Cinema and Education: script teaching with the film Central Station

Through interdisciplinary research involving education and cinema, the article aims to analyze the narrative of the film Central Station (1998), directed by Walter Salles, and identify elements for teaching three-act narratives in a script. The research is classified as descriptive and documentary, with a qualitative approach, and uses the film analysis technique. The main result was the realization that the practice of teaching scripts, from the cinema itself, is an essential issue to encourage discussions, deepen studies and instigate creative ideas. It is also found that Central Station is not a film that only allows the teaching of three-act narrative, but also promotes discussions in the most different spheres, whether to issues related to the Brazilian social scene, senior people, and their relationship with work, culture, and national folklore.


Introduction
In the emergence of the cinema, at the end of the 19th century, its pioneers, the French brother's Auguste and Louis Lumière, had no educational intentions with the machine for making and projecting moving images. It was over the years that cinema became a form of media artistic language, converging the fields of art and communication. It is in this sense that Jameson (1997, p. 93) points to cinema as "the first clearly mediatic art form" and the only one "in history to be invented in the contemporary period". In a short time, this form of media art began to be used as a subsidy in education in the most different spheres of education. One of the pioneers in Brazil to implement the proposal of cinema as a resource for education was Edgard Roquette-Pinto, with the creation of the National Institute of Educational Cinema, INCE, under his direction, in the 1930s. This Institute lasted into the 1960s.
With the arrival of the VCR in the 1970s and with the increase in regular and pay TV channels in the following years, the possibility of recording films at home -to display as often as needed -began to become more accessible in subsequent decades.
The first step of the filmic image, that is, the language of cinema, is in the sequence, in the construction of images with complete meaning. Therefore, the concept of reading a film is the concept of assembling sequences since cinema is made by moving images. It is the assembling that creates the film's reality and constitutes the specific configuration that the film presents of the narrated facts. The film creates the illusion of continuous narration from the elements of its script, in short, it is made up of discontinuous cuts and jumps that are integral parts of its language (Santaella, 2006).
As stated by Martin (2013, p. 16) "cinema has become a means of communication, information, and advertising, which does not contradict, absolutely, its quality of art". And as an artistic form, it is considered that its language can be defined as a particular set of signs that form a logical and organized system whose form is also intended for communication.
Currently, cinema continues to be used as an educational resource and the proliferation of audiovisual images on the internet has further promoted access to works with high image and sound quality. It is easily possible to perform downloads of scenes or even full-length films. This enables the easy use of cinema as a didactic tool by teachers, confirming the pressing need for an education designed for the 21st century, that is, for/ from the digital era, in which the involvement of students in the learning processes is constantly foreseen.
Due to the pandemic (Covid-19) many teachers faced the challenge of adapting their classes to the online model and the cinema also became an efficient resource to exemplify contexts, illustrate situations and facilitate the understanding of some contents, favoring the demonstration, application, and execution. In the words of Pérez Gómez (2015, p. 111) "any application of knowledge is a new opportunity to learn, and every new learning opens up a new opportunity for application". The author also highlights that "learning is getting involved in practical activities to learn new forms of involvement and unlearn certain habits".
Through empirical observation, it is clear that the teaching of script content in courses such as Cinema and Audiovisual Production in Brazil has been based, from a survey of bibliographic references, on classic technical works to teach script such as those by the authors Syd Field, Robert McKee, Doc Comparato, among others. All these authors use cinematographic film narratives as examples to teach the practice of writing and the script's conception for cinema. Some curricular components of some courses in the Media area use these authors to teach audiovisual writing.
By bringing as examples other works that are part of the recent history of Brazilian cinema such as Four days in September (1997, Bruno Barreto), A dog's will (2000, Guel Arraes), City of God (2002, Fernando Meirelles), or Central Station (1998, for the object of study, it is possible to perceive contents that can help in teaching about scriptwriting and see how the use of cinema in education can be extremely fruitful for teaching the practice of teaching how to make cinema. Based on the above, the purpose of this article is to analyze the narrative of the film Central Station and identify elements for teaching three-act narratives in a script.

Didactic works on a script
Much of what is taught about script in the country has been based on important American authors, from didactic works, such as those by Syd Field (in memorian) and Robert Mckee, both recognized in international film schools. As well as Doc Comparato, Brazilian, who is known in the field for having already written for television and cinema and for being one of the pioneers to publish a book on writing for audiovisual in the country.
