MICE 2019 INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION of EDUCATIONAL CINEMA
 
Toward the 7th dream. Cinema and education
By Josep Arbiol
 
 
If there's magic in boxing, it's the magic of fighting battles beyond endurance,
beyond cracked ribs, ruptured kidneys and detached retinas.
It's the magic of risking everything for a dream that nobody sees but you.
 
— Morgan Freeman, Million dollar baby 
 
 
 
 
 
Film festivals or exhibitions perform different tasks depending on the field or environment in which they operate. Festivals, indeed, are not only a space where filmmakers, professional or novice directors show and exhibit their work; they also represent manifestations of cultural and social nature that generate important audiovisual assignments, including those with an educational, instructive and pedagogical nature.
 
And there is where MICE is born, a dream of passionate snipers of culture and audiovisual education that becomes reality passing trough the walls of social conventions and the immediacy of economism in the film sector.
 
MICE is a festival with an educational purpose that promotes audiovisual education and cinema beyond the globalized industrial consumerism. MICE is the big screen for films made by students —writing images, and for quality professional cinematography —reading images. We propose a sequenced, non-immediatist learning, which starts from the essential digital writing in order to form a critical, democratic, free and cultured spectator. Following Vygotsky's and Enrique Martínez-Salanova's theorieswe try to identify the main features of these two general functions:  the reading and the creative one and we apply them to the festival.
 
MICE is a full member of ECFA (European Children Film Association) located in Brussels, of CIFEJ (Centre International pour les Films de l'Enfance et la Jeunesse) sponsored by UNESCO and based in Tehran -whose board member, Josep Arbiol is also the director of MICE-, and of UNIAL (Audiovisual Universe of the Latin American child) based in Havana. We collaborate with the Academia de Cine de España and the Generalitat Valenciana.
The educational nature of the festival makes it a proposal worthy of study and support due to its impact on diversity. Furthermore, it meets communication and the audiovisual needs of future societies and has an increasing international level. With the MICE we want to open a window to the international educational cinema in Valencia, we want to display a screen for teachers and
 

 
students, a stage where they could present their own audiovisual practices; we want to bring the world of professional cinema closer to education without this being taken only as an economic niche market. We want Valencia to keep on being a reference for "educommunication" on world's stage.
 
Foundation:
Audiovisual technology is part of our lives but in school these changes are really slow. That is why it is necessary that children, young people and society in general have the essential knowledge to use the prevailing media codes. The appropriation of these codes will give them the elements to be critical to the messages received through the image. Education therefore plays a fundamental role in achieving these objectives: we must open education to the century of the image reality, we have to bring cinema to school as a pedagogical module, and audiovisual literacy as a purpose and instrument of learning.
 
Studying the image: Reading. Traditional learning: Spectator
The use of film and audiovisual in education is a basic value for the teaching-learning process; it fosters the achievement of contents and objectives of very different nature using a dynamic and effective method. It is a powerful information resource that allows access to cultural contents, individual or social values, stimulates the development of skills such as the ability to observe, analyze, reflect and improves critical thinking. Audiovisuals involve people not only in the cognitive and affective sphere but also in their ethical, social and individual dimension. Cinema helps education to treat topics and contents that although not evaluable, deserve a special educational attention: cross-cutting, integral education, tutoring and orientation are incentives to awake in students the interest for the subject of their curricular areas and also the pleasure of enjoying "good movies".
 
Creating the image: Writing  Active learning: Director
It is about learning by doing movies, writing images, narrating digitally. To show the need of  teaching image writing in the classroom. Students need to know how to detect, analyze and understand those technical film elements that allow them to be competent and critical in the construction of their own audiovisual messages. That is a key competence in the current media environment of participatory culture. It is a step forward from contemplative learning that takes place in "learning by watching cinema" to a more proactive learning in which young people is involved through the elaboration of their own messages, applying their creativity and concerns.
 
 
 
Cinema is never art.
It's a craftwork of first order, sometimes
mostly second or third.
— Luchino Visconti
 
 

 
Objectives:
 
The diffusion of the cinematographic culture among young population contributing to the free access to culture for all future citizens; To bring and to show teachers and students the advantages of using tools and audiovisual narrative to convey a message; To project audiovisual content with learning format made by young people within their educational centers; To raise awareness among parents of the importance of knowing the content their children have access to; To promote any cultural manifestation for the inclusion of cultural values in children and young people; To aware of the importance of including audiovisual language education and its tools within the teaching approach; The dissemination and promotion of audiovisual culture in all its manifestations, especially with the aim of educating new viewers on the value of the works and professionals of the sector to encourage future generations to be proactive, as in other countries where there is great support from citizens to the cinema; To establish and to maintain links, collaborations or agreements of cultural, technical or social nature with all types of organs and public and private entities, or with organisation aimed at diffusing cinema among children; To set and promote cultural exchanges at the international and state level, through participation in congresses, workshops, festivals or meetings of any kind.  
 
