Young Audiences

In 2015, the Collectif Jeune Cinéma created the Pôle Transmission in order to support the discovery of a different kind of cinema among young spectators or aspiring filmmakers. The Pôle designs programmes for young audiences based on its catalogue or calls for films, and coordinates experimental film practice projects run by its cooperating filmmakers.

Experimental and different cinema for young audience

Experimental and alternative cinema seeks to create films outside the aesthetic and economic norms of the most common cinema, the one we see on television or in multiplexes. Its aim is to (re)invent a cinematographic language and propose an alternative to the dominant visual discourse. It constantly questions its own medium, film or video, and its conditions of existence and creation. So-called experimental films are therefore astonishing and surprising for those who discover them. It is a free cinema: free of themes, norms, imposed formats and narratives. It is sometimes amateur cinema, often made with little means, which is accessible to everyone and can be made by everyone! For all these reasons, it is a deeply concrete and accessible cinema, and in fact, deeply educational.

Thus, experimental and different cinema makes it possible, while insisting on a personal, sensitive and playful approach, to raise questions about the perception of the image, creation, poetry and the arts. In short, it allows us to question cinema. And by moving away from classical cinema, it allows us to renew our view of cinema, and to confront it with freer, more accessible and creative acts because they are less institutionalised, and thus to ease the young public’s approach to viewing and creating cinematographic images.

The Pôle Transmission therefore accompanies the discovery of such cinema through programming, mediation and the creation of screenings and workshops for young audiences, in order to help them discover other types of cinema and forms, while at the same time proposing a reflection on images in a more general way, and developing their sensitivity. It also facilitates the distribution of the CJC’s catalogue to young audiences by working closely with external programmers.

Since 2015, in order to promote and stimulate creation among the youngests, the Pôle Transmission has been holding a call for films for filmmakers under 15 years old within the Festival des Cinémas Expérimentaux et Différents, in addition to the annual Young Audience screening. In 2021, a new category has been added for filmmakers vetween 15 and 17.9 years old. The films are then integrated into the distribution catalogue, and the Pôle Transmission works to integrate children’s and young people’s creation into the distribution circuit, in order to promote different cinema made by younger people.

Pedagogical project

To discover

other possible cinema histories, including the history of a different and experimental cinema and its rich and varied corpus, through programmations and workshops.

To engage and amaze

the viewers to works and practices that do not conform to the rules of classical cinema.

To educate

to a cinematographic language that does not need a narrative (like sometimes the imagination of a small child), based on spontaneity and the free association of images and sounds.

To defamiliarize

the minds of certain audio-visual and television forms, by showing the youngest spectators that a cinema made with little means can nevertheless be very rich in proposals!

To question

the creation of amateur images on a daily basis while raising awareness of other ways of making films.

To stimulate

the possibility that everybody can create, and to value the creation by the youngests, by programming their films during the festival and by integrating them into the CJC distribution catalogue.

Programs

“Turnkey” programs

From our catalogue of experimental films (more than 1,500 films) we offer “turnkey” short film programs organized around a theme and adaptable to all audiences (from 3 to 25 years old). We are available to provide mediation for these programmes. This mediation aims to welcome and accompany the possible reactions and interpretations of experimental works by children in a perspective of education to images. We can also provide pedagogical sheets to help animators in the mediation of the screenings.

To play with cinema (6 to 10 yo)

Experimental cinema is also a game that constantly reinvents its rules. Children’s play, acting, but also a game with the narration, with the imagination, with the ways of filming, with the material of the film itself…

Freedoms! (from 4yo)

If anything sets experimental cinema apart from the rest, it’s its freedom. Freedom of format, freedom of subject matter, freedom of fantasy. We wanted to pay tribute to this total freedom by programming films designed for the freest of beings: children.

A women's world (6 to 10 yo)

Experimental cinema has been the cradle of women filmmakers. The possibility of making films beyond the production and material means imposed by commercial cinema opens many doors for women, who were de facto excluded from the circuit for a long time. Through the game, in the hand of the pioneer Maya Deren, inventiveness and change of identity are at work.