The work Screenplay: the foundations of screenwriting (2001 [1979]), written by Field in the late 1970s, covers all the stages of writing a script, from the idea to the final treatment for production. It mainly addressed the concept of the paradigm of dramatic structure which refers to a narrative construction scheme, in which all of them are divided into three acts (presentation, confrontation, and resolution). The characters must also have defined needs for actions in each of these acts. For Field (2001Field ( [1979), every character is considered the foundation of a script, so it is important for the scriptwriter to know him well. The author cites different Hollywood motion pictures as examples, which are part of his audiovisual repertoire.
Another well-known work by Field is Four Screenplays: Studies in the American Screenplay (1997 [1994]). The work explores many examples of film scripts, in an exemplary way, and how they are conducted from this theory. For Field (1997Field ( [1994), every script has its own form and that is always original. It combines elements such as images, dialogues, and descriptions to tell a story to be transformed into an audiovisual production. It serves as a guide in which it shows all the steps and forms the script will take.
At work Story: substance, structure, style and the principles of screenwriting, by McKee (2006McKee ( [1997), more than 100 films are used as examples in which important elements that define a quality story are identified. The author points out that, especially in the United States, most scriptwriters were taught not to study the fundamental principles of a story. McKee comments on the unusual structures such as the structures of two, seven, and eight acts, as well as explaining classic scenes of the film and their fundamentals.
In Da criação ao roteiro: teoria e prática, Comparato (2018), presents different views about the scriptwriter's performance. By using Brazilian and foreign examples, the work teaches new definitions that are applied to scripts produced in the streaming era, to fictional series, to the writing of different audiovisual genres, among many others.

Cinema and education: reflections and possibilities
The use of media in the classroom has been adopted by many schools for being a resource that facilitates the teaching activity. This makes the exercise a significant factor in media recognition at school. This practice needs to advance to create qualified, contextualized, and systematized reflections on the social scene. In the mediatized era it is necessary that education is considered in a communicative and knowledge production perspective and that it knows how to deal with the different communication processes existing in the global society (Melo & Tosta, 2008).
According to Pérez Gómez "we live in the global village and the information era, a time of rapid change, with an unprecedented increase in interdependence and complexity that is causing a radical change in the way we communicate, act, think and express" (Pérez Gómez, 2015, p. 14).
Both students and teachers are touched by multiple platforms, as well as the school itself, in most cases, has resources that facilitate the interaction of the media with the education in the teaching and learning process (Melo & Tosta, 2008).
Education in the digital era has increasingly recognized the power of access, instruction, and training arising from the use of digital platforms. Students become spectators or users of the content on these platforms -cinema, in the case of this research -and as Pérez Gómez points out, for this they need to be constantly engaged in learning and developing a specific vocabulary. Students need to learn the language of screens and mediations and for these teachers need to prepare the students to read and write through the multimediatics platforms and so consume 'the film, the script, the narrative event, the message, the emotion', thus comprising "the intricate, connected nature of contemporary life" (Pérez Gómez, 2015, p. 21).
The spectator/user of a film lives emotionally as if it were a real event. It is as if the spectator becomes a witness of that event and participates in it. Therefore, it is not simple to transpose past and future to screens, as well as the unreal times. The first films were about present life, which documented everyday life, until reaching the cinema we know today.
The emotions that the cinema conveys to the spectator are the same as were the bases of sensations of the Roman circus enthusiasts and which currently approximates the same emotions felt by the car racing spectators.
Lotman (1978, p. 36) states that cinema gives a double emotion: "to forget and at the same time be aware that what is seen is a fiction". In other words, films can arouse emotion by the plot and at the same time, you can appreciate the actor's performance. "Art is not limited to reproducing the world with the inert automatism of a mirror: by transforming the images of the world into signs, art fills it with meanings" (Lotman, 1978, p. 30).
Cinematographic films are excellent symbolic systems that can generate several meanings, and, in the school context, they play a very important role due to their amplitude when discussing different representations of culture and society, according to authors Viana, Rosa & Orey (2014).
When conducting a bibliographic survey of scientific production about cinema and education, Almeida (2017) points out a positive issue for the various biases addressed in the research due to the plurality of studies and the different interpretations that cinema can mean in the classroom. Some of the research, according to the author, validate Hollywood films, even with marketing importance, by contemplating different perspectives and reading possibilities.
Everything that is noticed during the projection of a film, and that touches us and acts on us, has a meaning. For Lotman, learning to assimilate these meanings is as indispensable as for anyone who wants to understand classical dance. Any information conveyed by a film is not exclusively cinematographic. That is, the film portrays the world, and it will only be understood if the spectator identifies these traits of the world in the film and these traits are signified by this or that thing -translated as "world". "The cinematographic meaning results from a particular chain of semiotic elements, a chain that is characteristic of cinema" (Lotman, 1978, p. 77).
