The Thing That Happened

L'école de demain

A documentary about a vision care school that enables visually impaired children to learn the skills necessary for a full life.

Pojď s námi na palubu!

Two high school students from very different backgrounds participate in a musical with mentally disabled children, which eventually leads to the realisation of their dreams and aspirations.

In Uganda, AIDS-infected mothers have begun writing what they call Memory Books for their children. Aware of the illness, it is a way for the family to come to terms with the inevitable death that it faces. Hopelessness and desperation are confronted through the collaborative effort of remembering and recording, a process that inspires unexpected strength and even solace in the face of death.

A short film following Anthony, a young child from the small, rural town of San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba. We see him in different moments of his daily life as he interacts with different forms of environmental, familial, and social influences. While Anthony displays contradictory traits of creativity, destruction, rigidity, and tenderness as he interacts with his external and internal worlds, we see a story built from the the multidimensionality of Anthony's layered personality as a young man.

Nová škola

Scene is the classroom of a special school in Berlin. Yannik is the leader of class 7a. Yousuf and Marcel would rather have him as a friend than as an enemy, otherwise they might end up like Emanuel. Sitting in a corner, unwanted and lonely, he gets beaten up regularly. But Emanuel shrugs off these offences and violations with surprising gentleness. All in one boat, the roles are firmly distributed. But when the teacher introduces the topics of democracy, ethics, and human rights to the class, Emanuel sees a chance to break free from his role as the underdog.

Short, evocative documentary on the education of blind and partially sighted children.

Follows the rich history and traditions of the English Language School “Plovdiv” in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

After several farmyard analogies featuring chicks and calves, the well-spoken narrator and director of the film, Winifred Holmes, considers the subject of girls and how they reach adulthood and readiness for the 'important job of motherhood.

The documentary's title translates as "to be and to have", the two auxiliary verbs in the French language. It is about a primary school in the commune of Saint-Étienne-sur-Usson, Puy-de-Dôme, France, the population of which is just over 200. The school has one small class of mixed ages (from four to twelve years), with a dedicated teacher, Georges Lopez, who shows patience and respect for the children as we follow their story through a single school year.

Through poetic cinematography and stories of teachers sharing their wisdom with children from a range of backgrounds, the film showcases the benefits of mindfulness as a way out of violence and suffering, and as an attainable solution for younger generations.

These children live in the four corners of the earth, but share the same thirst for learning. They understand that only education will allow them a better future and that is why, every day, they must set out on the long and perilous journey that will lead them to knowledge. Jackson and his younger sister from Kenya walk 15 kilometres each way through a savannah populated by wild animals; Carlito rides more than 18 kilometres twice a day with his younger sister, across the plains of Argentina; Zahira lives in the Moroccan Atlas Mountains who has an exhausting 22 kilometres walk along punishing mountain paths before she reaches her boarding school; Samuel from India sits in a clumsy DIY wheelchair and the 4 kilometres journey is an ordeal each day, as his two younger brothers have to push him all the way to school…

"This video cassette contains a recording of a live performance by TG at Oundle School. The audience, apart one or two members of the staff, was composed completely of school boys between about 8 and 18. In addition to the single camera recording of the gig, certain visual information from the files of Industrial Records Ltd. has been included. Like the TG sound itself, the content and quality of this recording cannot and should not be compared with conventional commercial recordings."

Ute Vecchio has two years to prepare children who have just arrived from other countries for the German school system. The challenges she faces are just as diverse as the cultures the children originate from.

A look at how the community of Newtown, Connecticut came together in the aftermath of the largest mass shooting of schoolchildren in American history.

Ted Hughes's 1993 novel The Iron Woman is the springboard for this multi-media project by Mikhail Karikis. The video section of the installation features seven-year-olds from Mayflower Primary School in East London discussing the novel's environmental themes.

L'école du voyage

This short film from 1958 compiles 3 short reportages on different ways kids are schooled in remote areas. To School by Boat follows children of isolated fishing hamlets along a stretch of British Columbia coastline as they travel to school by sea-going bus. In Classroom on Rails, we hop along a railway coach that brings school to children in a logging area of northern Ontario. Northern Schooldays introduces us to First Nations children educated in a residential school in Moose Factory.