Cinema at the service of education: the experience of elementary and secondary schools in Algarve – Portugal

Abstract

First you will find it strange, but then you interiorize it. This is how we could define, using Fernando Pessoa, the first contact of a child or adolescent with the non-blockbuster cinema. Train the spectator to watch films that require careful consideration and a thorough interpretation – that is the role of teachers that, somehow, influence the lives and tastes of those with whom they contact. The need for training these professionals is associated with the difficulty of over passing established bureaucracies and prejudices that continue to constrain the introduction of cinema in the programs of basic and secondary education. In Algarve, the southernmost region of Portugal, the Youth Film School project (Juventude Cinema Escola), coordinated by Graça Lobo, has acquired a reputation and seriously counter-currents.