Film Education

Film Education

Cultural education is currently a topic on the agenda at many of the institutions that work with children and young people, provide services for them or look to their future both in and outside school. The underlying aim is to anchor culture more firmly in the educational system since the arts are clearly a significant factor in terms of personal development, creativity and learning behaviour. No doubt about it: film belongs on the cultural curriculum – film as moving pictures in general but also as film criticism and production studies in particular. The places where children and young adults seek out these pictures and information about them, where they consume them or even make them themselves have all changed radically over the past few years. The same applies to the related media: the Internet, YouTube, mobile telephony, computer video games and DVDs for the home cinema. And the cinema as such? Has it outlived its usefulness? Or is it only for the forty-something generation who grew up with it? For more than twenty years now, the Dortmund | Cologne International Women‘s Film Festival has proudly presented a film programme especially compiled for children and teenagers – to be seen in the cinema. And will proudly
continue do so. Not because films screened in the cinema are inherently better; it‘s just that the effect is different.  The darkened theatre and the big screen still exert their own fascination, surroundings for which the pictures have been especially composed, a conscious interaction of many artistic and technical components. With film stories often complex and multilayered, film history seen as a whole is also part of cultural history.

This year, we have selected a programme of ten fiction feature and documentary films, both short and long, for school students and their teachers to watch and discuss. Films that are based on the NOW WHAT festival theme. For children and young adults are often faced with difficult decisions. Do something or stay out of things? The films show characters of all ages and sizes who have either found an answer themselves or who are still searching for one.

After each screening, we offer a discussion platform for the school students to ask their questions about the film or, guided by the moderator, learn more about the film‘s production background and its specific cinematic language.

Thus the Dortmund | Cologne International Women‘s Film Festival, like other film festivals too, makes an important contribution to cultural education and media competence.

_ Barbara Fischer-Rittmeyer

UK
2008
Documentary
90’

»We calculated the film‘s carbon footprint (…). Overall, it added up to 94 tonnes of CO2 – equal to the […]

Ednas Day

Bernd Sahling

DE
2009
20’

New in the class and only recently in Germany anyway, Edna finds lessons in a foreign language rather difficult. Since […]

Girls’ Focus Workshop 2011

Eva-Maria Marx, Nina von Guttenberg

Workshop Film: Focus on Film Editing Director: Eva-Maria Marx Adviser: Nina von Guttenberg »… the workshop was great, the listing […]

Hier kommt Lola

Franziska Buch

DE
2010
Spielfilm
100’

After Lola‘s Brazilian father is subjected to racist abuse and attacks, the patchwork family moves from the small-village confines of […]

Kikkerdril – Frogs & Toads

Simone van Dusseldorp

NL
2009
Spielfilm
70’

Max‘s big brother Jannus is in hospital following an operation on his tonsils. Jealous that Max is free to go […]

DE
2007
Documentary
10’

Life objectives, dream jobs: What will work mean in the future? To find out, the director asks some of those […]

The Indian

Ineke Houtman

NL
2009
Spielfilm
79’

»Most children come out of their mother‘s belly«, says the eight-yearsold Koos, »I come out of an aeroplane.« Yes, Koos […]

Themba – A Boy Called Hope

Stefanie Sycholt

DE / ZA
2010
Spielfilm
108’

The eleven-years-old Themba lives with his mother Mandisa and his younger sister Nomtha in dire poverty in a small Eastern […]

Twice as Wise

Piet Eekman

DE
2009
Documentary
19’

»Fuck off, n***! Get lost, Pollack!« Serge from Ruanda and Filip from Poland, both eleven-years-old, live in the north part […]

Utopia Ltd.

Sandra Trostel

DE
2011
Documentary
90’

The stuff other young bands only dream of: Anton Spielmann (18, vocals and guitar) and his younger friends Basti Muxfeldt […]

Waste Land

Lucy Walker

UK / BR
2010
Documentary
100’

»Waste Land questions our prejudices about people living on the edge of society. The film presents its protagonists as people […]