Art-kino (Rijeka, Croatia) has reasons to be proud. Their “School at the Cinema” programme was recently adapted to the needs of pupils watching online, and after 12 years rounded the cape of 100,000 participating children, young people, educators and teachers.
School at the Cinema raises awareness about ‘film art’ for young audiences and promotes cinema culture to school pupils, motivating them to watch films on the big screen, and developing their ability to understand, analyse and evaluate film content. Through its varied film selection, Art-kino works on different focus points for every age group:
– kindergartens (promoting the habit of visiting cinemas already at an early age),
– primary schools (a topical approach in correlation with the regular school curriculum),
– high schools (connecting different school subjects with independent feature films).
Last year in autumn, due to the new circumstances, Art-kino, in co-operation with some Croatian film distributors, launched a part of their programme online. “Although one of our basic goals is to encourage watching films at the cinemas, now Art-kino had to find simple solutions to enable the access to quality films through other media, even though our cinema was still open for screenings”, says Barbara Zupičić, Art-kino’s advisor for children’s programmes. “We saw the online programme not only as a way to keep in touch with our school audiences and somehow assist them in overcoming the challenges they were facing, but also as a way to expand our programme beyond our usual geographical outreach. By making this decision, we have contributed to the positive perception that cinema has in our community.”
In 2020, a total of 83 titles were screened, 50% domestic titles like DIANA BUDISAVLJEVIĆ’S DIARY, and 50% international, among which titles like THE INCREDIBLE STORY OF THE GIANT PEAR (photo) and GORDON AND PADDY were the most successful ones.
More information here.
