On a short workshop the participants of the RIDEF were able to see the documentary film Educazione Affetiva, by Federico Bondi and Clemente Biocchi. The last year they followed a school class (ten years old) in Scuola - citta pestalozzi di Firenze together with their two teachers. It's a school that emphasizes working with the children's relations with other children and with the teachers. Conflicts that occur have to take place and be solved by them; it is a part of the education. They mostly work with prevention not only solving things. In the film we follow them on a camp for instance.

Such a method with a minimal distance between teachers and pupils, will make the inevitable separation hard. The film focuses on this. It starts with the teachers giving the pupils the farewell-letters and comes back to this evocative moment in the last scene. Some of the pupils start crying when they read the wonderful encouraging letters from the persons they have been dependent on for five years. They do this "alone by themselves" since after one year of appearance of a film team, they no longer notice their presence.

It's strong. It's very much a touch of Freinet-inspired treatment. Or Martin Buber-inspired perhaps. The German philosopher who wrote the book Ich und Du - You and Me. This is a matter of treating everyone as a subject not an object as in the repressive school system.

One of two teachers in the film, Paolo Scopetani (the other is Matteo Bianchini), was here to present the film and to answer questions.

"The film was an initiative of the school and the director together," he said. We wanted to document our work and asked the parents for permission.

The audience was impressed and asked questions about how it was to work like this. What the parents thought about it etc. A resume of this discussion will soon be published in il giornalino Della RIDEF on the FIMEM site.

You will find a trailer of the film on:
http://www.mymovies.it/film/2013/educazioneaffettiva/