As teachers, educators and film artists, we believe it is our mission to explore and pursue creative, innovative paths of ethical training that allow for a more enriching understanding of the genuine signification of Ethics in the lives and work of film students and, more generally, of the global community of filmmakers.

As socially committed moral agents, it is our duty to pursue a global-scale educational research project that will foster an ethically minded, self-examining practice in the lives of media makers: a multifaceted domain in which the student learns to become more aware of, and competent with regard to, the complex interplay between herself, individuals, community, history, experience, and environment—an ethical stance in its own right.

Our mission is to make this cumulative source of ethical experience available to all film, television, and screen-based arts students and their teachers worldwide in two ways:

(1) By creating a source of identification and inspiration accessible to fellow students, colleagues, and researchers; and

(2) By providing a shared, online pedagogical database that will be available worldwide and for viewing and discussion in classes.

Our mission is to spread the creative dimension of the young filmmaker’s diverse ethical universe. However, we do not intend to embark on this journey as if Ethics were a restrictive realm of “dos and don’ts,” nor would we attempt to become clarion callers for a patronizing moralistic ideology—or, worse, for a missionary-like, self-righteous moral gospel—as if attempting to enforce The Right Thing to Do. No. For us, Inspirational Ethics and the method of Collecting-Ethical-Evidence on video is an experience of co-learning, co-growing, and co-existing, one that takes Ethics to be a creative aspect of our inevitable shared being—a realm wherein young artists-in-the-making experience how to become intimate with inspiring notions such as eudemonia—a complete life lived in accordance with reason—or, alternatively, by the influence of other ideas such as virtue, duty, utility, care, and freedom. To this end, The Ethics Lab seeks to cultivate the unmediated practice of working one’s ethical muscles in the context of film, television, and media (making) studies.

Finally, we look upon Ethics as a province of massive accumulated human wisdom. For us, then, Ethics is the student’s most intimate form of subjective agency, through which better human expression and reasoned understanding of the self and l’autre are globally advanced. It is our mission to nurture, strengthen, support, and encourage more and more individuals to safely navigate their moral landscapes, not only without fear but with great confidence and trust.

We never forget that media making is always about l’autre.