Skopje, November 13, 2022 (MIA) – The film has a great impact on the development of creative, critical and cultural knowledge, skills and future competences among children, and according to experts, it is an equally effective tool for strengthening the motivation to learn. However, at a slow pace this cultural art is trying to find its place within the formal educational process in the country.
According to the director of the Youth Film Festival “Jifoni Macedonia” Darko Basheski, film literacy is the ability to understand and analyze film and its film language, with all its characteristics and forms of expression as a medium for creation and as art.
In a statement to MIA, Basheski clarifies that film literacy is knowledge and awareness when choosing films to watch, the ability to critically watch and analyze their content, as well as understanding the audiovisual way of expression and the ability to manipulate viewers by using technical resources or manipulation in the use of film language.
– Since the audiovisual expression and monitoring of video content has become everyday, today it is almost equally possible to talk about audiovisual literacy, and of course also related to media literacy or, more generally, digital literacy. In the past hundred years, film language has become a special audiovisual language of communication, with a great advantage over other spoken languages, because it has been built as a more universal and more influential language for communication on a global level, explains Basheski.
Daniela Stankovska Plachkovska from the Film Agency says that the film, in addition to entertainment, also offers education, strongly influencing the mind and senses of children.
She explains that young people have an interest in understanding what is specific and characteristic about the film.
– Young people are interested in experiencing the film not only as a personal experience, but also as a collaborative process (cinema experience). They are interested in learning through the film, but also acquire knowledge, skills and future competencies. They are interested in discussing the film from a critical, aesthetic, emotional, cultural and creative perspective (critical framework), they are interested in receiving information through the film, raising awareness of social, social and historical topics, which is reflected in learning, i.e. ability for thinking, researching, learning about film as his future profession, says Stankovska Plachkovska for MIA.
For young people to be film literate, Basheski explains that they need to learn to consciously choose and correctly “read” audiovisual contents, that is, to know how to understand and analyze them with all the expressive means of the film language.
The next step, he says, is for them to learn to critically consume video content as viewers and learn to express themselves properly as creators, creating their own audiovisual content that has a clear message.
Young people show interest in film festivals
In this country, young people have the opportunity to visit various film festivals, which in the best way can bring them closer to film art, and currently one of the biggest festivals of this type is “Jifoni Macedonia”, which this year was held from October 5 to 10.
Through this festival, as Basheski explains, the students, in addition to film literacy, also acquire critical thinking skills, develop creativity and youth action.
– The festival is held during six festival days, in which the young participants are simultaneously a jury that chooses the best films of the festival in three age categories. The programs took place in the Cinematheque of North Macedonia for students from primary schools from the fifth to sixth grades and in MCC for students from secondary schools. Every day, selected short and feature-length films are shown, followed by discussions about films with themes that affect young people, adds Basheski.
As he informed, this year nine different creative workshops were offered in 15 groups, led by experienced mentors who during five working days worked with the young people on the development of ideas and creativity, and on the last day at the closing of the festival they showed the results of their work. .
Art, music and film workshops for the youngest were housed in the Cinematheque, and for high school students in the MCC there were workshops for photography, video editing, animation, digital design, comic book drawing and one-shot video recording.
Due to the pandemic, in 2020 the festival was held in an online edition, and in 2021 with limited attendance to only 30 percent of the number of seats in the halls.
-To fill the two-generation gap, this year a new initiative called Gifony Film Days was launched, where every Saturday children could watch a film, discuss the film, and meet young filmmakers. The activities continued at the Film Classroom, a workshop led by director Maria Dzijeva, Basheski explains to MIA.
He added that interest and activities continue after the festival in other cities throughout the country. As he said, in the past years, two-day festivals were held in 22 municipalities under the name “Jifoni travels”, and we are currently preparing for two more editions in Kriva Palanka and Negotino.
The benefits of introducing the film in the educational process
Daniela Stankovska Plachkovska is part of the Working Group for Film Literacy, which is part of the Media Literacy Network.
Since its establishment in December last year, as he mentioned, the main goal of this working group is to make film and film literacy part of the curriculum in formal education – primary and secondary school.
She informed MIA that a proposal for a research text has already been drawn up, which, according to a precisely defined methodology, includes quantitative and qualitative data – analysis and studies that include approaches and activities at the European level in this area, and are aimed at children and young people, identifying the need to include film and film literacy in formal education, results and concluding remarks.
In that context, as part of the Media Literacy Days, a free screening of themed films was organized for primary school children, with screenings in the Millennium, Kinoteka and Cineplex cinemas.
– The interest of young people in this event, but also of schools and teachers, was really great. To our satisfaction, the cinema halls were full and if we talk with numbers, then we can say that this is the first activity in our country where the eight screenings of the three thematic films were watched by a total of 2139 students from 20 primary schools from six Skopje municipalities, adds Stankovska Plachkovska.
This activity, as he points out, showed that children, apart from current films and blockbusters (feature and animated films), are also interested in European films if they are given access and availability to them.
– In this activity, we included two Danish and one Italian film, of which two feature-length films and one animated feature-length film. Two of the films were dubbed in Macedonian, while one was in Italian with a Macedonian translation. From the interest in the screenings, from the reactions of the children themselves during the screening of the films, as well as from the children’s conversations with the psychologists on a specific topic, we saw that the students are open to a wide range of films, regardless of whether they are part of the national, European or world cinematography, explains Stankovska Plachkovska.
She adds that some of the children had the opportunity to discover and get to know the European film for the first time, to experience it, but also to understand the meaning of the film and the texts with the moving image they consumed.
– We believe that we encouraged and encouraged them to access a wider range of films in the future, as well as encouraged them to think, but also to openly discuss the ways in which they experienced the film and the topic it deals with, that is, to get involved in the film from critical, aesthetic, emotional and cultural perspective, explains Stankovska Plachkovska.
Film should be systematically introduced in education
For children to really understand the film as another branch of culture that is of inevitable importance for their development, it should become part of the teaching process.
The benefits can be great, only if it is introduced systemically.
– The benefits and results of introducing film literacy into the educational process can be great, only if it is introduced systematically. The film should be introduced as a didactic aid – a teaching tool for a specific subject, but also as a separate aesthetic entity – a separate subject. Then, the film should be introduced through a series of processes and practices that include three dimensions: creativity, criticality and culture, says Stankovska Plachkovska for MIA.
She explains that film is an excellent resource for visual learners to understand historical events, to understand concepts without barriers, to see life through different perspectives, to help them learn a foreign language.
-Also, the film as a visual fragment motivates, provides information, and is also a catalyst for conversation on a certain teaching content and topic. The film also provides opportunities for learning and acquiring a greater number of transferable skills such as analytical, research, problem solving skills, critical reasoning (opinion and thinking process), imagination, logic and forms that can contribute to permanent memorization of concrete knowledge, adds Stankovska Plachkovska.
And Darko Basheski is of the opinion that the film should be part of the educational process.
– By watching and talking about the films watched, film education has a very positive effect on the development of critical thinking and creativity in children. Through formal and informal film education, by recording video content, young people build their film literacy and master communication skills through video expression, thus developing their creativity and acquiring valuable competencies in their personal and social life, explains Basheski. for MIA.
Also, according to Basheski, the film can be used as an extremely effective tool to strengthen the motivation for learning and the development of mental and cognitive abilities in children and their maturation.
