Different but together. A film for a united Europe Erasmus Project

Project Title

Different but together. A film for a united Europe

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Creativity and culture

Project Summary

In our present digital age media education takes growing importance in curricular guidelines. Our project focuses on educational work with films, which means that films are not only revised and interpreted, but students are also invited to shoot films themselves. The special challenge of the project is that students from three different countries work together, they do the planning, write the screenplay, act and take care of the technical aspects likewise. This way the students improve key competences in foreign languages and technical skills (IT, camera operations, editing) as well as cooperation and teamwork. Besides, the project is meant to support the introduction of the subject “German” at the Spanish school in Novelda and the subject “Spanish” at the German school in Handrup.
The teachers accompanying the project mainly function as mentors, the main decisions as to the screenplay, setting and action will be taken by the students themselves. The topic is to design a plot on the process of the European unification. From the films it should become clear that people first of all see the differences between their nations when they meet, but finally consider the common values as most important. When preparing the project teachers developed several options concerning the plots: Groups of students from various nations meet, utter their prejudices and stereotypes, only speak their own language and communication is impossible in the beginning. In the course of the film these groups get to know each other, get closer, agree on a common language (English) and this way their meeting is finally successful. Another idea is to focus on the historical aspects of the topic: More traditional forms of communication are contrasted to more modern media which make communication much easier. Thus the process of digitalization would be presented as a process of gaining unity and experiencing common European traditions and values. However these ideas will not be given to the students. The participants will develop their own ideas.
In the projects you find three schools with 25 students per school, aged 15 to 18. Three international groups will be formed and they will deal with the screenplay, the acting and the technical side of film production. These three groups are going to meet once in a schoolyear, to exchange their results and advance their work together. For the bigger part of the students this means that they will take part in two of the six planned meetings. A few of the students (directing, camera operations) are expected to take part in more than two meetings. Between the meetings students and teachers exchange their ideas via eTwinning, which is ideal as it offers the chance to send and receive materials and to evaluate plans and ideas mutually. Project work is done in extracurricular activities in Novelda and Saint Quentin and in a special subject called “Seminarfach” in Handrup. This means that students can apply for the projects at each school. According to former experiences lots of students are interested in these international projects. Altogether a group of 75 students directly participates in the project, whereas additional students can join in at the annual meetings. Additionally each school has a team of five teachers involved in the project, all of them are very experienced in international cooperation of schools and media education.
The film will be presented publicly to all the students at each school, e.g. in a school-cinema at Novelda and it will also be published on the schools’ websites. As it is work in progress, the schools will present their project work in radio programmes twice per half-year/term so that all the other schools can stay informed, too. This project is considered to be a kind of test and starting signal for the three schools. Our common aim is to install this kind of joint film production projects in other school partnerships, so that this type of integrative work can be done during future exchange visits and become a basic element/module of media education in our school life.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 12000 Eur

Project Coordinator

Gymnasium Leoninum Handrup & Country: DE

Project Partners

• COLEGIO Y SEMINARIO MENOR DEHON SACERDOTES DEL SAGRADO CORAZON
• Lycée Saint Jean et La Croix