Co-operation with Barcelona Province Public Libraries and the ESCAC Foundation (Film and Audiovisual School of Catalonia)
When young adults are on the second year of High School, in Spain, they find themselves in front of one of their life’s toughest decisions, such as choosing University studies. Some of them have a clear vocation that they have already developed throughout their lives. But some doesn’t. From the libraries of the province of Barcelona, Xarxa de Biblioteques Municipals we offer them the chance to try some very special university studies: the possibility of dedicating their career to the cinema.
Students of Secondary School and 1st and 2nd of High School experience a live class of introduction to sound, assembly, or the crafts of cinema in general, based on the film Jaws. They can immerse themselves in film adaptations of literary classics that must be read during the course, such as Hamlet, Frankenstein and The Metamorphosis; they can learn how the film world has portrayed the painters, or how they have adapted successful books to turn them into scripts. And, finally, they can hear how former students of the school who have premiered their first feature films explain the way they have travelled to fill a movie theatre. All the lectures are free, open to the public, and free for users. The ESCAC takes charge of the fees of the professors and the rights of exhibition of the films that are projected.
Libraries can enhance their role in the educational community
For all the participating libraries in the project this is an opportunity to complement the activities they carry out around the cinema, reinforcing their role as link with the educational community, and opens a window to a young audience that often unknowns the possibilities that our facilities offer. For the ESCAC it is a powerful speaker to publicize their studies, at the same time an opportunity to attract talent that, otherwise, could not be considered the possibility of studying them. Who knows, perhaps one of the thousand five hundred pupils who went through the lectures of the Aula de Cinema of last year will be the next Juan Antonio Bayona.
The Aula de cinema (Cinema Classroom Project) is a collaboration between the XBM libraries network of Diputació de Barcelona and the ESCAC Foundation (Film and Audiovisual School of Catalonia). Some libraries selected based on their work towards cinema are in contact with institutes in order to organize master class sessions by ESCAC Professors.
For the participating libraries it is an opportunity to reinforce their role as speakers behind the educational community and to inform young people about what facilities they can offer. More than one thousand five hundred students went attended the lectures of the classroom of Cinema last year.
Text and photos: Jaume Felipe Villa, Director Biblioteca Maria Àngels Torrents