The Future of Education

What is CINAGE?
Lights, camera, action! Prepare yourselves, CINAGE project has just begun! 
As a response to Europe’s demographic ageing and the consequently increasing of social stigma about older people, four European countries – Portugal, Slovenia, Italy and United Kingdom – came together to develop CINAGE – European Cinema for Active Ageing, a Grundtvig multilateral project, supported by the EU Lifelong Learning Programme, that offers a new approach on learning for active ageing through film practices and shared cinematographic experiences.
Our project ultimately aims at producing, testing and validating a package of film-oriented tools and learning strategies that will be the base for a cinema course for elders, culminating in the production of 12 short films by citizens of the specified age group, by 2015.
Alongside with fomenting critical thinking and self-reflection methodologies, CINAGE’s innovative character is its andragogical dimension, since it will engage the elderly with filmmaking practices to creatively explore their age experiences, and thus promote a change in mentalities towards achieving a more active ageing.

Research & Focus Groups
One of the first phases of CINAGE project is RESEARCH! It comprises research on European cinema addressing ageing and elderly characters, as well as critical literature review and larger desk-research on the topics of ageing, adult education and models of competencies for active ageing. Assisted by cinema experts, each partner has carried out research and analysis of European cinematographies by country since 2000.
As a result, the partnership came up with a first selection of the 12 European feature films that best illustrate the competencies for active ageing, also providing a deeper understanding of how senior citizens are being portrayed in cinema’s fiction narratives.
Furthermore, we decided to pay tribute to the oldest filmmaker still active in the world by adding Manoel de Oliveira’s “Je Rentre à la Maison” to the other set of films. Full list of 13 selected films can by now be found at: http://www.cinageproject.eu/en/ package/films.html.
The selected films are now being submitted to four FOCUS GROUPS (one per partner country). Each focus group includes 6 members of designated representatives of CINAGE’s target audience: senior citizens, cinema professionals, active ageing experts and later life learning providers or adult educators.
Based on a critical grid, we encourage an environment of productive discussion and sharing of opinions, expecting that a more customised critical analysis of the films will contribute to confirm and narrow the first list and therefore obtain the six European films that best illustrate the competencies for active ageing.