FRAME – Watching and Making Animated Cinema – is a project supported by the Cinema and Audiovisual Institute (ICA) for the years 2023, 2024, and 2025, and by the Manuel António da Mota Foundation (FMAM) , which brings together several areas of CINANIMA’s Education Service, and is divided into two main axes, one dedicated to Watching Animated Cinema – which includes exhibition initiatives -, and the other to Making Animated Cinema, integrating training activities.
In the first area, one of the oldest activities of CINANIMA Festival stands out: Schools Come to CINANIMA.
The second area is formed by the initiatives Children F1rst, the ANIMA Workshops, and the Anima Collective, which, in turn, allows formative activities such as the CINAnimadas Conversations.
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The ANIMA Collective is a multidisciplinary group of experts from several fields of cinema and the arts who work together to enrich education, bringing new viewpoints and greater depth to animated film. The team invites directors, animators, producers, authors/scriptwriters, set designers, festival directors, among others, to hold discussion sessions on animation cinema (films, production, professional practise, among others) in schools, targeted at secondary school teachers and students.
The inaugural visitor of the 2023–2024 academic year was Joana Nogueira, a director of animated films.
Director of animated films Joana Nogueira spoke to the Dr. Manuel Gomes de Almeida School Group’s students on the theme of “From sculpture to animated film – A reality as a visual artist” at the CINAnimadas Conversations on May 16, 2023. The filmmaker talked candidly about her extensive professional experience as a visual artist, which stems from a routine. Additionally, there was room for film screenings, behind-the-scenes photos of her many creations, and an introduction to some of the props and objects used in the films she worked on.
Joana Nogueira, who holds an ESAD.CR in visual arts from 2009 and an IPCA in illustration and animation from 2016, finds it challenging to categorise her work. She thinks “tomorrow it will be” as she drifts off to sleep while wanting to do everything she isn’t. Without intending to, she creates rhymes. Director of animated films, ardent ceramicist, maker of stop-motion puppets, and associate artist for puppet theatre. Numerous puppets.
The Education Service of CINANIMA is coordinated by Paulo Fernandes. He attended the ‘Cinema and Education Meeting’ in July of this year (2023) at Pedro Alves’ request. Pedro Alves is a lecturer and researcher at the School of Arts of the Portuguese Catholic University. The purpose of this gathering, which was held as part of the Cinema, Music, and Education Days on July 13 and 14, 2023, organised by the Portuguese Catholic University School of Arts and the Centre for Research in Science and Technology of the Arts (CITAR), was to bring together primary and secondary school teachers to consider and discuss the relationships between the three event themes.
The primary focus of the “Cinema and Education Meeting” was film literacy in schools, and Paulo Fernandes presented a number of initiatives run by CINANIMA’s Education Service that are geared towards children and schools, including the FRAME project, which combines watching and creating cinema with funding from ICA’s Support Programme for the Training of Audiences in Schools.
With the participation of Paulo Fernandes (CINANIMA), Carlos Viana (Associaço Ao Norte), Irina Raimundo (Indie Junior), Joana Canas Marques (Batalha Centro de Cinema), and Teresa Garcia (Associaço Os Filhos de Lumière), the round table also explored film education techniques. Leading leaders in Portuguese film education also participated in this gathering, presenting and debating ongoing film literacy initiatives that are dispersed throughout many programmes, institutions, and festivals. Public plans on education for the arts and movies were given by Paulo Pires do Vale, Commissioner of the National Arts Plan, and Elsa Mendes, Coordinator of the National Film Plan. Insert was also presented by its coordinator Pedro Alves, with Cristina Freitas (Canelas School Group, Vila Nova de Gaia), Manuel Monteiro (À Beira Douro School Group, Gondomar), Maria Antónia Brandão (D. Afonso Henriques School Group, Vila das Aves), Maria do Carmo Fontes (Padrão da Légua School Group, Matosinhos) and Maria José Teixeira (Afonso Sanches School Group, Vila do Conde) taking part in the debate.
