Cinekid festival in Amsterdam

This week kids in The Netherlands have their autumn break. Time to go with the parents to a holiday parc with a fancy swimming pool. But they can also go to Cinekid 2006, a festival with movies, television and new media programmes. This year it is the 20th edition. The organisation expects 30.000 kids this year to watch and play with 200 media productions: feature films, children’s documentaries, short films, animations, TV series and single plays, cross-media productions, interactive installations and set-ups and workshops. The main festival is held in Amsterdam, but approximately 30 satellite festivals are held in cities all over the Netherlands. There is a local festival and an international festival. The Cinekid Awards are presented in each discipline: film, television and new media. Each section has its own professional jury and a children’s jury. Media partner of Cinekid is the broadcast station Nickelodeon.

Each year, the film programme consists of a competition programme with 15 high-quality films from all over the world. Each edition of the festival also has several additional programmes so that children can chose from a wide variety of movies.

The television programmes shown are the best of what Dutch and international television have to offer. To accompany almost every screening directors, actors, hosts and/or producers are invited so that the children in the audience can ask them questions on how their favourite programmes are made. A huge success is the yearly workshop for the pre-schoolers, in which they are invited to produce and star in their own first film. The documentary section is one of the rare places in the world where this genre is promoted.

The new media programmes are rather new. At Cinekid’s digital playground where children can play with the latest games, online tools, cd-roms and interactive installations. But the big is, that they can also create their own media productions on the computer or make their own news show. To celebrate its 20th anniversary, Cinekid has developed Cinekid studio, a programme to develop your own movies. Kids can download the program and upload the results.

During the many workshops that Cinekid organises, children can make their own animation films, music videos and become official Cinekid reporters. The new media programme offered by Cinekid is considered to be the yearly state of the art, and of established importance for the industry, the producers and designers.

Tags: kids, new media, festival

Blog Posting Number: 544