Mexican children challenge their country’s ‘bad television’
Compiled by María Teresa Aveggio, Programme Manager
A 12-minute documentary, produced with equipment purchased with the support of WACC, has won the 2010 prize for the best documentary of the Kolibrí International Festival of Audiovisuals for Children and Youth held in La Paz, Bolivia, 3-11 November last year.
Launched in 2006 in Bolivia, Kolibrí was the first international video and film festival in Bolivia dedicated to the topic.
The festival aims at promotion, dissemination and encouragement of quality audiovisual productions for children and adolescents to generate a space for reflection, exchange of ideas and knowledge sharing around audiovisual productions for this sector of the population.
During a recent visit to WACC, Irma Avila, director of RadioBolaTV (www.radiobola.tv), Mexico’s first internet radio and TV station for and by children, screened the winning documentary “Santa Clara del Cobre vista por sus niños” (St Clara our Lady of Copper seen through the eyes of its children). The documentary presents the views of the children on the town’s traditional craft of working in copper.
Avila explained that Radio Bola TV is an initiative of Comunicación Comunitaria (www.comunicacioncomunitaria.org), a WACC partner based in Mexico City. RadioBolaTV aims to provide alternative choices and forms of communication which use the enormous possibilities of radio, internet and TV. She sees these as excellent sources of quality education, training and dissemination of Mexican cultural values among young people.
A whole range of materials can be seen by accessing the site, including materials produced by indigenous children, advocacy efforts regarding problems in the capital city as well as children’s life stories. They include ‘Tales of Fear in San Lorenzo Tezonco’ produced by children of the indigenous group native to Mexico City which two years ago won an award for the Best Experiences in Alternative Communications.
Based in Mexico City, Comunicación Comunitaria has been working on the promotion of young people’s communication rights since 2003 when they started organising media education and literacy as a way of addressing the lack of media education elements in school curricula. Mexico’s policies have concentrated on granting technological access and connectivity without looking at the issue of quality content or tools for young people to be able to use that content. The group has produced the Declaration of Tláhuac, a 9-minute documentary where children speak about what they want from television and radio (Watch the documentary below)
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Comunicación Comunitaria developed a methodology based on games and on children’s capacity to reflect and analyse. Part of the methodology included organising workshops which encouraged the formation of “children’s communication collectives” to develop ideas for their messages which are then produced by them with the technical support of adults. These experiences have been collected in Apantallad@s a manual which systematises media education and the exercise of children’s communication rights. In 2009 the manual received the UNICEF Human Rights award in the category of best practices. (See manual here...)
