At ALCINE we are convinced of the myriad virtues and relevance of short films. The first, the pleasure audiences take from viewing a brief, intense and direct piece of film. Beyond that however, the possibilities are endless.
For many years now, we have brought short films into classrooms, or rather, taken the classrooms to the cinema. The Movies 4 Teens section invites whole classes to discover a range of short films as an aid to teaching values, with topics such as immigration, abuse, etc. After watching the short films in the cinema, they are given a DVD of the same short films and an educational guide so they can continue with the activities in class, watch particular short films again, debate the issues, and learn notions of the language of cinema. This activity has been undertaken for twelve years now, and attracts hundreds of students every year.
The other educational arm of the Festival, Language in Short Film, employs short films for language learning, in this case French, German and English. The language students can watch an excellent selection of short films, chosen especially for this activity, and always subtitled in the original language of the film. Despite being in existence for a relatively short time, it has already become one of the most popular sections of ALCINE.
