Film club and education: launch of the book that values ​​cinema as a meeting space

film club

The Arts, Cultures and Heritage Network worked on this new publication that collects the history of film club in Chile and that also includes a manual for universities that want to replicate this practice that seeks to expand the social fabric of cinema and that contributes to the meeting of people through movies.

Cineclubism and Education, is the book that starting today will be available for open and free download through the page of the State University Network (uestatales.cl). This publication highlights an activity that has been almost invisible in the development of culture in Chile, but which is nevertheless fundamental as a space for discussion and reflection on film production and its relationship with what the country is experiencing.

This is what Guillermo Jarpa, coordinator of Artistic Creation at the University of Chile, believes, who indicates that film clubbing is a practice that “appeals to the gathering of people around cinema as an invitation to live a common experience on two levels: that of exhibition and reflection on cinematographic art. Therefore, its sine qua non condition is that it be participatory and meeting, being a driving force to address general issues typical of all audiovisual citizen culture.”

Film clubs were born as self-managed spaces in which people meet to exhibit and discuss cinematographic works, establishing horizontal dialogues between all participants. In Chile this practice arises precisely in universities, which opted for these spaces that even gave rise to film festivals that last to this day.

This is why the Network of Arts, Cultures and Heritage seeks to rescue this history, highlighting, above all, the material produced in Chile: “For the universities of the State it is important to promote film rescue because Chilean cinema is part of the country's film heritage. . It is through this experience of collective emotion that cinema is transformed into knowledge,” says Leonardo Seguel, director of extension at the University of Bío-Bío.

Along the same lines, Fernando Gaspar, director of Artistic Creation at the University of Chile, highlights that “the rescue, valorization and dissemination of memory, the arts and particularly cinematographic memory, is essential to promote more critical and reflective communities.” about our history and also to value the importance of those who have made these works, because in addition the exercise of rescuing cinematographic memory means the valorization of our history as a country.”

Along with this publication, the network has promoted a series of activities, aimed at promoting film clubbing. Among them is the holding of a national meeting of film clubs that will take place at the University of Bío-Bío in May 2020.

Source: Network of State Universities of Chile