Today I visited the Children’s Film First conference in Brussels, where two returning issues seemed to dominate the discussions between professionals from the film and education sector. First, there was the question on how to deal with the new digital environment in a children’s film context. The ways for a children’s film to reach a young audience have indeed developed enormously in recent years. Apart from VOD and all kinds of online channels, also other innovations, such as smart boards in a school context, offer new kinds of opportunities to find audiences for quality films and to stimulate a dynamic (and hopefully critical) interactivity with films.
This is connected to the second major issue of the day: the importance of film literacy. As the ‘Film education framework for Europe’ emphasizes, film literacy stimulates curiosity, empathy, aspiration, tolerance and enjoyment (the idea of film as a ‘social tool’ has come up several times). Again, in this context of film education projects (projects, indeed, as film education and literacy is still very rarely a structural aspect in young people’s lives), the digital story takes an increasingly important place. That also film history can (and should) take an important role in this context is demonstrated by the great Eyewalk project of the EYE film museum in Amsterdam (presented by Florine Wiebenga):
Inevitably, the role of governmental policy also enters the picture. Becky Parry from the University of Leeds wrote this piece on children’s feature film production policy for the conference (it is quite UK-specific, but nevertheless also very relevant for many other European countries). One of the discussion points when talking about the broader policy towards the relation between children and film, is which government domain is relevant here: culture, education or youth. There’s often a search for the ‘most legitimate’ place for children’s film culture and literacy. This may have many consequences, both on a practical, financial and more conceptual level. In an ideal world, however, there would be a smooth collaboration between the three domains, as they are all as relevant…