Using film in and out of the classroom can engage and inspire a new generation of young minds and provide children and young people with additional literacy, comprehension, analytical and writing skills.
Education charity, Into Film, hosts an annual free film festival for schools, the Into Film Festival. This year, the festival returns from November 7 to 24, offering a UK-wide free event for schools with film screenings and curriculum-linked events hosted by special guests from the world of film.
The programme engages more than one million 5 to 19-year-olds every year – in classrooms, through extra-curricular activities, in cinemas and online. The programme is curated to support the curriculum and includes films with PSHE topics too, ranging from anti-bullying, mental wellbeing, citizenship, and friendship.
Pre-Covid, in 2019, the festival reached its seventh year with the biggest audience to date seeing 600 cinemas welcoming more than 500,000 attendees across the 3,000 screenings and events on offer. This year’s edition, celebrating Into Film’s 10th anniversary, will hopefully be able to welcome audiences of the same magnitude once again.
The festival plays a vital role in developing curious minds – giving young people a chance to see films they wouldn’t usually see and visiting venues they may not have been to before.
The festival’s activities are accessible for all young people with half of the screenings on offer being accessible to attendees with a visual or hearing impairment through audio-description and subtitling with autism-friendly screenings made widely available. There are also more than 7,000 wheelchair spaces across festival venues.
Jacqui Smith from St Andrew’s CE Primary School in Barnsbury said: “The Into Film Festival presented wonderful opportunities for our pupils, most of whom rarely visit the cinema. It was amazing to see the diversity of films on offer. It also provided the opportunity for the children to venture out and visit the different types of venues. Last year the school attended seven screenings in total.
“The cinema visits and online resources linked well with the school curriculum and could easily be incorporated into lesson plans. The visits were great fun for the pupils.”
The full festival programme for 2023 and bookings will go live for educators on Thursday, September 7. Many of the events tend to fill up extremely quickly, so be sure to take note of the date and be ready to book your places.
- For details and to book, visit www.intofilm.org/festival