25 february 2016

Audiovisual and Education scopes are closely related in the new edition of the International Festival of Educational Cinema (Mice) which turns four in 2016. Almost a lustrum in which audiovisual pedagogy has become the leitmotiv of a festival developed by and for students.

Created by the cultural association entitled Jordi el Mussol, Mice arose in 2013 as a revolutionary idea: an international short-movie festival under educational themes. Eventually, it has been consolidated as one of the world’s referents in communicative education.

Its main objective is to provide students with the necessary tools for them to be able to decrypt the dominant media codes and to start to develop a critical vision of media and of the pictures that surround us. The festival promotes this critical attitude by encouraging children and teenagers to create their own short films and enter the competition. The festival is divided into four categories:

• Elementary: for children up to 12 years old.
• High school: for teenagers up to 18 years old.
• University: for undergraduates up to 22 years old.
• Professional: it is divided into Fiction and Animation and it is for any adult interested.

The novelty of this year is that the programme includes for the first time a full-length film. From the 175 pieces that are projected, 136 of them are productions realised in educational environments and 39 are professional productions. All of them have been sent from 32 countries, which emphasises the international character of the meeting.

The festival is completed by a calendar of activities among which conferences, manga workshops, trick photography, play-doh animation, filming with chroma, cinema history and dubbing.

In this year edition, Mice has expanded its influence and it will also be in Benetússer, L’Eliana and Sagunto. In Valencia,the Filmoteca will held on Saturday 27 February two sessions: the one at 18 hours will be dedicated to the guest country of this edition, Japan, and in it it will showed both Komaneko, la gata curiosa (Komaneko: The Curious Cat), based on a successful cartoon series; and a short films programme by the animator Yasushi Asai. At 20 hours it is programmed the showing of the Iranian full-length film Historia de la bicicleta de mi padre y yo (Story of My Father’s Bike & Me), directed by Fayaz Mousavi, who will present his film in the room Luis G.Berlanga. Mice 2016 will conclude the next Sunday 28 with the award ceremony.