Film Education. Some proposals for our time – Moving Cinema Conference 2017

The need for film education is something that has been repeated over the years. Multiple arguments have been put forward from different perspectives. With the title of the conference we wanted to emphasize, on the one hand, the urgency of this film pedagogy happening today, during our time. On the other hand, the desire to focus these two days of reflection no longer on continuing to present arguments defending the need for film education, but on providing methodologies, strategies and concrete ways of developing actions of film pedagogy that will promote its discovery as an art and creation, and at the same time enable cinema to find a place in the life of young people.

The main objective of the conference, therefore, was to generate spaces for shared reflection based on four issues: 1) School: meeting and springboard; 2) Youth participation in cultural life; 3) The experience of creation; and 4) The bond with cinema auteurs. That is why the fifty people who participated in the conference are professionals linked, from different spaces and perspectives, to cinema, culture and its transmission. Particular attention was paid to the participation not only of cultural managers and heads of film education projects, but also of two representatives directly and intimately concerned with the matter: filmmakers and teachers. In his brief prologue to Six Memos for the Next Millennium, which inspired the title of this conference, Italo Calvino wrote: “My faith in the future of literature consists in knowing that there are things that only literature, with its specific means, can give.” The same can be said of cinema: its future lies in its singularities, in what makes it unique and, therefore, indispensable.

After the conference, some of the discussions that took place at the conference – exploring some of the most resonant questions facing film education practitioners and cultural partners in diverse contexts across Europe – were summarized in an article published on Film Education Journal (2018, volume 1, Issue 2, pages 147-162)

Conference Programme

Pep Garrido – Filmmaker and film educator (Barcelona)