IN MY OWN VIEW
Nationwide screening, commenting, voting and writing activity
Project summary, project objectives, outreach, results so far
During November and December 2015 KARPOS, with support of the Greek Educational Radiotelevision and the Greek Film Center,performed a nationwide screening, commenting, voting, and writing activity for Greek school groups (11 - 17 years) based on youth video productions, a flourishing area of expression today. The project aims to develop thoughtful young viewers, to open a discussion about their own media productions and to offer a critical tool for teachers to promote argumentation and criticism about media. Each set of screenings is made with a standard collection of films so that all viewers watch the same films as if coexisting in a festival. For the first year we selected 5' min. Greek student productions presenting aspects of everyday youth culture. Those films were nominated in our VideoMuseums Competition 2014. Collectively produced,the films talk about issues like fear for high school, bullying, digital media use and video games addiction,female vs male teens, immigration due to crisis, peer culture, cyber bullying, moving and displacement, parent-teens contradictory goals.
Viewing & Voting process
The screening is a collective classroom activity involving collaborative decision-making by small groups of students(groups of three or four). After viewing a set of films, each group discusses and decides their voting in each of the three core-questions described below, which overcomes typical nominations of “first, second, third” etc. to develop critical thinking: 1.Which would be your most favorite film in order to show it to your friends? 2.Which would be the film most suitable for adults' taste? 3.Which would be the weirdest film? The one you need to ask something about?The voting process is based on an online platform which functions as a guidance area for the teacher and where all voting results are collected. The statistics are dynamically affected by all groups’ votes in real time. Students and teachers are able to find out other schools’ final choices. Thus, a further stimulus for discussions is offered
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Review Writing Competition
A third phase of the project is a Review Writing Competition: individual students may choose one of the videos to write a review about. The platform provides detailed guidelines about how to approach a film. Its content, structural elements and artistic features are discussed. The aim is to realize that writing a review is not simply to put forward our own opinion about a media text, but also to answer questions that anyone in the audience could ask and that each one of us might give his/her own answers. The reviews were judged by a committee including film director, media educator, film critic, writer and High school teacher. The guidelines propose to think:1. The film’s identity: What? When? By whom? Why?
2. The main subject? Any side subjects? Are the creators clear and convincing?
3. Do we agree or would we propose a different approach?
4. Film language: how does the film 'shows us' its subject? How does it use information, image and sound? Does it remind of reality or is therea different approach?
5. The film’s characters? Are they convincing and why?
Results
In total sixty-nine schools participated in the project, twenty-nine of which were located in Athens while the rest represented other cities of Greece including remote islands. At least 2 teachers were involved in each school addressing to 25-50 students. (about 2800 students involved in total). The "Written film review competition" attracted one hundred and ten students, from twenty-six schools, who devoted time to write their critique. As a result, we published (in print and online) and presented at the ceremony 2 selections of texts:one including the nominated reviews and another which presented a selection of quotes/phrases from reviews that were finally not nominated but were exceptional and deserved recognition. The Ceremony attracted 300 students and teachers from all over Greece, involved readings and presentations of the videos.