Shorts as schoolbooks

Focused right from the start on the importance of education in film and audio-visual media and on the need to provide opportunities for exchange and thought for young and very young audiences, the 24^th ShorTS International Film Festival (Trieste, 1-8 July 2023) is back with the lively Shorter Kids’n’Teens section.

This wholly idiosyncratic space is a real “festival within the festival” as end point of the Cinema in corsivo project, a learning process of short films aimed at school-age children in Trieste and Gorizia, in which shorts offer themselves up as an alternative to “schoolbooks” to discuss diversity, rights and environment and the goals set by Agenda 2023 and a comprehensive opportunity for providing contact with languages and cultures.

Cinema in corsivo is therefore an exploration of the world of film and audio-visual language through the viewing and analysis of epoch-making shorts starting with Le voyage dans la lune (France, 1902), an early cinema classic by Georges Méliès, up to Vincent (USA, 1982) by Tim Burton, the first stop motion horror gem by the director of Alice in Wonderland and many others. The aim of all this is to show kids the features of a given film from the point of view of form in order to stimulate discussion and thoughts on the themes of growth and relationships. This process also involves the screening of films presented at previous ShorTS IFF events, including Biletat/The Ticket (Bulgaria, 2021) by Kevork Aslanyan whose lead character is a young boy who faces up to the dangers of an entire city to ensure the perfect present for his mother and First Love (Canada, 2021) by Beatrice Woo, a sincere and amusing portrait of the pain and joy caused by a first love. Shorts also take us to geographical and cultural boundaries as a direct portrayal of personal reflection, such as for example in Saka Sy Vorona/Cat and Bird (Germany, 2021) by Franka Sachse in which a bird and a cat reveal how chirping and tail fluttering suffice to form a friendship and Cemento (Italia, 2021) by Davide Venerus on the small saga of a little girl who travels through a noisy steel and cement jungle, ready to face anything in order to find her small green space.

This pathway, organised and conducted for ShorTS IFF Trieste by the expert Manuela Morana, is made up of viewings, discussions, analyses and writing and drawing activities serving critical reflection and active learning and takes place through many different lessons which during these months involve an audience of as many as 600 students. It is a process of preparation for the creation of two groups of Selectors, kids (from 8 to 10 years of age) and teens (11 to 15), who in April are to select the shorts in competition for “their” section, Shorter Kids’n’Teens, which will then be a feature of two days of the Festival.