About Conference

Regional conference about children's rights within media literacy

Croatian Film Association is organizing Croatian Children’s Film Festival for over 50 years. Also, Association is made of 45 membering organizations and cinema clubs, most of which are involved with education in film made by children and youth. We think that we are one of the rare countries which has such quality and continuously developed children’s filmmaking and youth filmmaking, mainly because of numerous participants which act outside of institutions for long period of time and are connected by the Association. This is what sparked the idea to organize the Conference about children’s rights within media literacy before the Children’s Film Festival in Makarska. Besides through UNICEF’s Children’s Rights Festival, which was started in 2009 by CFA and within which children’s and youth films with the topic of children’s rights were seen by over 10 000 children all across Croatia, Croatian Film Association is involved in improving children’s rights through numerous other activities.

- In the past three years it has been participating in the Blue VAFI award for the film promoting children’s rights at the International Children’s and Youth Film Festival Varaždin – VAFI.
- We can see the good example at the Youth Film Festival and Four River Film Festival in Karlovac (also co organized by CFA) where the award Yellow Flag is given since 2010 – award for contribution to nonviolence on film.
- Also, part of film examples from the CFA archives serves teachers and professors for media culture classes which are held at their schools or during some other events. Children’s film is an ideal contribution to such classes. On one side because it is, logically, made for elementary school kids and on the other side because those same children are creating it. Film is their expression which connects technically and artistically motivated students.

Representatives of several countries from the region will participate at the Conference, all dealing with film creation of children. We are expecting representatives from Slovenia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Italy, Macedonia, Albania and of course, from the whole Croatia. Most participants are connected to children and youth films, some in the sense of festival programs and some are producing films with students that age. By founding Youth Cinema Network in 2013, collaboration between film clubs creating children and youth films became stronger at the European level. Besides visiting film festivals organized by the members of the Network, collaboration is developed on the film experts exchange level as well as student exchange which always sparks great interest at workshops around Europe. This project is ideal chance to connect within the Network and get to know those who share the same interest towards film creation.

Media educators from countries with strong children’s film creation as well as several our experts dealing with media and children’s film creation will participate at the Conference. Third kind of participants at the Conference will be representatives of exceptionally successful film groups and programs which have dedicated their time to children’s film creation.

In the past three years, Croatian Film Association achieved respectable number of collaborations thanks to development of international partnerships so they created needed platform for achieving the stated program of the Conference about children’s rights in film creation. It is necessary to mention that in 2015, over fifty elementary and high school students, together with their mentors participated at several international festivals and showed how strong our filmmaking is comparing to many countries.

Considering that today media literacy is seen as one of the basic kinds of literacy it is hard to believe that without institutional development of such literacy amongst children and youth we can even think about children’s rights. To talk about children’s rights and not to ensure the right to media literacy is a paradox per se. This is why the conference is regional and it deals with rights of children and is necessary to achieve collaboration at the field of media education of children, youth and their teachers, educators and mentors. This is one of the first important steps in the simultaneous promoting of media literacy and children’s rights in digital twist of fast development of new media and their social impact.