Brussels, 18/09/2002 (Agence Europe) - On the occasion of her presence at the Film Festival of Viareggio, in Italy, where she will hand over the "Frederico Fellini Platinum Awards" on 21 September, Viviane Reding will announce that the first edition of CinEd@ys EUROPE 2002 entitled "A full screen week on European cinema and the image" will be held throughout Europe from 15 to 24 November. The official opening will be in Copenhagen on 14 November, under the auspices of the Danish Presidency of the EU Council, and the culmination will be a projection of multimedia films and spectacles in Brussels on 23 November. Sponsored by the Spanish stage manager Pedro Almodova and backed by numerous film archives and cinema theatres in Europe, this initiative by Ms. Reding has as aim to raise awareness among young Europeans of the great richness of Europe's cinema heritage and encourage them to go and see non-national European films, as well as to promote, within schools, genuine reflection on the place of the image in our societies (how to read and decipher the image), in other words to promote genuine education of the image.
The Week of European cinema will also be an opportunity to raise the problem of the free movement of films in Europe with the economic stakes it comprises. That Week, which is to become an annual event, will comprise the following chapters: (1) close co-operation with Netd@ys Europe, which, since 1997 has mobilised over 500,000 young people and professionals in education and culture around multimedia exchanges and creations, and the subject of which this year is "European cinema and education into the image". The 30,000 schools participating will thus be able to exchange their experiences and undertake projects from one end of Europe to the other and with the world as a whole, as students from all continents and linked each year to Netd@ys through the site http://www.netdayseurope.org . Among the projects presented, that of the Belgian German-speaking community of creating an Internet site on the Belgian cinema. Such an initiative will be an opportunity for schools of other countries than Belgium to discover the Belgian cinema, its directors and actors and make it known throughout the world, commented Christophe Forax, Ms. Reding's spokesman; (2) organisation in some sixty cities of Europe, through the European network of cinema archives and the "Europe Cinema" network, of a special programme on European cinema heritage, with the participation of schools; (3) Commission contacts with numerous European television stations, public and private, so that they programme European films and deal with the European cinema sector, in their cultural programmes, for example. Mr. Forax said that the Commission had already received positive responses along these lines, notably from the Spanish TV, MediaSet (Italy), TV5 9France), ZDF and WDR (Germany), BBC 4 and Channel 4 (United Kingdom).