Italian ECFA member Cinemovel Foundation launched a digital edition of their ‘Screens in the Classroom’ Festival, a school project bringing students closer to the audio-visual language and raising a strong social topic: the fight against the mafia in Southern Italy.
Vincenzo Bevar: “Since 2010, the Cinemovel Foundation has been bringing film culture into Italian schools, setting up temporary cinemas in auditoriums, gyms and corridors of schools that are located far away from regular theatres. This year, due to the pandemic, we are organising an online festival in which hundreds of classes will participate.” The goal is to bring cinema directly to students, teachers and families in the week leading up to 21 March, the National Day of Remembrance & Commitment in Memory of the Victims of the Mafia. After watching the films the audience, hosted in a virtual cinema, has an online meeting with the directors, actors and authors of the films.
“Fighting the mafia,” says Don Luigi Ciotti, President of the co-organising Libera association, “means nourishing a culture that knows how to be an instrument of condemnation and civic growth. Criminal organisations have always been in agreement with ignorance and superficiality. Moving pictures represent a universal language at the disposal of our democratic commitment. It is a school’s duty to educate students in such new forms of communication. Culture moves responsibility and civic participation, helping to find and understand one’s own sense of living and being a citizen. This is why it is a fundamental tool in the fight against the mafia.”
Within the programme are documentaries like SELFIE, by Agostino Ferrente, with two young protagonists filming daily life in a neighbourhood in Naples with a high Camorrista density, FOR SAMA by Waad Al-Khateab & Edward Watts, about life in Aleppo, a city crushed by civil war, and OUR ROAD by Pierfrancesco Li Donni, about teenagers in Palermo, facing the world of adolescence. Fiction features like BOYS CRY by Damiano & Fabio D’Innocenzo, set in the Roman suburbs, and the animation THE BEARS’ FAMOUS INVASION OF SICILY by Lorenzo Mattotti.
The themes addressed by the films will be discussed through an online platform, with teachers and Cinemovel representatives introducing new didactic methods. The collective multimedia narration generated by the project will give shape to a social communication campaign .
Screens in the Classroom focuses on the audio-visual tools to reawaken critical thinking and educate young people to freely choose, form and express their opinion. The project so far has involved more than 10,000 students throughout Italy.
The initiative is organised by Cinemovel, Libera and MYmovies.it.
Contact: Cinemovel, sic@cinemovel.tv.