Bring The Change aims to encourage active and proactive reflection on what it means to build an inclusive society among adolescents. For this purpose, the project offers an integrated course of knowledge of the language and of the narration techniques of documentary film, of the use of participatory videomaking, of personal involvement as a jury within Biografilm Festival and of in-depth analysis on social cinema through meeting with directors.
Every year, from January, one or more classes from local high schools are involved, sharing the path with a group of young people with disabilities involved in Arca di Noè Cooperativa Sociale's projects. These workshops give rise to the Bring The Change youth juries, which award prizes within the Festival's official program, and share their views with the audience, the people and guests of the event.
Cinema as an engine of inclusion and confrontation
The project, in continuity with Bring the Change 2022, stems from the idea that people with disabilities and different experiences can meet and confront each other. Through different languages, the people involved will be accompanied in a path of 7 meetings to approach the language of cinema and acquire the basic tools to analyze the sequences of selected films.
Bring the Change 2023 is a project of Arca di Noè Cooperativa Sociale, realized thanks to the contribution of Sistema di Accoglienza e Integrazione (SAI), in collaboration with Biografilm Festival and SMK Factory - active since 2009 in the field of production and distribution of documentary cinema. Also, this year the project sees the involvement of the Aldini Valeriani Public High School in Bologna. Also collaborating is the school library "Fuori Catalogo" of the same institute.
With the aim of creating opportunities to unhinge prejudices and develop empathy between the and young people, through peer to peer education activities in 2023, Bring The Change wants to implement the module related to the establishment of youth juries for the films selected and proposed within the 19th edition of Biografilm, which will be held from June 9 to 19 in Bologna.
The project involves, from April to June, class 3ATR of the Aldini Valeriani Secondary School in Bologna and a group formed by vulnerable beneficiaries of the SAI project and some people from the Cadriano occupational laboratory of the Arca di Noè social cooperative.
How the workshop is organized
The jury workshops are divided into two phases: the first involves the creation and guided viewing of the films by the two young juries (Arca di Noè and male and female students from a class of the Aldini Valeriani High School, while in the second phase the two juries will meet to confront and exchange among peers through participatory workshops. Fundamental in these meetings is the enhancement of the specificities of each person, of their own history and experience evoked through the viewing of the films. The workshops are aimed at group-building through empathy and the consensus method, the development of listening skills and the expression of one's opinions, and the acquisition of a basic film language that can enable the next stage of peer-to-peer confrontation between the two youth juries. The latter will award the Bring The Change prizes during the Awards Ceremony of the 19th edition of Biografilm Festival.
For this path, 4 documentary films were chosen from the program of the 19th edition of Biografilm Festival, selected by the Biografilm programming office together with educators and cultural mediators to stimulate identification and exchange of experiences.
Stimulating critical thinking through documentary cinema
Three classes of the Aldini Valeriani Public High School in Bologna were directly involved in the project in 2022, but the path aims to involve other high schools on the Italian territory over the years. To this end, a catalog of films with paired educational activities has been produced and can be downloaded for free here.
Bring The Change project, developed in a reduced pilot form as early as 2021 by the Fanatic About Festivals - Biografilm Festival Association, in 2022 is implemented by the SMK Factory Association - active since 2009 in the field of production and distribution of documentary cinema, in collaboration with Biografilm Festival and with the important involvement of the Aldini Valeriani Public High School in Bologna. Also collaborating are the school library "Fuori Catalogo" of the same institute, the Terra Di Tutti Film Festival- a social film festival founded in Bologna in 2007 by COSPE and WeWorld, the la Cooperativa Sociale Arca di Noè and ZaLab. It was made possible thanks to the contribution of the Fondazione del Monte di Bologna e Ravenna and the support of the Embassy and Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Italy as part of the cultural program (S)punti di Vista.
How the workshop is organized
Bring The Change offers an integrated course divided into 4 modules:
1. February-March 2022. Education in documentary storytelling language and techniques. The module offers 6 face-to-face meetings which include the screening of 5 documentary films on social issues in the original version with Italian subtitles, 5 educational workshops aimed at stimulating debate and the acquisition of tools for analyzing reality (one of which with the Italian director Pierfrancesco Li Donni), 1 final masterclass with director Joris Postema and director Els van Driel both from the Netherlands.
2. April 2022. Practical workshop of participatory videomaking. Since the theme of the workshop is "change and inclusiveness", some disabled people from the Arca di Noè Social Co-operative will participate in the workshop together with the group of Aldini students, to make the final videos together. The final videos will be screened in June 2022 at Biografilm Festival and in October 2022 at the Terra di Tutti Film Festival.
3. May – June 2022.Practical workshop for the young jury of the 18th edition of Biografilm Festival.
4. October 2022.Final masterclass on social cinema, within the 16th edition of the Terra di Tutti Film Festival.
How do you fight against discrimination? Giving value to the differences and talking about oneself starting from daily experience. #RespectAllTheDifferences is the thread that binds 3 short films created by the students of the Aldini Valeriani secondary school together with some young people from the social laboratory of the Arca di Noè social cooperative, in the context of a participatory videomaking workshop held by the SMK Videofactory association within the educational project Bring The Change - Biografilm 2022.
This is my voice | 2' (4aC GC Aldini Valeriani Higher Education Institute – Noah's Ark) by Sara Derario, Lorenzo Paolo Vai, Ettore Carrieri, Margherita Natali, Francesco Puddu, Nicole Marani, Christian Barbieri, Daniele Belleti, Alessia Avallone, Gianluca Scagnet
But do you know how to use those phones? | 3' (4aA GC Aldini Valeriani Higher Education Institute) by Greta Bongiovanni, Gaia Cacciapuoti, Franco Comellini, Sara Diolaiti, Arianna Pancotti, e con Giacomo Cappelletti
In a day | 2' (4aA GC Aldini Valeriani Higher Education Institute) by Rachele Baffetti, Martina Bertoncelli, Alex Naldi, Greta Ciancimino, Silvia Trulli, Iris Sabbioni
