Festival as a Form of Education. Asian Cinema Education Good Practices
The role of film festivals has long ceased to be limited just to screening the works of important artists. Apart from presenting films, the organizers of film events often use the festival space to further the debate on important, socially engaged topics. In other words, film festivals became platforms that educate the audiences and raise their awareness.
Asian Cinema Education is a multi-stage project created to broaden the spectrum of festival activities, with the goal of raising the audiences’ awareness and tolerance for cultural diversity. The results of the initiative, which included both theoretical ideas and real-life activities, are presented in the form of three reports of the Festival as a Form of Education series. Their aim is to present a number of what we consider to be good practices for a more inclusive treatment of migrant groups and creating educational narration. The reports show practices around educating through festivals and eliminating cultural and racial stereotypes. The last report is devoted to Culture Lab workshops, a quick course in creating cultural events for immigrants and expats living in Warsaw.
The reports presented below were created by four film festivals specializing in Asian cinema. The organizers of the events have closely examined the practices that can be incorporated in festival, educational and social activities, in order to promote the awareness of tolerance and diversity, especially around migrant groups and expats living in larger urban centers. The reports were created based on the experiences of and in cooperation with: Five Flavours Asian Film Festival in Warsaw, Poland, Udine Far East Film Festival in Italy, CAMERA JAPAN Festival in Rotterdam and Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and Helsinki Cine Aasia in Finland.
Festival as a Form of Education: A Collection of Festival Educational Practices, Resources, and Inspirations
The report consists of a set of practices connected with organizing events – festivals, smaller film programs, and projects aiming to spread knowledge and raise awareness of Asian cinema. In the report, we show how to organize a film event, we look at the dynamics of such endeavors and point to the difficulties in organizing festivals and smaller film events. An important part of the report is devoted to educational practices, demonstrating selected examples of initiatives we were able to carry out, as well as potential initiatives that could be organized based on the practices presented. The report also includes a list of organizations and institutions one can turn to when organizing a film event in a given city/country, and possible topics for lectures and workshops that could enrich its program.
Festival as a Form of Education: Going Against Stereotypes. How Can Festivals Promote Tolerance and Diversity?
A set of practices and guidelines for film festivals aiming to promote the attitudes of tolerance and inclusiveness towards cultural diversity. The report presents the key organizational issues on the examples of case studies collected by the partners of the project. They include guidelines for volunteers, a detailed account of cooperating with NGOs and foundations helping refugees and migrants, practices around educational institutions (schools), and the scope of activities aimed to encourage the migrant minorities to participate in the cultural sector. The need to create a list of detailed practices stems from the need of countering cultural and racial stereotypes, as well as from the desire to promote tolerance and openness to cultural diversity.
Festival as a Form of Education: Culture Lab
The last report is devoted to the educational activity Culture Lab. Organized by Arteria Art Foundation (organizer of Five Flavours Asian Film Festival), the initiative was a series of workshops preparing for the organization of cultural and social events, directed towards migrant groups and expats living in Warsaw. In the report, we present the Culture Lab project step by step: from a detailed training module and workshop goals to working on particular activities and the results presented in the form of artistic and social activities prepared by the participants. The report can serve as further inspiration for creating similar workshops directed at minority groups from particular cities – to this end, it includes recommendations on how to effectively reach migrant minorities and engage them in cultural activities. The report is available in Polish only.
