Bring The Change project 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.
Bring the Change is a project of Arca di Noè, part of Arcolaio Consortium, realized as part of the SAI project and in collaboration with SMK Factory, Biografilm Festival and the Aldini Valeriani Higher Education Institute.
This year reaching its third edition, the Bring the Change project aims to create a space for young adolescents to meet and dialogue through film language. Cinema is indeed a strategic tool to encourage new narratives but also processes of inclusion and social transformation.
A journey of cinema, relationship and creativity
In 2024, the journey involves some young beneficiaries of the hosting projects run by Arca di Noè and a group students from the Aldini Valeriani Institute.
As in the previous edition, the project proposes an integrated journey of knowledge of film language for the creation of the Bring the Change jury, which will award prizes within the final evening of the 20th edition of Biografilm Festival (June 7-17, 2024, Bologna), sharing its point of view with the audience, the and guests of the event.
The choice of cinematic language aims to encourage reflection on what it means to build an inclusive society, thus encouraging mutual understanding, exchange of experiences and discussion in the group.
To encourage people's active participation and guide them in viewing and evaluating films, tools for reworking the languages and messages of the film they choose as the winner will be presented during the meetings. This year's project includes a new element: through the use of different languages, including the slam poetry method, the jury group will produce a short video representing the motivations for the award, encouraging a creative Bring the Change jury.
Cinema as an engine of inclusion and confrontation
In 2023 the project involved, from April to June, class 3ATR of the Aldini Valeriani Institute in Bologna and a group formed by vulnerable beneficiaries of the SAI project and some people from the Cadriano occupational workshop of the Arca di Noè social cooperative.
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.
With the aim of creating opportunities to break down prejudices and develop empathy between young people through peer to peer education activities, Bring The Change 2023 wants to implement the form related to the creation of youth juries for the films selected and proposed within the 19th edition of Biografilm (June 9-19, 2023, Bologna).
The jury workshops are divided into two phases: the first involves the creation and guided viewing of the films by the two youth juries, while in the second phase the two juries meet for moments of confrontation 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 aim to build the group 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.
In 2023, the winning film for the Bring The Change Award Aldini Valeriani and the Bring The Change Award Arca di Noè was:
THE MIND GAME by Sajid Khan Nasiri, Eefje Blankevoort, Els van Driel.
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 participated in the workshop together with the group of Aldini students, to make the final videos together. The final videos were 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.
To actively involve the whole school, a catalogue of films with paired educational activities has been produced, download it here.
In 2022, the winning film for the Bring The Change Award Aldini Valeriani and the Bring The Change Award Arca di Noè was:
THE STORY WON'T DIE by David Henry Gerson
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
