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EUROPE

The European Film Factory: Film Education 2.0

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- Ten European heritage films are available online, free of charge and in eight languages for students aged 11 - 18 years and for teachers in all member countries of Creative Europe

The European Film Factory: Film Education 2.0

On 26 August, the European Film Factory platform, which was introduced to the international press yesterday, went live. Driven by the Creative MEDIA Europe programme and steered by the Institut français with the support of ARTE Education and European Schoolnet (which links together 34 education ministries in Europe), the initiative proposes an innovative approach towards film education, mainly aimed at wider discovery of the diverse nature of the 7th art in Europe and a rejuvenation of the cinephile audience.

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Lucía Recalde (head of the DG Connect division at the European Commission) looked back on the origins of the initiative: "for some years now, the European Commission has been supporting film education activities through the MEDIA programme. The initial idea was to stimulate the appetite for European films and to attract long-term viewers of European content. But we rapidly became aware of the need to approach film education from the angle of awakening curiosity and encouraging critical thought, which are crucial skills in the adult world. We also realised that film is a very powerful tool for connecting citizens from all over the European Union, and that film education has the enormous potential to help young people recognise all the things we Europeans have in common, national borders aside. And with the Covid crisis, for the first time ever, young people have seen borders close and free circulation grind to a halt, which makes the European Film Factory initiative even more pertinent. The ten films in the catalogue are the perfect representation of the very best of European culture and its unique richness. Our wish now is that this catalogue goes on to circulate in as many schools as possible, whatever their geographic, social backgrounds etc.. Because culture knows no borders."

For Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland, whose film Europa Europa features among the European Film Factory’s ten catalogue titles, "it is vital to the future of European film that we educate young generations in the most complex and personal languages of cinema. There are now a number of platforms in place, but most of them, especially American ones, are aimed solely at entertaining. We need to awaken people’s imagination and sensibility, and the way in which we tell our stories will be key."

The European Film Factory allows students aged between 11 - 18 years and teachers in all Member States signed up to the Creative Europe programme to access a catalogue of ten European heritage films for free, via all devices (computers, tablets, smartphones), by way of a closed, secure system. The platform is accessible in eight languages (German, French, English, Greek, Polish, Romanian, Spanish and Italian). Students are notably able to watch films on their own account outside of the school context, and various pedagogical tools are also made available: film scenes can be extracted, annotated (image, sound, text) and given a title, and mind maps can also be created so as to link the different films together by theme.

The ten selected titles are of an undeniably high-quality and are wonderfully diverse in terms of genres, subjects, styles and time-periods, ranging from La Strada by Italy’s Federico Fellini to the animated film The Secret of Kells [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Didier Brunner
interview: Tomm Moore
interview: Viviane Vanfleteren
film profile
]
by Irish directors Tomm Moore and Nora Twomey, without forgetting Europa Europa by Poland’s Agnieszka Holland, The 400 Blows by French director François Truffaut, A Swedish Love Story by Sweden’s Roy Andersson, Billy Elliot by Brit Stephen Daldry, the documentary En tierra extraña by Spain’s Iciar Bollain, Good Bye, Lenin! [+see also:
trailer
interview: Wolfgang Becker
film profile
]
by German filmmaker Wolfgang Becker, Stella by Greece’s Michael Cacoyannis and 12:08 East of Bucharest [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Corneliu Porumboiu
interview: Daniel Burlac
film profile
]
by Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu.

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(Translated from French)

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