See the world from someone else’s perspective

Film has enormous potential to shape society because it speaks to us as a society. People use stories to express themselves, to share culture, to challenge power, and, of course, to entertain. But while most scholars study the film experience from the point of view of the audience, Dan Leberg looks at it from the opposite direction: what did the actors on screen do to tell that story?

A crucial part of film and acting is empathy. But why is it so important to study that? The connection between film and society is that empathy is a collective survival skill, which lets us value someone else's experience as much as our own. And we all use it in our daily lives. Film invites us to see the world from someone else’s perspective, or in other words, to relate to a story together.

Dan Leberg, Assistant Professor in Film and Media Studies at the Faculty of Arts, studies film acting and empathy. He looks at how empathy in film works. While no two actors work with it the same way, all of them basically work with three approaches: their relationship with the character, with the other actors, and the way they are offering that to the audience.