https://www.freemusicarchive.org/
In CCAJ, we believe that cinema education should link talking about films with filmmaking, to develop a film sensibility and enlarge expression.
Developing film sensibility: creative practice is a very effective way to open students’ eyes on their immediate environment, to see (and hear) it in new ways (when it is represented by film) and to discover how interesting it can be for others. Creative practice also enables learners to become subjects - of stories that are worth telling; creative practice enables children to transform what might seem uninteresting to them, trivialized by habit, into something fresh and new.
Enlarging expression: creative practice helps students become active spectators, helping them experience the world for themselves. In this case, experiencing is not only making images - as many young people do (mostly for communication and social networks) - but becoming aware of all the choices you can make when you really question and have to find your own point of view, at the same time becoming aware of choices made by filmmakers whose films you see.
We believe that creative practice should always have two sides: individual (for instance, with exercises), so that each learner can be personally engaged, but also collective, a learning by doing-together, learning collectively to make a film.
We believe that cinema is not and should not be just like other ordinary school subjects, and that it is important to introduce as soon as possible the point of view of cinema professionals (filmmakers, technicians…) to allow an artistic experience with studentsLet us summarize what matters, to us, in film-making practice with students…
- Go out of school and film the world: develop sensitivity and attention to familiar surroundings before storytelling;
- Choose a point of view, like a cinema question (‘montrer/cacher; real/fiction; ‘long take’ etc), to lead your experiment in a precise, rigorous and at the same time unexpected, stimulating way, as much for students as for you;
- Go and search in the film extracts for diversity of artistic expression; compare, make links and learn to talk simply about them in a back and forth between extracts and experiments;
- Pay attention to the showing of the exercises and films made in the workshops: keep in mind the essential thing is the path, not the result. A process is successful if participants are able to witness it, above all;
- Put the students work (and yours) as much as possible into perspective with other achievements of exercises or films;
- Never forget that a collective workshop (and learning to do-together) should not inhibit the personal and sensitive dimension of the experience;
- Don’t be afraid, as risk-taking is a major pedagogical virtue: ‘cinema initiation’, as a creative experience, questions the place of the teacher and requires a more personal commitment from adults; it’s not teaching, it’s an encounter, an experience