The Discourse of the Handle: Teachers, Students and the Blackboard Film.

This article examines the political and pedagogical dimensions of the Dziga Vertov Group’s "blackboard films" within the context of Marxist debates on education in late 1960s and early 1970s France, particularly focusing on the influence and critique of Louis Althusser and his students from the École Normale Supérieure. It explores the tensions between Althusserian theory, Maoist practice, and the role of the teacher-student relationship as both a site of ideological reproduction and potential revolutionary transformation, highlighting the ambivalent position of the teacher figure in these films and related theoretical writings, including those of Jacques Rancière. The article also engages with Serge Daney’s concept of "Godardian pedagogy," which frames the films’ didactic yet contradictory mode of address as a "discourse of the handle"—a powerful, authoritarian teaching style that is simultaneously enacted and questioned. Ultimately, the analysis situates the Dziga Vertov Group’s work as a complex experiment in militant cinema and Marxist pedagogy that both reproduces and challenges hierarchical educational structures, pointing toward the unresolved tension between teaching as domination and as a site of emancipatory potential. [Extracted from the article]