Transition Times: Having long been ignored, the study of film is finally on the school syllabus, reports Louise Holden.

When did you watch your first film? I'll bet it was long before you read your first book. By the time you reach transition year you've probably spent a lot more time watching movies than doing equations. Films are easy to watch, so why do we need to learn about them at school?

Film and television products are so easy to digest that people don't immediately see the importance of learning how to watch them. Today the visual image is in many ways more important than the printed word. We respond more readily to images than to text. All media products push values and ways of life. Mainstream films send us messages about such issues as right and wrong, normal and odd, the roles of men and women, race, history, politics and a great deal more. If we don't learn to watch films with a critical eye we passively absorb the messages that are built into them, without the skill to notice what we are being told and why.

Alicia McGivern of the Irish Film Institute is relieved that film is finally taking its place on the school curriculum. "With the introduction of film to Leaving Cert English, Irish and, now, art it seems that the education system is at last giving some recognition to the importance of moving image in our world," says McGivern, who runs film screenings for transition-year students at the institute's cinema, in Dublin.

"For school students these subjects afford them the opportunity to engage with our most contemporary medium. However, it is in transition year that teachers and students have an ideal opportunity for a much broader study of film, outside of restrictions of exam syllabi."

Statistically, students in the transition-year age group are among the world's largest group of cinema-goers. The 15PG certificate means far more films are available to teachers for use in the classroom (although it is not without problems: see the panel below).

Film has long been used to stimulate classroom discussion, as an adaptation of a literary text or in the context of particular themes. McGivern believes students need to learn about film if they are to be informed consumers in a media-saturated world.

"We need to see this art form in its own right and to provide students with the opportunity for critical engagement with a wide range of films. They should also be able to learn the language of film and be able to articulate a response that extends beyond simply passing a good or bad judgment, such as: 'I like/don't like this film.'

"Transition-year students have already many years of viewing experience behind them: they have learnt, unconsciously, to follow narratives, to interpret visual codes and to predict endings. Learning the language of film and having an awareness of broader film culture is as important an element of education as learning about novels and poetry."

The Irish Film Institute offers a year-long programme of film screenings, workshops and related events for school students. McGivern and her colleague Ann Ryan schedule a range of films for transition-year students, including documentaries, films in other languages, new Irish films and independent US movies. They aim to interest students in films they would not usually choose to see or have access to.

If you can't make it along to the Irish Film Institute to catch a screening, you could check out one of its recommended films on DVD. This term's transition-year programme includes Hero, a martial-arts spectacular with Jet Li and Maggie Cheung; Touching The Void, a gripping docudrama about surviving a mountaineering accident in the Andes; the contemporary French classic La Haine; the recent Irish hit Adam & Paul; Shattered Glass, a docudrama that exposes a journalist's lies; and the classic prison drama The Shawshank Redemption.

Use your transition-year film experiences to start engaging with film in a new way. It will give you a boost in the Leaving Cert and, more importantly, help you gain more from watching films.

* For a useful database of media- studies resources, visit www.media-awareness.ca. For more details about the Irish Film Institute's education programme, contact Alicia McGivern or Ann Ryan at 01-6795744; Netd@ys is a European Commission initiative to promote new media in education and culture. The theme of Netd@ys 2004 (November 22nd-27th) is dialogue between cultures. If your school, college, university, youth group or organisation has been involved in the innovative use of information and communication technologies or audio-visual projects, you may want to contribute. More details from www.netdaysireland.ie or 01- 8731411

A bit of sauce on the big screen

The Ketchup Effect, the first film by the Swedish director Teresa Fabik, has been massively popular among young people in her home country.

Their Irish peers can't watch it so freely, however. Although The Ketchup Effect has a general certificate in Sweden, the Republic's film censor, John Kelleher, decided it should be a 15PG film.

So what is suitable for young people to watch? A fortnight today, as part of the Netd@ys project, the Irish Film Institute will screen Fabik's film, then allow Irish students to exchange their views about the film with counterparts in a Swedish secondary school.

A representative from Kelleher's office will also take part in the discussion, giving students an insight into the process of classification, in particular for their age group.

The Ketchup Effect is an example of how certain adult themes are very relevant to younger people when handled by a responsible film maker.

Summer holidays are over, and Sofie, Emma and Amanda are starting seventh grade. The girls, who have been friends since they were toddlers, are eagerly waiting to start secondary school - and, most of all, meet the coolest guys in the school: Mouse, Jens and Sebbe.

This also happens, but in circumstances that are slightly different from what the girls had been expecting.

At their first class party Sofie drinks too much and passes out. The three boys whom the girls admire take advantage, shooting obscene photographs of Sofie that they later circulate at school.

It does not take long for her to get a bad reputation, and on her birthday her classmates congratulate her for being the school whore. And as reputation is everything when you are in seventh grade, Emma and Amanda do not want to hang out with Sofie either.

The Ketchup Effect is a story about growing up, told through the problems faced by 13-year-old Sofie. Unlike Hollywood coming-of-age stories it does not go for easy laughs. Instead it deals honestly with some of the difficult situations in which Sofie finds herself.