Bulgaria and the Bulgarian students will be one of the lucky ones who will be able to get acquainted with the immense and delightful European cinema. The new CinEd online platform will allow this wealth to enter the minds of children and adolescents, offering free rich creative diversity to key filmmakers and training Bulgarian teachers and educators.
We asked Ralitsa Asenova, Chief 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 program is to present the wealth of European cinema to children and young people from 6 to 19 years, 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 precondition for analyzing the world through it. To this end, the program offers a free and easy-to-use online platform that has 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 age, marked by rapid, abrupt and lasting changes in the way we see, receive, distribute and produce images. On the one hand, CinEd Bulgaria's team offers free screenings of films and discussions, both at school and in the Slaveykov Hall of the French Institute - a partner of the project for Bulgaria: so far the screenings are over 50, coming soon in May and June. On the other hand, CinEd also prepares teachers through specially developed 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 metropolitan teachers will be held at the end of June.
Who and how will be able to use the platform?
Trained teachers, teachers, cultural mediators and film professionals can use the films on the platform to discuss with students the cultural and historical context, their cinematic and aesthetics, the creativity of the author, as well as to develop creativity, sensitivity, taste , analysis and discussion skills, knowledge of cinematic techniques in youth, changing the traditional model of teacher-student communication. This is also the most innovative practice of CinEd for Bulgaria - the students themselves reach cinema analysis, through guiding questions and in dialogue with the teachers or the screeners.
What does the platform include and what do you expect to achieve through it?
Part of the collection are Jean-Luc Godard's classic Crazy Piero (1965) films, Jacques Rosier's "The First School Day" (1955), which enjoys tremendous success among 7 - 10 students, as well as the contemporary "Shelter" (2010) by Bulgarian director Dragomir Sholev, "Little Svetlinka" (2003) by the recently won Berlin Allen Allen Gomis Festival Award, as well as the "Happiest Girl in the World" by the iconic for Romanian New Wave director Radu Jude (2009).
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Crazy Piero by Jacques-Luc Godard
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The First School Day by Jacques Rosier
We expect more than 2500 students from 30 schools to attend the screenings and discussions organized for them. Also in three cities will be the presentation of the program to 50 innovative and motivated teachers. A free one-day training of Sofia teachers will be held in Sofia at the end of June. A summer film academy was also organized in the village of Dermantsi, with our view of the 2018 being more and more classrooms accommodating the vast cinema space.
The large-scale project was initiated and coordinated by the headquarters of the French Institute in Paris, and in Bulgaria it is represented by the Association Seven. Co-financed by the Sofia Municipality's Culture Program for 2017 for the second consecutive year, it is already delivering real results and new methods of education through screen images. The other partners in the project, supported by the MEDIA program of the European Union, are non-governmental organizations with extensive experience in non-formal film education from Spain, Italy, Portugal, Romania, the Czech Republic and Finland. The French National Film Library, on the other hand, coordinates pedagogical activities.
For more information and to register for screenings: cinedbulgaria@gmail.com
To register the platform: cined.eu
