Cinekid Festival

What it is

Cinekid is the biggest festival of its kind for children: an annual event in Amsterdam given over to films, television programmes and digital media. Young viewers between four and fourteen years old are the audience it is built for. Its main home is the Westergasfabriek, a venue in the city, though Cinekid also travels. Around fifty thousand people attend each year, counting children, parents and international guests. Alongside the screenings, the festival runs new media activities, and the organisation behind it works on projects for children throughout the year rather than only during the festival itself.

How it began

The festival started in 1986, when it was a small event devoted to children's films. Over the years it expanded into a wider organisation covering film, television and new media, with activities running across the calendar. The Cinekid Foundation is the body behind both the festival and the work that accompanies it. Its stated aim is to raise the standard of visual culture available to children and to encourage them to take an active, creative part in media, so that their position in relation to media is stronger. The Foundation describes three main strands: the festival, work with professionals, and development and renewal.

Films and prizes

During the festival, films from many countries are shown, along with a choice of the best television programmes made for children, and several new media projects. Prizes are handed out in three groups. The Cinekid Lion is the film award, given by a jury and also by the audience. Television honours carry the name Kinderkast, with separate jury and audience awards for fiction and non-fiction, plus a Golden Kinderkast. New media has its own award, decided by jury and audience. In 2010 the festival planned to give a Best Dutch Family Film prize for the first time, chosen by both a jury and viewers.

Children who make things

Cinekid treats watching as only part of the point. Through its media education work, children from every part of society get to join in: they take part in discussions, cast votes, talk with people from the industry and with child actors, and attend workshops. The festival also makes room for genres that are harder to find, such as documentaries made for children and interactive cultural media. Cinekid Studio is an online space where children can put together their own media productions during the year; the aim is to build media awareness while they play. The Cinekid Klappers is a canon of about a hundred children's films, chosen by a wide panel of experts.

Beyond Amsterdam

The festival itself is the centrepiece, but it is not the whole of Cinekid. Before it opens, school screenings take place around Amsterdam, and a satellite programme called Cinekid On Location visits thirty cities in the Netherlands. There is also a strand for people who work in the field: the Cinekid for Professionals conference, with seminars and co-production markets where professionals can watch a selection of children's films and television programmes. Cinekid's wider work includes training, research and innovation programmes in the area it calls Child and Media.

How Cinekid Festival is kept

Children between four and fourteen are the participants, along with parents and guests from other countries. Ahead of the festival, school screenings are held around Amsterdam and a satellite programme tours Dutch cities. During the festival, films and children's television from around the world are screened, new media work is shown, and children join discussions, vote for prizes, attend workshops and meet people who make the programmes. Juries and audiences decide the Cinekid Lion, the Kinderkast awards and the New Media awards. Cinekid Studio and the training and research work continue after the festival closes.

When and where

The festival is held once each year. It is the centrepiece of Cinekid's calendar, while studio projects, training and research carry on between editions. School screenings and the On Location satellite programme lead up to the main event.

Amsterdam is where Cinekid belongs, and the Westergasfabriek is its principal venue. Screenings for schools reach children across the city before the festival opens, and Cinekid On Location carries a smaller programme to thirty cities elsewhere in the Netherlands.

What Cinekid Festival means

For those who run it, Cinekid is about giving children good things to watch and a real say in what they see. The Foundation frames its purpose as improving visual culture for the young and helping children take part in media creatively, so they are better placed in relation to it. Media literacy is taught through doing rather than lecturing: voting, discussing and building their own productions. The Klappers canon reflects a belief that some children's films deserve to be treated as essential viewing.

Questions people ask about Cinekid Festival

See also

King's DayA Dutch national holiday celebrating the monarch's birthday with street markets and orange attire.KetikotiAn annual Emancipation Day marking the end of slavery in Suriname and the NetherlandsSizdah BedarAn open-air picnic holiday concluding the Iranian New Year celebrationsBloemencorsoAnnual parades of flower-covered floats and boats in the Netherlands and Belgium

Good reading and sources

• Cinekid Festival on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data

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