Research and Development

CIFEJ

CIFEJ
(International Centre of Films for Children and Young People)

Mandate
CIFEJ was founded in 1955 under the auspice of UNESCO and UNICEF to promote excellence in the cinema for children and young people. Today, CIFEJ retains operational relations with UNESCO and consultative status with UNICEF. The CIFEJ secretariat originally based in Brussels, then in Paris, has been transferred to Montreal in 1990.

Mission Statement
- CIFEJ believes in the power and potential of audio-visual media to enrich the lives of children and is dedicated to a media environment respectful of the dignity and rights of children and young people around the world.
- CIFEJ stimulates the development, production and distribution of high quality and culturally diverse children's film*, television, and new media.
- CIFEJ supports the media charter embedded in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
*According to our Statutes, the word "film" is used to include all types of audiovisual media: film, television program and video.

Membership
CIFEJ is a network of members - presently 150 in 54 countries.

Activities
- Publishes CIFEJ Info six times a year, in English and French, with varied news from the milieu, an annual Calendar of Festivals, lists of prize-winning films and current productions. This newsletter is distributed to more than 500 individuals and organizations around the world.
- Organizes the Kids For Kids Festival, a festival of films made by children for children every year.
- Maintain databases of current titles for children and young people and the companies responsible for the production, distribution, and broadcast of these titles.
- Organizes International seminars and meetings to discuss the urgent issues that concern those working in media for children.
- Awards the CIFEJ Prize to festivals that screen quality films and television programs for children and young people.
- Coordinates specialized tours of films, for example, the Latin American Tour which brought feature films from several countries to children across Latin and South America who rarely have the opportunity to see productions from other cultures.
- Publishes Who's Who of members once a year.
- Researches the laws and policies governing children's media around the world, published in the Creating A Space for Children's media series.

Benefits for a CIFEJ member
- Subscription to CIFEJ Info, an interactive newsletter that allows members to send in information on their current productions or their need of financial co-producers, and to publish articles or interesting notifications.
- Inscription in the Who's Who, a descriptive address-book of all CIFEJ members and their activities.
- Free access to an audiovisual database of current titles for children and young people.
- Special registration fees on seminars and meetings, including the biennial General Assembly (the next G.A. will take place in Iran in 2005)
- Free access to research, studies and publications related to policies, laws and guidelines governing children's media, and children's tastes.
- Beneficiary of the solidarity of the only and largest network of professionals concerned with the promotion of excellence in the audio-visual media for young audiences, through which the experiences of one is available to the other.
- Possibility of being invited as a CIFEJ Jury member in different Children's Film and / or Television programs Festivals around the world.

Board of Directors 2003
President
Athina Rikaki, Director, European Children Television Center (ECTC), Greece
Vice-Presidents
Florence Dupont, Director of International Film Festival for Young People, Le Sancy, France
Vahid Vahed, Executive Director and Artistic Director, CINEWEST Ltd. Sydney, Australia
Secretary General
Monic Lessard, Consultant and Invited professor at National institute of image and sound, Canada
Treasurer
Sally Bochner, Executive producer, National Film Board of Canada
Members
Ricardo Casas, Director, DIVERCINE, Uruguay
Amir Esfandiari, Head International Relations, Farabi Cinema Foundation, Iran
T.S. Naghabarana, Director and Producer, India
Jia Peijung, General Director of Quindao Children's Television Centre, China
Eli Stangeland, Head of sales and Distribution at BV Scandinavia, Norway
Piotr Zalewski, Director Foundation Academy Promotion, Poland
Secretariat
Executive Director: Jo-Anne Blouin
Head of Operation: Louise Hallé

CIFEJ is an international network. By telephone, mail or E-mail, CIFEJ helps build contacts that will strengthen children's audio-visual world and redefine their experience of cinema and television, and for the adults who create these images, who distribute them and who teach children how to understand them.

Each board member has an interview to be published in the CIFEJ Info.

Vahid Vahed was born in Tehran, Iran in 1959. He attended high school and later university in England during 1975-81. He studied civil engineering and communications, majoring in photography and film studies. He lived and worked as an editor and a photographer in Germany for 3 years before immigrating to Australia in 1984.
Vahid has worked as a journalist, lecturer, film and television producer/director, curator and video artist since he arrived in Australia as well as completing an Associate Diploma, Charles Sturt University (Television and Sound Production), Bachelor of Fine Arts, College Of Fine Arts UNSW (Sound, Performance and Installation) Master of Arts, College Of Fine Arts UNSW (Time Based Art). Vahid returned to Iran in 1994 after nearly 24 years to produce a documentary about the making of Mohsen Makhmalbaf's controversial feature film entitled 'Salam Cinema'.
During 1998-2002, he was employed by the NSW Ministry for the Arts as a Multicultural Arts Officer and has been the Artistic Director and Founder of Auburn International Film and Video Festival for Children and Young Adults (est. 1998) and CINEWEST multimedia (est. 1999). In 2002, Vahid was elected as the Vice President of CIFEJ (International Centre of Films for Children and Young People). Vahid was awarded a two years fellowship from Australia Council for the Arts for researching, initiating and developing community cultural development practices and screen culture activities locally, regionally, nationally and internationally during 2003-2005.

1) What was the decisive factor for you to get involved in children's media?
The decisive factor for me to be involved in children's media is the unseen and unheard expressions of children and youth globally that contain social, cultural, economical and political significance.

2) What has been your biggest challenge since then?
That many children and youth expressions are still unseen and unheard due to economical and political rationalism of our time.

3) How do you assess the state of children's media in this new millennium?
With the presence of the New Technology and easy access to multimedia facilities children's media is bound to shift dramatically in the New Millennium. Children and youth will utilize the new technology to express themselves free of economical restrictions that once excluded them from representation.

4) How do you define children's film?
Conceived and produced by children.

5) