Informal learning through fictional and narrative films: a study on film reception in the Iberian Peninsula

The behaviour and understanding of human beings about their reality, world and life comes from contact with a series of experiences, situations and communications (whether objective or subjective, sensitive or artistic) enabling them to create, adjust and think about their expectations, attitudes and knowledge. As a cognitive, emotional and empirical communication device, cinema allows one to represent, to reference and to express reality as a metaphor through stories and imagined/simulated universes that reflect, expand and problematize the ontological conditions of what is real. Whereas the approach of narratives is to format the film elements into structures that stretch beyond the film account (they are part of journalism, science and everyday communication), fiction provides the means to broaden the horizons of possibilities and ways in and out of the real world, giving the spectator a sense of security, causing a decreased cognitive resistance in the spectator and a consequent increase in their emotional openness to the film. When spectators see a film, their attention, awareness and ability to pretend are drawn through a series of events, actions and outcomes in which they are required to participate. This participation is equivalent to their having an active role (rather than a passive one) in the film reception, and involves phenomena such as perception, understanding and interpretation, but expands until it develops into projection and identification enhanced by the actual immersive context of the cinema-situation. All that which defines and is part of each spectator (in terms of psychology, sociology and culture) is embodied in a film that opens up to their dreams and desires and comes out as a catharsis to resolve frustrations, inabilities and inefficiencies, projecting some of its own figures, actions and situations on the spectators' minds, enhancing their ability (and willingness) to learn from what they see, hear and feel. In the sense described above, it can be said that fictional and narrative films combine a series of conditions (communicational and receptive) conducive to the development of various types of learning by whoever sees them, leaving room for different subjectivities that influence the flexible rigidity of the fictional and narrative film proposal. Each spectator experiences a world and story as if they were their own in one same space (the context of reception, the screen and the contents it conveys), which inevitably leads to the use of the contributions made possible by such an experience. Informal learning such as the one described, however, always assumes that access to the subjective data on experience, understanding, interpretation and essential integration of film elements is difficult. Our aim is therefore to determine in theory and empirically the potential and effectiveness of informal learning through fictional and narrative films, showing the results of an ongoing study begun in 2013 (part of a doctoral research) that compiles the views of spectators in Portugal and in Spain on their film experiences and on the contributions and learning identified therein.