In 2013 when we started our film pedagogy project we were talking and working about important social, ethical, human right and civil issues, which are invisibly affecting our everyday lives, feelings, passions and finally: our actions. During the project we did 20x90 minutes long sessions with 18 high school classes and 2 adults groups, altogether more than 600 person participated.
One objective of ours is to teach the students to ask. To create a way of critical thinking that focuses on changing between different points of views of a subject and therefore refines the existing opinions. To force the change of paradigma in the young members of our society, a society that’s social sensitivity is poor, solidarity hides in silence and is insensitive about the vulnerable and suffering ones. The aim of project is that the students don’t pass by social injustice, verbal, mental and physical violence without paying attention, but asking: is that all right that way? The answers that could be given would be the future step of the project.
We consider it particularly important that the youngsters pay attention to the everyday life stereotypes and the discrimination coming from them, that they think about the seen problems and they understand the working mechanisms.
Above the social sensitivization our goal is to achieve awareness about the opportunities
to take action and help. We want youngsters to be more open-
We choose 6 high school classes from te applicants and make pairs of them, if possible one school from the capital one from the rural area would be together. The activity series has 5 session with each class.
The first, introductory class session is focused on helping, weakness, thoughts about being in need of help and experiences according to them. Besides the experiental games the exchange of opinions count a lot; everybody gets a chance to express his/her opinion and debate about general human right questions, which have become the part of common discussion lately.
We consider it important – on the first session as well -
On the second session we show one short movie from our series „What would you do?” and build the activities upon that. This series are speaking about the discrimination towards five socially disadvantaged minority groups; the Roma, the gay, the homeless, the women and the Jew. The favorable case would be if the class chose the topic, but we ask both the teacher and the students.
After the short movie a directed conversation follows, a debate about the seen subject. The static conversation is interrupted by dramatic situations and dynamics, both are serving for senzitivation towards socially disadvantaged and vulnerable groups and for spreading the theory of equity.
The next session, called Labeling class is about being in danger of stigmatization and stereotyping. The students get a chance to experience stereotyping themselves and to feel it’s hurtful, inhuman and degrading nature. We keep a proper frame distance to be able to differentiate between fiction and reality, although the gained experience is more than a game: the prejudices in our society toward these minority groups are pretty clear for them.
On the fourth session we use methods of drama pedagogy to think about human rights, observing the issue how real life and law can go past each other. We talk about the possibility of ruling a society’s coexistence only by law and intent to find the individual references, of which without the equality is only an expression without content.
Between the sessions the classes have to do tasks, for which we make closed facebook groups to communicate with them. On this online surface the students can for example share memes that make them think about: Is that all right that way? They make notes, debate and argue – and look up the connections.
They also have the task of explaining the important concepts by making short movies according to their previous knowledge.
The last, ending session is an evaluation and we also try to facilitate further cooperation. The project leaders consider the gained experiences very important, but they would strongly advise to keep improving the collaboration in the future. For this aim we want to offer further opportunities for individual participation, like taking part in the participatory action research, in the work of MáSzínház with people with moderate mental disability, in further sociocandid short movie making, and in the summer camp ALLOY (ALL Of You).
In the Cradle of Civil Courage we talk through stories, tales, games and puppets
about tolerance, empathy, differences and hate in a kindergarten group. We are convinced,
that the ability of being open-
The nursery project also has 5 sessions in which we create a story together and based on that an animation movie later. The sound material of the animation movie will be recorded on the kindergarten project sessions. With the public distribution of the animation movie in Tv channels we will have the chance to speak to a wider public of the toddler age group. We will also publish a project booklet that can be used as a workbook for nursery education and form a basis for establishing civil awareness in a very early age; the civil courage.