For a cinema activity in the classroom to be successful, it is important for the teacher to watch the film and study it before displaying it. Whether to expose the full film or just excerpts from it. It is necessary to research important data about the audiovisual work, in addition to preparing a discussion script with the students to highlight what should be studied with that activity in question (Duarte, 2002). Every audiovisual work as an educational resource according to Silva, Silva & Almeida (2017, p. 261), "needs to be used with due prudence, with objective and intellectual responsibility, its use should not be occasional, but with planning and articulation with the disciplinary contents".
In this sense, to help teachers select a film to be used in the classroom, Napolitano (2004) makes some notes that help the choice and that are related to the didacticpedagogical objectives of the activity and the film. It is important to know if the work fits the students' age group and if the screening will only be of some scenes, the most punctual, or of the entire film. The author also comments that: "working with cinema in the classroom is helping the school to rediscover the culture that is both every day and elevated, because cinema is the field in which esthetic, leisure, ideology and broader social values are synthesized in the same piece of art" (Napolitano, 2004, p. 11).
Although there is still a certain resistance on the part of social actors to see cinema as a didactic resource since audiovisual productions are like entertainment spectacles, many teachers use cinema only as a pedagogical illustration. In fact, cinema in the classroom is sometimes not explored in the way it should be. As Duarte (2002, p. 17) reports, "watching films is a social practice so important from the point of view of the cultural and educational background of the people, as reading literary, philosophical, sociological works and so on". For Napolitano (2004, p. 11), "from the most commercial and uncommitted to the most sophisticated and 'difficult', films always have some possibility for schoolwork".
According to Garcia & Pereira (2018): Most of the materials available in Brazil about the educational use of cinema are case reports and experience records -suggestions for activities and exercises and a list of works and possible topics for discussion. As it is a relatively young art, we are clear that the discussion of cinema related to education will become even more common and profound, especially if we do our part as researchers and share our experiences and reflections (Garcia & Pereira, 2018, p. 149). It is important that the educator knows how to share their experiences with the film and knows how to analyze and select the most relevant scenes of the filmic work to relate to the content taught. From this, it will be possible to take full advantage of the cinematographic resource to illustrate the contents that are being exposed in classes (Bona, 2021).
Every activity that relates to cinema and education is almost always linked to certain curricular knowledge. And it is important to know that, like other languages, cinematographic language can offer many possibilities (Fusari, 2009). In this way, the basic knowledge of the cinematographic language by the teacher becomes important because, according to Napolitano (2004, p. 57), "a good part of the values and messages conveyed by the films we watch is effective not so much by the story itself, but by the way of telling it". Fischer (2018) seems to corroborate the premises when she attests that: our experience with the practice of cinema in the classroom tells us that -depending on how we choose the works, how we propose them to the students, and how we conduct the selection of scenes and articulations with facts from Brazilian and world daily life -it is possible to touch people, affect them, invite them to creation, to thinking. It is possible, from a cinematographic narrative, to bend forces that constitute us historically, forces of knowledge and power, in a work of you for you. This is not a mere introspection, psychically interior experimentation and "from me to me": a work is at stake, a collective effort, which begins with the good preparation of the meetings with the film and with the spectators (who are also us themselves, teachers) (Fischer, 2018, p. 31).
In research about franchise films and education, it was noticed that films like Star Wars, even though they are considered marketable audiovisual products to generate profit, they also have problematization fields by exposing the spectators to situations that include moral and educational values (Hochsprung & Bona, 2016).
Although franchise films are considered marketable products that depend on great advertising efforts to generate profit, it is important to highlight that in some cases it is possible to observe the cinema beyond a product made for commercialization. In some of these films, the presence of problematization fields, exposing children to situations that include moral values, may help in the development process of their moral education (Hochsprung & Bona, 2016, p. 396).
To present the film as a powerful field of problematization with an educational focus, Duarte (2002, p. 90) states that: "cinema is a precious instrument, for example, to teach respect for values, beliefs, and worldviews that guide the practices of the different social groups that combine complex societies".

Methodological procedures
The research is classified as descriptive and documentary, with a qualitative approach, and uses the technique of film analysis through the concepts addressed by Penafria (2009). According to the author, analyzing a film is the same as decomposing it. There is no unified methodology to analyze a cinematographic work, but it is important to decompose/describe the work's images and then interpret them according to the proposal's objective. Film analysis is an important activity because it allows to effectively verify and evaluate their specificities in the production of meanings. Penafria complements that: [...] the analysis of films is a fundamental activity -and we would say urgent -in discourses about cinema. Only through analysis will be possible to effectively verify and evaluate the films in terms of their specificity or similarity about others. But film analysis is not only an activity from which it is possible to see the cinema more and better, through analysis it is also possible to learn how to make cinema. (Penafria, 2009, p. 9).
