TIFF interview: ready to bet on film education for young audiences

Ramona Sarbu coordinates the media and literacy programme for young audiences section of the biggest film festival in Romania for four years now, being one of the stuff members of the Transilvania International Film Festival (TIFF) that grew up and developed both personal and professional on the same time as the festival itself. BR talked to her to find out how the teenagers understand this industry and what’s happening in terms of education on the matter.

What is EducaTIFF?

EducaTIFF is TIFF’s film education program which premiered in 2009, when it started with a selection of movies for children during the festival for teachers and students and Young Film Critics Competition, but is also a programme for those interested in finding out more about the theoretical part of the film industry. Following the requests of the parents and the teachers, we managed to improve the program by adding different workshops such as cinema lessons for teachers and students, film training, animations workshop, seminars for film critics. Now, we have ten full days of activities during TIFF, basically we covered all the festival’s period. From edition to edition we kept the film screenings based on specific student age groups, the meetings with the representatives of the film industry and the animations movie training.

The novelty this year is that we are organizing a conference about the importance of media and cinema education with both Romanian and Norwegian representatives, on June 4, from 14.00, at Babes Bolyai University for Theatre and Television. Our aim is to open a dialogue between all the representatives to find out ideas and solutions but also to exchange of good practices in order to promote better the film education within children and teenagers in schools.

Do we have a curriculum approved by the Ministry of Education for teaching film in schools?

As far as I know, there isn’t any. A while ago the Active Watch NGO proposed a project for teachers to learn how to explain media to the students, but it was a pilot program and it ended. Here in Cluj teachers ask us to propose school curriculum for learning cinema as an elective discipline. They are trying to cover this subject by organizing film projections, but their effort isn’t sustained.

Basically, EducaTIFF has been the first relevant programme to bring films for children and teenagers in the Romanian cinemas, while filling in the lack of lesson plans resources for Romanian teachers by providing proper educational materials based on these films.

Which is the most active student age group in the workshops?

Firstly, we divide them into 8+ years old, 11+years old and 15+ years old groups. The most open minded and the most active are the small ones. They don’t have absolutely any problem with public speaking, they assume their own thoughts and beliefs although others might think different, and the discussions with them are very pleasant because you, as an adult, can learn a lot from them due to their capacity of absorbing information and reproducing it as it is. Nowadays, most people live under constant media exposure, and the younger in age, the more vulnerable they are to its influence.

Another interesting category is the group represented by teenagers, who don’t necessarily want to step up and start talking, but once one of them breaks the communicational barriers, then the discussions are easier to conduct.

Are the children that participated in the previous year returning to EducaTIFF?

Yes they are. I have this pleasant surprise that part of them is returning with friends and colleagues, and this method also works with teachers, who are ambassadors of the projects and involve others and others. I can truly say that I have my own community of TIFF attenders, those who realized how important cinema learning is and how significant the project is for them.

What’s happening during the competition organized for EducaTIFF?

The competition aims to involve teenagers in the process of film critics. Although it wasn’t a very popular section in the beginning, the competition has grown year by year. Currently in competition section teenagers are learning some basics about film critics by analyzing and presenting their point of view about the movies they are seeing. Mostly they are describing the atmosphere, what’s happening and the characters, using also a short film vocabulary that they already know or it was recently learnt during workshops. We also provide some theoretical support for film critics by offering informative materials about the movies we screened in competition and by trying to do some exercises in the workshops after the movies.

The teachers are those who can subscribe teenagers to competition and we offer awards for every student age group, as well as a big prize, a trip to TIFF Sibiu with the parents. We also publish all the articles we receive, thus being a huge rewarding for parents, teachers and teenagers.

Tell me a story from this year’s edition of EducaTIFF.

I didn’t gather too many stories until now because we kicked off only two days ago, but I can tell you the story of a little boy, Alex, who came to the workshops subscribed by his mother, very passionate about film. We were at the beginning of the training, offering information about techniques, what is the process of film making and so on and so for, and at some point it was screened a picture with someone drawing Mickey Mouse, and the trainer asked who is the character, and Alex answered very sure and almost disturbed by the silliness of the question, “Walt Disney, of course”.

The biggest entry on Romania’s movie calendar, Transilvania International Film Festival (TIFF), has reached its 14th run at the end of May, bringing to Cluj-Napoca highly acclaimed and garlanded productions selected by critics from around the world. More about TIFF can be read here.

You can follow the activities of EducaTIFF on their Facebook page or on their website.

Oana Vasiliu

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