One year ago the Croatian Film Association presented their ambitious plans for film education in the challenging era of a new school curriculum. Now, the pandemic situation pushed the association to their limits to develop a modified programme overnight.
Sanja Zanki (Croatian Film Association): “Under normal circumstances, we would organise our Film EDUcation programme in Cinema Tuškanac with more than 150 students watching and analysing features. This year we had one week to prepare an online version of the event. This is what it looked like. We partnered with the www.croatian.film platform on which participants could watch Croatian shorts, to be analysed and interpreted afterwards.”
Due to the many positive reactions the Croatian Film Association launched a new platform in June. Filmska naSTAVa offers primary and secondary school students and educators the opportunity to watch a series of short films made by young filmmakers, awarded at the Croatian Children’s Film Festival and the Four River Film Festival. In short clips lecturers from Film EDUcation introduce you to the creative world of young filmmakers and motivate teachers to guide young people through a discussion, based on pre-designed questions, shaped according to specialised methodological templates. Afterwards students can watch the movies once again and embark on a closer individual and interactive analysis. Sanja Zanki: “Through this platform we managed to offer a new life to films made by children and youngsters after the festival season is over.”
Soon the Croatian festival season will start, with the Four River Festival as its biggest international flagship. Sanja Zanki: “We are currently planning two options. In plan A all the guests will be present in our little town on the four rivers and we will celebrate the opening night on the banks of River Korana with more than 200 participants from around the world, watching and discussing their films on the big screen and participating in workshops. In plan B all of this will happen online. If needed, we will prove this can be done. Except there will be no mosquitos buzzing around in the open-air cinema. Hope to see you all in Karlovac!”