The criteria used to choose the film, the object of the research, were done in a nonprobabilistic way, by a judgment of researchers and intentionally, because it is a wellknown film in the recent history of Brazilian cinema.
Central Station, a film directed by Walter Salles, tells the story of Dora (Fernanda Montenegro), a former teacher who writes letters to illiterate people at the Central do Brasil station, in Rio de Janeiro. At a certain point, she meets Josué (Vinícius de Oliveira), a nine-year-old boy, who loses his mother, Ana (Sôia Lira), in an accident. Dora is reluctant to help the boy but joins him and they leave for the northeast of Brazil in search of Josué's father.
The film received two nominations for the Academy Awards, in 1999, in the categories of Best actress in a leading role (Fernanda Montenegro) and best foreign language film (as of 2020, this category came to be called Best international feature film). Central Station had an important repercussion in cinemas and the media around the world. The story of the film works with universal feelings such as friendship and companionship, important elements to delight audiences around the world. In addition to the Oscar nominations, Central Station won the Golden Globes Awards for Best foreign language film in 1999, a pioneering fact (and unique until today) for Brazilian cinema. The film also won the Golden Berlin Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. In 2018, when it completed 20 years of its release, the film was re-released in a restored copy in 4K version.

The teaching of three-act narrative from the script of Central Station
The conception of scripts in three acts is one of the most studied examples in different film and audiovisual schools. For Field (2016, p. 23), "a script is a story told through images, dialogues, and descriptions, always located within a dramatic structure". This structure is related to the classic beginning (act I), middle (act II), and end (act III) in which each of the stages has its determined actions by the plot and its characters. Generally speaking, each page of a script is equivalent to one minute of recording. Therefore, the average of a script in the standard Hollywood has 120 pages.
In another script teaching work, Field (2001Field ( [1979) exposes the paradigm in which act I refers to the presentation of the story and characters (which is around pages 1 to 30 -in a 120-page script); in act II the confrontation of the characters takes place (between pages 30 and 90); and in act III, the resolution (between pages 90 and 120). All these acts are united by the structure that is what "holds the story in place. It is the relationship between the parts and the whole that determines the game" (Field, 2001, p. 2). They have the main conflict (plot) and the plot points that are part of the narrative construction of the acts. The conflict is the backbone of the story, the plot; the plot points are responsible for events or incidents that take the narrative in another direction.
The film Central Station is scripted -based on the idea of Walter Salles -by two beginners in film scripts at the time: Marcos Bernstein and João Emanuel Carneiro. At a time of social and political crisis in Brazil, Salles began to be inspired by the character Dora, based on the story of the ex-convict Socorro Nobre who, in prison, helped other inmates to write letters. The script went through about twenty-five versions until it reached the final story.
Dora is a character with well-defined characteristics in the script. It goes through the entire process of maturity of a character within a narrative (Field, 2001). The beginning of the film shows a bitter and grumpy character, who is also smart and embezzler for taking advantage of the naivety of the illiterates. According to Seger (2006), the character is one of the pillars of a script. Most stories are built from its context. To build a good character in a script, extensive research must be done so that the contexts in which it is inserted, and lives make sense and really seem real. It is necessary to deeply research the entire life of a character, for what the audience watches is only a part of the entire construction of the author.
Over time the narrative, Dora gets closer to Josué, which helps her in the maturation of the character. From the middle of the film onwards, it is possible to notice it maturing characteristics that are revealed according to the narrative's proximity to the climax. When reaching the end of the script, we see a transformed Dora, kind, expressing an image of accomplishment and that everyone deserves a second chance.
Cinematographic works used as a pedagogical tool -according to Fusari (2009) -can generate different senses and meanings for each of the students and it is essential that the teacher capture these possibilities and give them potentially. Considering that films can present illustrations for the class, they can be an important object to exemplify different contexts of scriptwriting.
It is important that the teacher has watched the film Central Station before the screening, in order to explain the narrative to the students and project only a few scenes. The film's plot must be previously contextualized for them.
As an aid for teaching scripting from the narrative of the three acts and without needing to show the entire film, three moments can be selected that clearly illustrate this in Central Station. The first is the plot point of the story (around 8:45) when the running over of Josué's mother happens, taking the narrative in another direction. Ana, Josué's mother is with him in front of Dora, at Central do Brasil, and asks Dora to rewrite the letter to her husband Jesus. According to the film script -published by Editora Objetiva -this would be a part of scene number 8 (Carneiro & Bernstein, 1998).
