The 3rd World Summit on Media for Children was the first Summit to include cinema in its program. As representatives of the cinema working group, CIFEJ and ECFA were very proud to take part in the event.

Cinema is an important narrative audiovisual medium and therefore a basis for media literacy of any kind. What we have to care for is the preservation of cinema's cultural authenticity. This is important for European countries as well as for other national cinematographies open to international media markets. Children want to use media and especially cinema to reflect on themselves, who they are and who they want to be, what the future means to them and what they need to achieve. Authentic films that relate to children's own cultural backgrounds help them to identify their own relationship to reality. The special atmosphere of cinema is that children see films together and are able to communicate with one another about films. This is the main difference between privately consumed audiovisual media and cinema.

Considering all this we believe in the importance of various workshops that make children familiar with films from their own countries as well as from neighbouring countries and other cultures from all around the world. We support film educational projects teaching children the language of cinema and how they can use it as an instrument for their own biographical development. We support projects that bring films to children who do not have access to cinema.

The cinema we have in mind cannot exist without the partnership of other media. The TV stations as well as video, DVD and Internet providers all around the world are important partners in the production, promotion and distribution of high quality films for children. Let us work together using different media to serve the best interests of children today and tomorrow.