KINOFORUM WORKSHOPS

The Kinoforum Workshops began their activities in 2001 as a parallel project to the São Paulo International Short Film Festival, sponsored by Petrobras. Coordenated by filmmaker Christian Saghaard, the project is developed with the help of other filmmakers and guest pedagogical collaborators, and also includes the alumni as staff members.

Through the introduction to basic film language, the workshops intend to encourage the discovery of new views, universes and conceptions regarding motion pictures. The participants acquire a more critically refined view of the form as well as the content of different types of audiovisual pieces, recognizing in them procedures that derive from film language. The project intends to, in many ways, attend those communities of Sao Paulo’s outskirts where there is a lack of cultural opportunities.

The preparation for the workshops begins with partnerships established between Kinoforum and fellow cultural and/or social associations that work inside these communities. Before the student selection process is finalized, a screening of videos made in previous workshops takes place inside the community.

Anyone between the ages of 16 and 26 can apply for the workshops, even if they don’t have any past experience in the audiovisual field. Twenty students are then selected to be a part of the workshop, which happens in the space provided by the community’s partner association. The feature film “Jardim Ângela” was shot during the Kinoforum Workshop that took place out in Jardim Ângela community in 2005.

After watching short films and fragments of some features, which serve as an introduction to film language, the participants begin practical exercises with the digital video camera. Four groups are formed and each one of them develops collectively a screenplay. Their ideas are then discussed with their teachers and monitors. From then on, they begin to list the production needs for all their short films, documentary or fiction. Operating the cameras, location scouting and doing the local production, the participants are involved in the writing, shooting and editing processes of their films. On the last day, their videos are exhibited before all the students and the community. All of these activities, including the exhibitions, are free of charge.

A starting point for the development of the workshops’ project, the International Short Film Festival also works as a showcase for the work done by these students, which is fully exhibited in a special session which is part of the official program, and through which some of the shorts have been receiving several invitations for foreign festivals. Also, since 2002 the Developing New Visions program of the Festival gathers, presents and debates similar experiences carried out throughout the country, promoting an annual seminar on the subject.

Since the pilot project in 2001 until the 2006 season, 36 workshops happened, in which more than 500 students wrote, produced, directed, photographed, edited and exhibited 133 digital video shorts. After a workshop is over, our local partners are always encouraged to carry on with similar work within their communities.

Jardim Ângela is a documentary focused on boys and girls from São Paulo’s suburbs and their particular view of the world. Residents of Jardim Angela, a district which has been on the top of the city’s most violent neighborhoods ranking, these young men and women are afraid and ashamed to say where they live, claiming to be victims of prejudice for living in that community. The film is structured around the video workshop that was carried out by Associação Cultural Kinoforum at Jardim Ângela in 2005.