Cinema and education: repertory, themes & articulations

Abstract

The present article has its origins in the course Cinema and Education: repertoire, thematics & articulations, offered within the project Vagalume, Laboratory of Studies in Audiovisual and Education, from the Audiovisual Literacy Program, in the city of Porto Alegre, between September and October 2015.It starts from the premise that the cinema educates and can be a great ally of the teacher and students  to know more about curricular contents and about projects which they intend to perform throughout the year, with different proposals (Xavier; Bergala; Duarte e Alegre; Fresquet; Fantin; Migliorin; Junqueira Filho e Barbosa). However, to do so, it is necessary to know what has the cinema already produced about different thematics, among them, the ones which are in the teachers and students interest in each moment of the school year. How can we know which films we have to select in order to discuss a thematic? How can we access such films? How to elaborate an explore guide to each film and each thematic? These were the questions that have led to the course and to which we have tried to answer collectively along the four meetings. Other questions appeared during the course, showing specificities on the students demands: How to organize pleasant situations in which teachers and two or three-year-old students could watch films and talk about them? How can cinema help teachers to re-bewitch to life and studies high school students who live amidst violence? These exchanges between students and teacher have produced a significant enlargement of the possibilities of articulation between cinema and school and reinforced the need for planning and elaborating of work projects in order to use films in the different levels of education.