Coordinating teachers: A. Christodoulou, K. Kechagia

Participating students (B class): A. Konstantara, M. Dalkafouki, A. Karastathi, A. Kritikou, D. Gialvari, M. Voulgari, A. Giagiakou, V. Agapiadou, S. Kleftogianni, S. Andrianopoulou, E. Athinaiou, A. Nenda, E. Nasiou, E. Naki, E. Gaitanari, A. Androulaki, K. Georgiou, A. Apostolidi, K. Anastasiadou, M. Damigou, D. Tsilali, A. Chatzopoulou, A. Gioni, E. Malama, S. Papagelou, E. Vikeli, S. Palla, P. Ralli, L. Savopoulou.

The idea behind devising this project was basically a practical one. We knew that the students of B Class didn?t have enough time to go to the cinema as often as they would like due to their heavy every day schedule. After discussing with them we realized that most of them usually watched action movies or romantic comedies, that is films based on linear narration techniques or impressive action scenes and special effects. We thought that through a cinema project they could come in touch with less commercial or massive mainstream Hollywood films on the one hand, and on the other, they could be exposed to films of a different cultural origin.

We chose four films to watch and work on during this project based on three basic guidelines: the inter and cross cultural element; the familiarization of our students with various narrative techniques used in the cinema as opposed to the ?linear narration? technique usually adopted in most of the American action movies that teenagers usually watch in multiplex cinemas across Europe; and , last but not least, the sensitive adolescent issues that are dealt with in the films.

The chosen films were:

• ?The end of an era? (Greece/ Best Greek Film Award, Thessaloniki International Film Festival, 1994)
• ?The color of Paradise? (Iran)
• ?Igby goes down? (USA)
• ?Run, Lola, Run? (Germany)

The first film, ?The end of an era?, which is in black and white, records incidents from the every day life of a group of teenagers in Greece in the 1960?s (now at the age of our students? parents or younger grandparents) using the flash back technique.

The second film refers to the life and tragic death of a twelve-year old blind boy who has lost his mother and lives with his farmer father in a small village in Iran. The actors are amateur and only one camera has been used to shoot the entire film contributing to a hard realistic effect.

The third film follows Igby, the rich upper-class 18-year old New Yorker, who tries to find his inner balance after an adventurous adolescence because of drugs, his catatonic father and his overprotective mother who chooses euthanasia over the painful treatment for breast cancer. It is an all-star American film using the linear narration technique.

As for the fourth film, it refers to a couple of 17-year old Germans who are madly in love and who accidentally get involved with the mafia and try to find their way out of the mess. The narration of the story goes back and forth suggesting different endings each time. The students watched all the films in small independent rotating groups for each film, discussed their opinions and emotions and , in the end, they recorded their conclusions with the help of questionnaires for each film devised by the coordinating teachers.

As a second step we invited Mr A. Kakkavas (Chairman of the Greek Script-writers Union and script-writer of the award winning Greek film) to the school and held an open discussion about different kinds of films and the future of the cinematographic art within the framework of globalization.

Both teachers and student thoroughly enjoyed the project which has since served as a model cinema project for other schools in the area of Pireas.