In Munich, 1968, filmmaker Edgar Reitz engaged with a small class of thirteen and fourteen year old girls in the first ever documented attempt in film history to teach film aesthetics as an individual subject. Each student was given a Super 16 camera and encouraged to engage with filmmaking as not just a practical exercise but a way of viewing the world critically and communicating concepts with a new form of language. Fifty-five years after the resulting documentary Filmstunde was aired on Bavarian television, Reitz and the class regather to discuss how the short course changed their lives. Blending segments from the original work, the short films directed by each girl and the reunion, Subject: Filmmaking is both a time capsule of a vanished world and a loving exploration of the curiosity and creative drive at the heart of filmmaking.

Bringing together elements of durational documentary making in a way reminiscent of the ongoing Up Series, Subject: Filmmaking is a long-term exposure portrait of a remarkable group of women and a truly revolutionary teacher. In a contemporary climate saturated with overwrought shot-by-shot meta analysis of "content" it's incredibly refreshing to witness a kind of mini-film school education that focuses on cinema as a parallel mode of communication with rules that can be learned and strategically broken. The short films made by the girls are incredibly charming, even more so witnessing the ways in which personalities can be set for life from such a young age. Reitz's dream of a national film curriculum would never come to fruition, and the core of Subject: Filmmaking is a realisation of how much it could have improved our media literacy and understanding of the world.