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Young film-makers are being given the chance to develop their skills in after-school clubs. Julia Andrews explains.

With today?s technology, every human being who has a voice and a story to tell can be a film-maker! Cheaper digital film cameras and low-cost editing software has opened up the possibilities for students and teachers to learn about the moving image and discover its transformational power first hand. By getting their hands dirty and making mistakes, students and teachers can learn the importance of risk taking and problem solving as a necessary part of learning in any curriculum area.

Cineclub is a network of after-school film-making and film-watching clubs designed to maximise this potential for creative learning through film. We train professional film-makers to train teachers and students to be proficient low-budget film-makers. The hope is that primary, secondary and A-level students will be inspired by the challenges of every aspect of digital film production ? scriptwriting, storyboarding, shooting, acting, editing, and creating soundtracks. Students make one film each term and the projects naturally link with acting techniques from the drama department, set-design and shot composition from art and photography, and musical composition for creating original copyright-free film scores! The collaborative nature of film as an artform encourages cross-curricular projects and skill sharing at a very real and purposeful level.

Our workshops introduce young people to a non-Hollywood concept of low-budget film-making with an explicit focus on the process, not product, of film-making and the creativity of constraints. We interweave film screenings with production activities, showing classic, cult and contemporary film clips to illustrate different aspects of the production process and to extend students? wider viewing and encourage them to discuss aesthetics and effects. Alongside the workshops, our teacher-mentoring strand operates to train teachers from across curriculum areas to run the Cineclub into its second and third membership years and develop ways of relating film work to other artforms such as drama, art and music within the school and across the curriculum. Cross-curricular school teams have been particularly successful in engaging a range of departments in the film-making project.

Once the after-school club has been established and the students have made at least two films the schools can join a membership scheme that provides a permanent support network to maintain the clubs? sustainability and provide an annual framework to work with. We provide:
? Public screening events
? Information about national and international young people?s film festivals and youth production opportunities
? Webstreaming of finished films, and
? Uncut rushes for students and teachers to view and review; peer-mentoring
? We also create networking opportunities and troubleshooting between Cineclub schools, teachers and workshop leaders through our programme of teachers? and tutor meetings and with our partnership cinemas? websites and events.

Once teachers are proficient in film-making they can start to use digital film across the curriculum and train other teachers too. Subjects such as art, drama, history, science and PSHE & citizenship are all areas in which film can be used as a creative and powerful enrichment tool in which to promote debate and engage learning on a more creative and dynamic level. In consultation with us, schools develop their own long-term vision for using film across the curriculum and work towards a three-year strategy for whole-school awareness, cross-curricular projects, peer-mentoring schemes, and teacher training and community development.

In this way, we hope to leave a clear legacy of skills and long-term strategy for moving image work that is embedded into the schools? existing structures and fits into their aims and objectives. In our first year we have worked with 40 primary and secondary schools to create a pan-London network, and in September 2005 we are launching our Regional Programme for schools outside London. The Cineclub network is a skeleton framework designed to provide schools with a screening platform for young people?s work and a networking forum for sharing ideas and good practice among teachers. In this way we hope to provide the ?bones? onto which schools can add the ?flesh? of their own film festivals, activities weeks and cross-curricular projects and professional development for years of moving image work to come.

Julia Andrews is Director of Cineclub. t: 020 7952 5549; e: info@cineclub.org.uk