History and vision

HISTORY

The director of the festival Zuzana Dražilová was considering to establish the festival when she was the producer of the documentaries "Lost Neighbours" made by Czech teenagers under the supervision of professional filmmakers. She entered them at foreign film festivals specialized on screening the films produced by children and youth from around the world. At that time, such festivals were starting …

Thanks to state-of-the-art audiovisual and computer technologies, nowadays youngsters hold important tools in their hands. What matters, however, is how they will use them. Whether as a positive means of creating something nice and beneficial that will enrich our world, or as a weapon that harms. The ever-improving technique has been here, it is and will be even more, and it is up to us how we deal with it…

The 1st year of the festival under the name Teenfilmfest.cz took place on 14 and 15 December 2019, when 149 films, and 132 from them in the competition, from 23 countries were screened at the Světozor art cinema in Prague. These were often videos that were awarded at foreign festivals and formed more than half of the festival program. The main goal was to present excellent films to Czech young people made by their peers in various countries around the world. Quality films made by Czech authors were also screened here. Screenings of these audiovisual works for primary, secondary and grammar schools in various cinemas in Czech Republic were also organised, which continued the following year. See below 2019.

In 2020, it was not possible to go ahead with the standard 2nd year of the festival due to the pandemic. Therefore the festival project continued with online screenings of festival films from the 1st year, for school children aged 6 to 19. Based on the specific requirements of various types of Czech schools, we created approximately 45- to 60-minute film blocks, made up of films screened during Teenfilmfest 2019. During the state of emergency, pupils and students watched them on computers at home, and teachers showed them to pupils in schools at a time when the pandemic situation allowed. See below 2020.

VISION

Thanks to state-of-the-art audiovisual and computer technologies, nowadays youngsters hold important tools in their hands. What matters, however, is how they will use them. Whether as a positive means of creating something nice and beneficial that will enrich our world, or as a weapon that harms… These ever-improving technologies have been here for a while, and will be even more in the future, and it is up to us how we deal with it… That is why this year we came up with a new form of online festival, which we want to develop further in the years ahead. The experience from the COVID pandemic gave us new knowledge for which we are grateful. The festival will run for six weeks and all its activities will take place online. Live events will also be streamed over the internet. We believe that thanks to several weeks of online work, in 2021 we will provide very interesting audiovisual works from around the world to a large number of audiences, including other events such as talk shows, Q&A, workshops, etc. Our goal is to publish on www.afilmteensfest.com the best international audiovisual works made by children and young people under the age of 21. The most important target group for us is young people aged 11 to 17. Our main goals are information, communication, inspiration, mediation of contacts and opportunities between the youngest filmmakers from all over the world. Thanks to the exchange of information and experience, we want to increase the quality of audiovisual works produced by children and young people in an international context. If the situation in the future allows, we will not exclude from our activities the presentation of films in cinemas and live workshops.

We want to support creativity, media literacy, the development of mind and aesthetics, moral and social perception, as well as the critical thinking of today’s children and young people. Our objectives are cultural enjoyment and entertainment, but also the upbringing of children, as well as alternative education. It is important for us to inspire teachers of various types of schools and help them to develop film and media education, we want to promote this. Our intention is to develop the creativity, originality and quality of the works made by teenagers through attractive, easy-to-use and constantly-improving techniques, which should lead to the elaboration of own original themes with minimal or zero budgets. We will also support disadvantaged Czech youth from children's homes with limited opportunities within the audiovisual project "Windows to the World”, and we would like to develop cooperation between children's homes in the field of film and media education at the international level.