Other programs

can be found in our portfolio of cultural actions, available for download thereafter.

Customized programs

We are also available to create customized programs, in partnership with the organisations that invite us, in order to constantly reinvent the relationship between young people and the images, and to offer activities and programs that are always varied and original. We are also regularly invited for “cartes blanches”, which we are always delighted to programme and animate. Do not hesitate to contact us for any request.

Film projection

Some of our films are available in film prints, so we propose 16mm and super 8 projectors for rent, in order to provide young audiences with an entertaining and exiting experience, as well as a better understanding of the origin of cinema.


Finally, our catalogue offers many films accessible to young audiences, as well as a few films made by young filmmakers under the age of 18. It remains available to programmers who wish to offer programs for young audiences.
We are currently working on a tag to distinguish these films within our catalogue. In the meantime, we remain available to guide you in your programming choices.

See the "young audience" calendar

Prices

  • Between 250-350 € for a single session, depending on the length of the program and the mediation required.
  • If you wish to offer a film projection, count allow an additional €100 for the renting cost.
  • If you wish to accompany the screening with a workshop, please contact us.
  • For the rental of individual films, please consult our prices on our internet catalogue.

Contact

If you have any questions or special requests, you can contact us at transmission@cjcinema.org or on +33 (0)7 69 61 53 57.

Workshops


Filmmakers from the Collectif Jeune Cinéma offer workshops exploring the various practices of experimental and different cinema, from film to video, from image recording to intervention on film… The workshops can last one afternoon in addition to a programming session, or they can extend over several days in the form of a long artistic intervention, with a final restitution of the project.
The workshops are designed according to the specificity of each audience, and can evolve according to the needs of the host structure.  

The description of the different workshops proposed by the CJC’s cooperating filmmakers is available in our Cahiers des Actions Culturelles, available for download below. New ones may be added as the filmmakers’ practice evolves and as particular structures request them. Please do not hesitate to contact us for any request, we can put you in contact with the filmmakers to work with them on specific projects.

Prices

From 450€, depending on the workshop, its duration and the material needed for it. Do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions about it.

Contact

We can be reached at transmission@cjcinema.org or at +33 (0)7 69 61 53 57.

Brochures and documents

Young Audiences & Festival des Cinémas Différents et Expérimentaux de Paris

The desire to integrate young audiences and young filmmakers into the Paris Festival of Different and Experimental Cinemas is in keeping with the CJC’s philosophy of constantly welcoming and promoting original, free and inventive artistic approaches, whatever the age or experience of each filmmaker, and whatever the age and experience of each spectator.

-15

Filmmakers under 15yo at the Festival

Since 2015, the Festival des Cinémas Différents et Expérimentaux de Paris has been offering a call for films open to filmmakers under the age of 15, and inviting them to submit their most free, inventive and experimental films. This approach responds to a desire to value and legitimise the individual and free cinematographic creations of children, and to value a different type of cinema that is constantly renewing itself under the eye and camera of the youngests. Their works are constantly demonstrating that their cinematographic imagination is still far from being invaded by the dominant visual models. Over the past eight years, the -15 section has shown more than sixty films and followed a significant number of aspiring filmmakers.

During the Festival, the films sent in are then viewed and selected by a jury also made up of young people between the ages of 10 and 18 approximately, former participants, young people from partner associations or simply enthusiasts. Finally, the selected films are then presented at a screening led by the young juries, which takes place at the Grand Action cinema during the Festival. The most experimental session of the entire Festival!

Catalogue -15

Each year, at the end of the Festival, some of the selected films enter the catalogue of the Collectif Jeune Cinéma. We believe that children’s cinema needs a place in the distribution circuit of experimental and different cinema, and we wanted to give it that. We are therefore working on their distribution and promotion, and regularly propose them for programming for young audiences and adults.

