Community Audiovisual Education: Cinema as a Tool for Reflection regarding Violence

Abstract

This article analyzes the experiences of participants in the project Historias de Ciudad, el cine como herramienta contra la violencia social y el racismo en México [City Histories, Cinema as a Tool against Social Violence and Racism in Mexico], with the goal of understanding how a heterogeneous group of people living in a context with a high incidence of violence managed to build alternatives to confront and resist them. This took place through the collaborative creation of 24 short films, using dialogues, situations, and characters as tools to express political positions and tell stories on their own terms. Relying on perceptions generated at three key moments in the process, we used participant observation and interviews to gather data, which allowed us to systematize the analysis into three categories: 1) training and creation to resist violence; 2) cinematic reflexes: creators and violent realities; and 3) dialogues and perceptions towards social transformation. Our objective is to demonstrate the project’s richness, assess the impact of its implementation, and highlight the potential for replication in another environment.
Keywords: media literacy, audiovisual education, media education, education for peace, citizens' media, community cinema