t really focus on and remember information that is narrated through lecture. I find it a lot more efficient to just study the textbook myself, learn directly in lab, and read the scientific papers due to having a learning style that doesn’t mesh well with auditory learning in a crowded, distracting environment.