Posters - Calls for Films

Since the 22nd edition of the Festival, the poster for the call for films has been created by the Applied Arts students of the Lycée Albert de Mun, supervised by Gwenola Desseaux.

© Marianne Mimoso, Loïse Merel© Lola Gires© Ewan Peneveyre

15–17,9

Filmmakers between 15 and 17.9yo at the Festival

In 2021, for the CJC’s fiftieth anniversary, the Festival is inaugurating a new 15-17,9 category, to allow a greater number of young people to participate. Open and international, it is aimed at teenagers and young adults and is placed under the same banner as the -15 section : decolonisation of the imaginary, valorisation of any creative gesture that overflows, disrupts or breaks the canonical models of filmic formats. During the 23rd edition of the Festival and the creation of this category, the call for films was a real success with the 15-17,9 with more than 40 films received. It was therefore continued for the 24th edition of the Festival and resulted in a sucess : around 60 films received. 

The session is also programmed and animated by a youth committee, and it also takes place at the Grand Action cinema during the Festival, following the -15 one. 

Posters - Call for films

© Eliott Thomas

Young Audience Screenings

Every year since 2004, the Festival has offered one or more screenings for young audiences, in order to highlight the films in the catalogue that are suitable for young people, and to promote the idea, within the Festival itself, of experimental and different cinema that is accessible to all. This session is often an opportunity to explore the Festival’s themes from a different angle.

Screening-Debate / 15-25yo

In 2022, the Festival is inaugurating a new session for high school and unversity students. The aim of this session is to guide young adults, whose eyes are often already (too) well trained, towards a  different kind of cinema. With this session, we want to get them out of the habit and renew their view of cinema(s) in order to open a discussion with them on the image - its formats, its ambitions and its possibilities.

On parle de nous !

“The “non-standard films” and “bizarre formats” of the young filmmakers sessions (aged between 15 and 18 or under 15) were not to be missed. In addition to being an (all too rare) opportunity to see films by such young auteurs on the big screen (a camera flying like a bee, a Chabrolian doll film, nightmares in multiple forms, attempts to be free…), these sessions are a joyful jolt, a place for exchange, benevolent, celebratory, in the face of profoundly experimental films : experiments in film practice, rudimentary and organic images and sounds, eminently spontaneous, broke (for the most part) and extremely expressive creations. While these films may leave the most intransigent souls circumspect, it remains impossible not to concede the rare audacity they often convey. The older section (15-17.9 years) obviously presents more conscious attempts, the open formulation of directing ideas and screenplay leads - in short, more adolescent works, often attempting to look at themselves, to identify their disorder, to situate themselves in the age of flux. This reflection on the self was exemplified by Émile Parcelier’s intrepid journey around the figure of Narcissus in Green Narcissus, taking us to the other side of the mirror, in a pop élan of interlocking green backgrounds and cut-outs - so many expressive ornaments framing this revelation,  in a pop élan of interlocking green backgrounds and cut-outs - so many expressive ornaments framing this reflection - under the sign of Cocteau, Lynch, Bidgood (to whom it owes its title), Fassbinder or Burton. As Émile points out in our post-screening chat, we don’t choose to make different films, we simply try to be ourselves. It’s clear, then, that caring for filmic material is as much about nurturing it as it is about letting it live in the raw, in tune with who we are and what we have to express - because difference speaks! These daring screenings, with their far less polished forms than those in the competition, almost raised a strange question: don’t we also want to see films with a slightly more abrupt sound, full of voids and imperfections? Wouldn’t we like to leave behind the layers of sound and delicate textures adorning the many subsidized films in the competition, and embrace worlds that are more expressive, more different, more imperfect but also more profound? Rougher or more blatant forms? Naive? Radical? “Revue Débordement, Camille Simon Baudry, Festival 2023

Contact

Alma-Lïa Masson-Lacroix
transmission@cjcinema.org // alma-lia@cjcinema.org
+33 (0)6 24 02 53 27

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