Paulo Oliveira Fernandes was born in Portugal in 1979. He is a primary and secondary school teacher, a teacher trainer, and a textbook author with a master’s degree in visual arts education. When he was younger, he developed a liking for animated films, and when he was a teacher, he realised how educational they might be. He has directed dozens of animated videos for various educational purposes since 2001.
She served on the organising committee for the CINANIMA – Espinho International Animated Film Festival in 2010 and is currently in charge of the FRAME – Ver e fazer Cinema project, which is being co-financed by the ICA – Instituto do Cinema de o Audiovisual as part of the programme to support audience development in schools.
The Children’s Prime1rº is a program initiated by the Educational Service of CINANIMA, with the support of the General Directorate of Education – National Cinema Plan. This initiative, created in 2016 by the Educational Service of CINANIMA, is one of the most relevant activities in the field of education, precisely because it promotes active cultural formation. Interrupted in the academic year 2019/2022 and returning strongly in the academic year 2022/23. With a team of animation film trainers and directors, it produces animated films in Preschools (5 years old) and Primary Schools. This initiative encompasses all the different stages and processes of animation production and is therefore structured with project methodology and animated image didactics. Developing an educational practice through project methodology signifies teachers’ concern in building meaningful learning for their students. In the field of education, project methodology is typically understood as the organization of the teaching and learning process around significant practical activities. Animation cinema consistently evokes fascination and familiarity among children, immersing them in the world of magic, imagination, and play.
An emotional connection is established from the outset, facilitating their attention to the teaching and learning processes. The aim is to harness these stimuli as educational potential to construct a strategy that fosters in each student the ability to develop learning within a motivating, participatory, and collaborative space. Animation cinema has its own language, which is simultaneously aesthetic, technological, scientific, historical, narrative, audiovisual, among many others. It is, therefore, a multidisciplinary language that operates at the boundaries of various areas of knowledge and which, in the school curriculum of the 1st Cycle of Basic Education (and also in Preschool for 5-year-olds), translates into presence in Portuguese, Mathematics, Environmental Studies, and Expressions. In this sense, the use of animation image didactics promotes a better understanding of school contents, their active, meaningful, diversified, integrated, and socializing integration, resulting in better outcomes. Work with students is organized into four stages:
*At the end of the school year, the films are submitted to over 20 International Animation Film Festivals for competition.
Screening cinema session of the films produced in the Children’s Prime1ro activity These sessions close the annual cycle of each Children’s Prime1ro program, offering students, parents, and other family members and project assisting teachers the opportunity to see the films they have made on the big screen of a cinema.
Tomé and his Grandpa travel through the memories of the past. Together, they discover the differences between Grandpa’s school, before the Carnation Revolution that destroyed the dictatorship regime in Portugal, and Tomé’s school nowadays
In memory of the school’s kitten, the students go back to the magical moments they spent with her, telling the story of their beloved Relvinhas’ life.
Leonor Faria Henriques studied animation at the School of Arts of Universidade Católica. In addition to animation, she also works in illustration and illustrated her first children’s book “E se tivesses asas para voar”, released in 2019. The following year, she directed her first short film “Nada se Perde”. In 2021, she directed the short “Rua do Caneiro” and, in 2023, a short film that served as the start for the series she has been developing called “My House Has Many Windows”. She is currently part of the Piquenique na Lua collective, runs workshops with children and works as a freelance animator.
Ema Lavrador is an artist and researcher. She holds a master’s degree in Sound and Image, with a specialization in Computer Animation, from the School of Arts of Universidade Católica. Her documentary “Land in Sight” (2021) won a Sophia Student Award and her animation “Néon” (2022) was presented as an installation at the Cinanima festival. He is also a member of the organization of BEAST – International Film Festival and of the animation collective Piquenique na Lua.