In the course of the scene, Josué, at several moments, with well-directed framing, plays with his top, an object that is made by carpenters, the profession of the father he wants to know. This top can be considered a sign, a pillar element in the narrative as it represents a series of issues that will be addressed in other scenes in the film. When the letter has finished writing, Josué and his mother leave for the exit and, as a distraction, while the boy plays with the top, she is run over by a bus. It is with this running over/ death that the beginning of the main drama of the film's story takes place.
Through this scene, it is possible to teach in a very didactic way the importance of the scene elements -in this case, the top -to meet the beginning of the action, which is important for a filmic plot and that a scriptwriter must plan in the narrative building. Baptista (2008) addresses an interesting discussion related to scenographic objects, and that these should not be seen only as a secondary role but perceived as elements that build important actions and relate to the actors, with the art direction, with the filmic plot in general. In short, by directing this look at two important facts of this turning point, which are: the death and the top, we will notice some pillar elements that move the plot of the film.
The second moment is the pilgrimage scene (around 1:08:00) where Dora is already reaching her tolerance limit with Josué, in addition to presenting the entire personality transition of the main character, which was the bitter one who wrote letters in Central do Brasil and now demonstrates a more honest and helpful personality.
This scene can be considered number 89, according to the script (Carneiro & Bernstein, 1998), and as the closing scene of the second act, in which the film moves to the last phase. Dora, desperate after falling out with Josué, who runs off, starts screaming for his name. The scene takes place at night, with several faithful holding candles in the procession. The voices of the praying people become louder than Dora's screams. Distressed, she enters the miracle stand, where she faints and Josué reappears. From then on, the two became good friends. With this moment, it is possible to teach how the conduction of the end of the second act is remarkable through gestures, growth, and maturity of the characters, as well as the parts of the audio and sound design, which are also important. It is worth remembering a quote from Field (2001Field ( [1979) mentioning that at this point in the film the scriptwriter needs to understand that his characters should be like very close friends.
Once again, considering the relationship between objects, how much can be discussed about lighted candles, going to a sacred place, and how much this symbolically represents in the context for a scriptwriter to write the scene. Even though the audiovisual is in an era of advanced technologies in which there is an extensive post-production work in which the scenarios and objects undergo transformations, according to Baptista (2008), it is possible to consider that when teaching script, students can understand the importance of objects and scenarios in the contextualization of written narrative.
The last moment is when Dora says goodbye and goes back to Rio de Janeiro (around 1:35:00) which refers to the climax and leads to the resolution of the third act. Scene number 111 begins (Carneiro & Bernstein, 1998). Dora begins to get ready to leave without telling the others. The most important moment, and one that serves to teach a good resolution of a story, is when Dora places the letter from Josué's father, who he so much wanted to know -and did not know -next to the letter from the deceased mother addressed to the boy's father. This letter is placed below their portrait on the wall. Dora leaves the house, boards the bus, while Josué in distress runs after her. Dora begins writing a letter to Josué and gives him hope. Field (2001Field ( [1979), comments that who writes the script must generate different conflicts so that the audience maintains interest in the narrative, but this story needs to go in the direction of resolution. In this case, the resolution of Central Station continues to be directed in the hope of finding the father. In a poetic way, we can see that in the beginning, it was a bus that took the life of Josué's mother to start the narrative plot, and Dora, supposedly, take her place. Now, again, it is a bus that takes Dora away and the story leaves it open to the imagination.

Final considerations
The article aimed to analyze the film Central Station from an educational perspective concerning the teaching of scripts. In the film, it was possible to find illustrative scenes that contribute to the explanation of the classic narrative of the three acts (Field, 2001). Even though it is a Brazilian production, its script structure is like Hollywood narratives as it presents, in a coherent way, the narrative in act I, which presents the personality of its characters (Dora and Josué) and their role in the narrative; followed by act II, in which the confrontation of characters takes place; and in act III, in which we can see the resolution of conflicts initiated in act I. Thus, the film is supported as an example in education.
Central Station is not a film that only allows the teaching of three-act narrative in audiovisual scripts but promotes discussions in the most different spheres. These are issues related to the country's social scene, about seniors and the relationship with work, culture, and folklore of the Brazilian people. In short, the main result of this research was the finding that the practice of teaching scripts, based on other scripts, is an essential issue to encourage discussions, deepen studies and instigate creative ideas.