Bulgaria and Bulgarian students will be among the lucky ones who will be able to get a closer look at the vast and delightful European cinema. The new online platform of the CinEd program will allow this wealth to enter the minds of children and adolescents, offering free access to a rich creative diversity of key filmmakers and training for Bulgarian teachers and educators.
We asked Ralitsa Asenova, the main coordinator and initiator of this success, to tell us more about this exciting project. Here is what she told us:
The aim of the CinEd programme is to present the richness of European cinema to children and young people aged 6 to 19, developing their critical and analytical skills, as well as their knowledge of cinematographic techniques and the language of cinema. CinEd is dedicated to the mission of adequately conveying the seventh art as a cultural object and a prerequisite for analyzing the world through it. To this end, the programme offers a free and easy-to-use online platform, which features a specially selected collection of European films and developed pedagogical materials for each of them, translated into 8 languages, including Bulgarian.
The pedagogical method that CinEd develops is adapted to our era, marked by rapid, abrupt and continuous changes in the way we see, receive, distribute and produce images. On the one hand, the CinEd Bulgaria team offers free film screenings and discussions, both in school and in the Slaveykov Hall of the French Institute - a partner of the project for Bulgaria: so far, the screenings are over 50, with more to come in May and June. On the other hand, CinEd also prepares teachers, through specially designed trainings, after which they themselves are able to use this new approach in their work, created on the basis of comparison and connections between images, films, cinema and other arts. A free one-day training for teachers in the capital will be held at the end of June.
Who will be able to use the platform and how?
Trained teachers, lecturers, cultural mediators and professionals in the field of cinema can use the films from the platform to discuss with students their cultural and historical context, their cinematic language and aesthetics, the author's work, as well as to develop creativity, sensitivity, taste, analysis and discussion skills, knowledge of cinematic techniques in young people, changing the traditional model of teacher-student communication. This is precisely the most innovative practice of CinEd for Bulgaria - students themselves reaching a cinema analysis, through guiding questions and in dialogue with teachers or those conducting the screening.
What does the platform include and what do you expect to achieve through it?
Part of the collection are the classic films "Pierre the Fool" (1965) by Jean-Luc Godard, "The First Day of School" by Jacques Rozier (1955), which enjoys huge success among students aged 7-10, as well as the contemporary "Shelter" (2010) by Bulgarian director Dragomir Sholev, "Little Light" (2003) by Alain Gomis, who recently won the grand prize at the Berlin Film Festival, and "The Happiest Girl in the World" by the iconic Romanian New Wave director Radu Jude (2009).
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"Pierre the Fool" - Jacques-Luc Godard
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"The First Day of School" - Jacques Rozier
We expect more than 2500 students from 30 schools to attend the screenings and discussions organized for them. Also, in three cities, the program will be presented to 50 innovative and motivated teachers. At the end of June, in Sofia, a free one-day training for teachers from the capital will be held. A summer film academy has also been organized in the village of Dermantsi, and our vision for 2018 is for more and more classrooms to embrace the vast space of cinema.
The large-scale project was initiated and coordinated by the headquarters of the French Institute in Paris, and is represented in Bulgaria by the “Seven” association. Co-financed under the Sofia Municipality’s “Culture” Capital Program for 2017, for the second year in a row it has already yielded real results and new methods of education through screen images. The other partners in the project, supported by the European Union’s “MEDIA” program, are non-governmental organizations with extensive experience in informal film education from Spain, Italy, Portugal, Romania, the Czech Republic and Finland. The French National Film Library coordinates the pedagogical activities.
For more information and to register for screenings: cinedbulgaria@gmail.com
To register on the platform: cined.eu
