For years now I’ve been bringing my camera into classrooms, with the aim of sparking a creative spark that leads students to build and tell stories. Audiovisual language nowadays pervades almost every aspect of communication in the modern world, between social media, television and the now ubiquitous displays of smartphones and tablets: the educational system can no longer limit itself to showing a few videos on the interactive whiteboard, but can turn it into a real teaching tool.
In cinematographic language many expressive forms converge and stratify — photography, painting, theatre, acting, dance, literature, music — and each of these can be explored further in relation to the interests or curriculum of the class. The stories that emerge follow spontaneous, unplanned paths, shaped by the students themselves, by the ideas that come up in class, or sometimes by a set theme, and can take the form of a short film, a documentary, a collective video-diary, a music video, or a journalistic report.
I have worked mainly with primary schools, but I have also produced work with secondary schools, both lower and upper. In the workshops I run I teach the language of cinema in a hands-on way — how to think through a shot, how to build a story in images — showing that even with a very low budget it’s possible to create effective, well-crafted and enjoyable productions. I guide the directing process from start to finish, giving the result a distinct stamp, while students and teachers act and actively contribute their own ideas and suggestions: an occasion for joyful collective effort, which always leaves a tangible trace in the finished video.
These projects are also part of the national CIPS programme – Cinema e Immagini Per le Scuole (Cinema and Images for Schools), promoted by the Italian Ministry of Education. What I love about these short films is that they often go beyond the walls of the classroom and the school: many have been selected for festivals, including international ones, taking the students’ work well beyond the boundaries of the institution that produced it.
I live in Val d’Orcia and usually work across the provinces of Siena and Arezzo, but I’m available to travel to schools and institutions elsewhere in Italy too.