The Role of Arts and Culture-Based Teachers in Increasing Vocational School Students’ Participation in Student Film Festivals

Abstract

Vocational secondary education in Indonesia is organised around technical competence, and the arts and culture teacher is commonly treated as peripheral to that purpose. Film has nevertheless become the most accessible expressive medium available to vocational students, and student film festivals the principal arena in which their work is judged. This article examines how arts and culture teachers shape the willingness of vocational school students to take part in the Festival Film Pelajar Jogja and in the screening and mentoring programme organised around it. The study is qualitative and interpretive, reading teaching practice through Durkheim’s conception of the social fact and through the sociology of film festivals. It draws on semi-structured interviews with fifteen informants — school leaders, arts and culture teachers, festival organisers, a film director and students — and on observation of mentoring workshops, screenings and appreciation sessions. Thematic analysis identifies three teacher practices recurring across the schools studied: intensive mentoring through idea development, scripting and shooting; structured film education combining screening, technical demonstration and analysis; and community-based learning in which student work is presented to a local audience and discussed with it. Each practice raises not only technical skill but confidence, collaborative capacity and analytical judgement. The article argues that the arts and culture teacher functions less as an instructor in a subject than as a mediator between the school and the film community, and that festival participation is the outcome of that mediation.