Film literacy means for me the competence to critically watch a film and to analyse its content, cinematographic and technical aspects.

To improve my language, I often watch a film in a language that is not my native language. Sometimes I use the subtitles to read the lines I haven’t understood. With this technique, I learn some new vocabulary. Mostly, I watch the films in English to improve my English even more. But I also watch some movies in Spanish with a German subtitle to get to know a few Spanish words.

While improving my language skills, I also discover a new culture. For example, as I was watching “Blinded by the light”, I got a different view of a Pakistani family. I had this experience more often while watching a movie whose main theme was about an Arabic or Indian family. You can see behind the curtains of these families. Nowadays, after watching such films, I have a different view of refugees or foreigners. They have a completely different way of thinking than we do, and I accept that. Sadly, there are some people who don’t accept them because they don’t understand them. So I recommend to everybody to watch movies about families with other cultures.

In my team, we discussed “film literacy”. We talked for example about our favourite film genres. Some of us like scary movies, some of us like comedies more. It depends on the person. Another example are our favourite actors. They are really different from country to country, because we all know movies and actors that the others don’t like. The Belgium students like the actor Omar Sy whereas the Spanish people like Mario Casas. But we all agreed on one thing: While watching a movie, we sit back with some snacks and enjoy the movie.