The Aver-o-Mar School Media Club and the curricular area Citizenship and Development have opened their doors to all students to take part in the European Youth Film Jury in partnership with the Portuguese Film Academy and the European Film Award since 2019.
After a training session with the project’s coordinator and vice-president of the Portuguese Film Academy, Carla Chambel, the students act as jury members for films directed by young people from the various countries that make up the European map. Over the years, the Young Audience Award (YAA) has grown under the umbrella of the European Film Club (EFC), a European film club created by young people who passed through the Young Audience Award and continued to want to see, debate and learn more about the richness of European cinema and its authors. This project now covers 12 to 19 year olds and aims to empower students in film literacy by allowing young people from all over the continent to come together to watch and discuss European films and share their own in a spirit of European citizenship. The films tell every conceivable human story, providing an insight into the lives of others, different cultures and what it means to be European.
The Portuguese Film Academy (PFA) continues to embrace this project of training young audiences and encouraging them to have the power to choose, debate and add their opinions and concerns, and once again our students took part.
To have a higher celebration, our 8th and 7th graders signed up together with young people from all over Europe to take part in various initiatives related to European cinema, fulfilling the international programme.
In the original group there is a Portuguese representative, 18-year-old Maria Bacelar, who has made it all the way through the YAA, as a jury member, reporter, Jury Speaker and her passion for cinema has taken her to Erfurt, Germany, in 2022, to be a presenter at the official YAA ceremony, alongside Emmerson, a colleague from the UK. To represent Póvoa de Varzim, Sara Cortesão, a 7th grade student from Aver-o-Mar School Group, was selected. She bravely travelled to Lisbon in the company of her parents to act as Jury Speaker on 5 November, along with her peers from the other countries, as she did last year. We are proud to thank Sara and her family for their commitment to this activity.
Well done, Sara!