Every year, the I Am a Jury initiative brings together pre-school, primary, secondary and high school students from the FRAME project’s partner schools to give them a little training and learning on important aspects to take into account when evaluating an animated film. The team of trainers includes CINANIMA members with experience in the field of animated cinema and festival programming, as well as trainers and teachers from the artistic and multimedia fields: Manuel Matos Barbosa, Isabel Couto, Pedro Perez, João Católico and Paulo Fernandes.
The I Am Jury event took place on 25 November 2023, as part of the Festival, at the Solário Atlântico swimming pool. The youth jury team learned how to select one film per category. The announcement of the winners will take place at a Children’s First Screening Session at the Centro Multimeios de Espinho, a way of celebrating one year of the FRAME project’s activity.
At the ANIMA Workshop – Animation Workshop of CINANIMA -, the Stop Motion technique* is explored, thus offering a brief contextualization of the history of animation cinema through the sharing of references from Pixilation films and animators. The main objective is to demonstrate the possibility of using one’s own body as a puppet to create a small collective animation in class, with the aim of promoting autonomous and collective production of animation films. In the ANIMA Workshop, images are captured using smartphones and/or tablets (fixed to tables by articulated telescopic arms) and free software is used for the production of a small animation. Ideas will also be provided to develop short animations using this technique. In the academic year 2023/2023, these workshops are led by trainers Carolina Bonzinho and Inês Costa. *The Stop Motion technique is a method used in Animation Cinema to create the illusion of movement through sequential capture of photographs of objects or characters/dolls modeled on a small scale. When the images are played back in rapid sequence, the resulting effect is smooth and continuous movement of the objects or characters. This process is similar to traditional animation, but instead of drawing frame by frame, a sequence of static photographs is used.
Carolina Bonzinho is a visual artist working in the areas of animation and design. She graduated in Communication Design from FBAUP, having also participated in the Erasmus+ program at MOME in Budapest. She currently lives in Porto where she has been working with the animation studio BAP for the past few years. Since 2020, she has contributed to animation and painting in several films by award-winning directors such as Laura Gonçalves, Alexandra Ramires, and Vitor Hugo Rocha. One of the projects that also stands out during this period was the design of the book “ELO,” in collaboration with director Alexandra Ramires and author Regina Guimarães. She also worked with the BEAST International Film Festival, in the 2021 and 2022 editions, as a web designer and developer. Currently, she invests in her own animation projects and is a workshop trainer for stop-motion. Her most recent published work is the co-direction and animation with Leander Meresaar of the music video “A Strange Feeling of Existential Angst” by Sunflowers.
Inês Costa (Viseu, 1998) holds a master’s degree in Image Design (2022) and a bachelor’s degree in Communication Design (2020) from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto. A designer and graphic artist, her research work focuses mainly on the role of the image in constructing narratives that make up the Portuguese collective memory, through the intersection of design and her artistic practices, problematizing the image as a tool of language and socio-political action. She won the Acquisition Prize of FBAUP with the short film Toque (2020) and the award for Best Local Production Film at the Vista Curta festival, with the short film Amélia (2021). Her work has been part of the official selection of festivals such as Curtas Vila do Conde, Vista Curta, Entre Olhares, Porto/Post/Doc, and IndieLisboa. She is a guest artist in the GAGE project – Game Art Gender Equality supported by ITI/LARSyS and is part of the artists selected for the artistic research residency project MANIFEST, co-created by the European Commission under the Creative Europe Program.
During this event, the school community engaged in FRAME activities over the past year has the opportunity to witness the result of the hard work of talented students from schools that have joined CINANIMA on this journey into animation cinema. After months of dedication, learning, storyboarding, character and set creation, image and sound capture, and meticulous editing, we delight the community with four films created using the stop-motion technique.
And who said kids can’t be judges? At CINANIMA, they have an active voice! Through the “I Am the Jury” activity, a group of students has the privileged opportunity to explore and evaluate films from the International Grand Panorama.
This celebration takes place in the António Gaio Room at the Centro Multimeios de Espinho.
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