{"id":2410,"date":"2025-05-23T14:04:25","date_gmt":"2025-05-23T18:04:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/film-media\/?p=2410"},"modified":"2025-05-23T14:06:48","modified_gmt":"2025-05-23T18:06:48","slug":"announcement-of-john-manns-retirement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/film-media\/2025\/05\/23\/announcement-of-john-manns-retirement\/","title":{"rendered":"Announcement of John Mann’s Retirement"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Johns Hopkins Film and Media Studies Program invites you to join them in celebrating the three-decade career of John Bright Mann at Johns Hopkins. John began his career in film at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill with a degree in Radio, Television, and Motion Pictures. He continued along this path with a Masters of Education in Educational Media thereafter, followed by an M.A. in Film Studies. But he became most recognizable as the John we all know, value, and respect in 1987, when he graduated with his Doctor of Education Degree, with his dissertation topic: \u201cA Phenomenological Inquiry Into a Concept of Home.\u201d John\u2019s distinctive blend of intense intellectual interest in philosophy married to his creative practice began but certainly did not end with this era of his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

John\u2019s career with Film and Media Studies has spanned the life of the program. He began teaching students in the late 1990s, when FMS was just a few years old. Since then, nearly thirty years of undergraduates have benefited from his omnivorous intellectual curiosity and his mindful approach as an artist and educator. Multitalented in his abilities as a filmmaker, writer, producer, cinematographer, director, and composer of experimental music, he has served as an organic model of what FMS prizes: intellectual and creative exploration, combined with intellectual rigor. Some teachers attempt to replicate themselves in the act of teaching; John inspires his students to reach beyond the confines of the classroom and their own expectations to something more serious and personal. He makes them think <\/em>\u2013 and that act is the beginning of all possibilities. John expects his students to engage as individuals with a responsibility to enter into a centuries-old dialogue on the nature of being, experience, and time \u2013 and to make films about the nature of that experience from a first-person perspective. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If he sounds unusual, it is because indeed he is. He is the perfect blend of theory and practice, and has shaped FMS with his example. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>John\u2019s classroom is the first place where most students ever loaded a 16mm film camera, and his course was the occasion for trials by fire. Films came back perfect and <\/em>imperfect, based upon students\u2019 experience levels, but no matter what the result, John ensured that students learned from that experience. He is directly responsible for ensuring that students both learned how to thread a 16mm Arriflex S model camera and understand its workings. He is also the reason that they read Walter Benjamin, Umberto Eco, and Rainer Maria Rilke. He is the reason students listened to Steve Reich. His courses inspire curiosity and creativity because John\u2019s own mind and heart have both in such abundance. Students are never permitted to be complacent in their relationship to the world around them; they are always challenged to be better through thought, through experience, and through what filmmaker Robert Bresson referred to as \u201cthe work of hands.\u201d Filmmaking is, for John, always both a physical act and a radical expression of perspective on the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

John\u2019s teachings argue: pay a greater degree of attention than you would otherwise, for there is much to see; stretch yourself, because you should want to as its own exercise; listen better, for sounds both beautiful and not, for they teach us things as well; look harder; think more deeply and completely. You must learn by doing, and you must learn from what you did. Own the failure, figure out what you did, learn the lesson, and move on knowing more. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ability to learn by a process that is both thinking and doing is among the best things many have learned from John. The exercise of the eye, the mind and the hands is always connected. He continues to excite his colleagues\u2019 own curiosity when they see him in the hall, hear what he is reading, and talk to him about what he is thinking through and working on. He truly loves ideas, and he makes colleagues\u2019 love of them deeper too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each year, there are students whom everyone knows are “John’s students.” They choose John as their mentor because they feel an affinity with him. They are drawn to his facility with ideas, the suppleness of his mind, his conversations about aesthetics and philosophy, his generous mentorship, his excellent and sometimes sardonic humor, and his ability to, with real sincerity, help people become the finest versions of themselves. His mentorship is organic, it is giving, and it is sincere. Being a mentee of John’s is more than a temporary position: it is an ongoing friendship, and our students have been so lucky to enjoy that friendship that carries with them throughout their lives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

John has been a colleague of collegiality and respect; he served for years as the head of production in FMS without complaint; he takes one for the team quietly even when he is not asked; and can always be counted upon to be forthright and also generous in his dealings with others. A man of this integrity is a jewel, and one to be prized. We recognize the loss of his presence with real sadness as he retires. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be taught by John is truly to have been taught by FMS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

John\u2019s favorite quote about the nature of the moving image comes from Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It reads: \u201cThe meaning of a film is incorporated into its rhythm just as the meaning of a gesture may immediately be read in that gesture: the film does not mean anything but itself”. The best assessment of all that John has meant to FMS was always embedded in the nature of experiencing him itself. We cannot say more, but we do not need to: the meaning was always implicit in the instruction, in the injunction. We trust to that experience, and its embedded meanings that live inside those of us who got to work with John. We could not have been luckier to have such a teacher, colleague, and friend. He is a gift. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Please join us in congratulating John on his chosen date of retirement, effective June 30th. We will miss him more than he could ever know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He will be making films, reading, and continuing to explore the worlds of film, art, and ideas, now unencumbered by teaching responsibilities. We are happy for him as well!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With great respect and appreciation for all he has given, we invite you to reach out to share your own memories of his time at Hopkins and the impact it has had on you. You may send thoughts or memories directly to this address: mward1@jhu.edu<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Johns Hopkins Film and Media Studies Program invites you to join them in celebrating the three-decade career of John Bright Mann at Johns Hopkins. John began his career in film at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill with a degree in Radio, Television, and Motion Pictures. He continued along this path with a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":271,"featured_media":2411,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/film-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/film-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/film-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/film-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/271"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/film-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2410"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/film-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2412,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/film-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2410\/revisions\/2412"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/film-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/film-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/film-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/film-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}