Directed to:
Students from Primary School to University. All stages professors Cinema and media professionals from all over the world Parents General public  
Being a film director in Spain
is like being a bullfighter in Japan.
 —Pedro Almodovar

...And being a director of children films is not even contemplated in the script.
—Author's note
 
 

 
Contents:
 
COMPETITIVE SECTION Professional international cinema dedicated to the youngest International audiovisual content performed in educational centers or areas State  audiovisual content in any official language held in educational centers or areas Audiovisual made in the Valencian region —in Valencian language  
INFORMATIVE SECTION Feature films, short films and audiovisuals outside the competitive section  
 
 
Specific MICE sections:
Inclusive MICE  
Approximately 10% of children have some type of disability (physical, intellectual or sensory) and need support measures in the access to the cinemas, to the filming set, to the recording or editing studio and in spaces of audiovisual training. We try to promote, protect and guarantee the full enjoyment of people with disabilities according to the UN International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
 
MICE University
With the collaboration of the universities of Castellón, Valencia, Politécnica de Valencia and Alicante we want to value the work carried out by the students of these Valencian universities, make a place for the work of the Spanish University and try to show it.

MICE Children
We do not have to wait for compulsory education to introduce students to the audiovisual reading and writing. Children are not digital natives —as the last fashionable topic reports—they are in contact with the world of the image and this work of introduction is necessary from very early ages.

MICE Hospitalaria
The MICE wants to reach all the students: make them leave the classroom to enjoy the magic of the big screen. As it is not always possible, we are expanding our hospital collaboration to open not only the viewing of films, but also workshops in the hospital classrooms.

MICE Rural
The localities far from the large population centers, are very often deprived of enjoying cultural and/or educational events, due to their depleted population. From the MICE we want to give strenght to the activities in the Valencian regions that are suffering serious problems of depopulation.

 
MICE FPA (Formación para adultos-Adult education)
The MICE is a tool that perfectly fits with the training objective of FPA centers: we try to promote that adults become the authors and viewers of audiovisual creations through simple format film proposals, made by themselves at school and of their assistance, and the projection of cinematographic productions appropriate to their profile and interests. Doing MICE in FPA means also to foster their own audiovisual creations and to increase knowledge of other surrounding realities that could describe and explain the external cultural references to all adults who, for various generational, socioeconomic or cultural reasons have not had access to education before.


Other contents:
Monographic Country Guest. 2019. Germany

Each year MICE dedicates a section to introduce and study the link between education and cinema in different countries of the world with the collaboration of official entities and festivals of the contry honored. In 2019 this country will be Germany (Exhibitions, conferences, cinema and culture) in collaboration with the Goethe Institute, the German Embassy and the Schlingel Festival in Chemnitz. A monograph of 10 feature films, from The Adventures of Prince Ahmed to the multi-awarded and current At eye level.
Also the advertising spot comes from Germany: the company Pixomondo, in charge of the special effects of Game of thrones is responsible of making the promotional trailer of the MICE edition 2019.

International film workshops for students
Opened for children, young people and young adults so that youngest children can develop their creative abilities together with audiovisual professionals, becoming protagonists of their own creations within the framework of the festival.
 
Teacher training
In conjunction with the Teacher Training Service The activities of the MICE have transcended the Educational Administration and for two years, through the SFP, courses, workshops, seminars, round tables and workshops have been organized for the more than 70,000 teachers of non-university levels from the whole Valencian Community.

Actors, festivals and directors honored 2019
We continue with the support section of the professional cinema to the educational work of MICE. José Luís Cuerda, Marisa Paredes, Agustí Villaronga, Jan Sverak, Ventura Pons, Chema Prado, and Lamberto Bava: they have given support to our work always attending to the exhibition in an altruistic way. The MICE edition 2019 will not be less, we are already in contact with relevant professionals from the world of cinema of international level.


CIFEJ DAYS
For this edition the CIFEJ (Centre International pour les films de l'enfance et la jeunesse) has prepared workshops and the viewing of winner films from the CIFEJ awards. A new path that we started in collaboration with this supra-national body of which we are an active part.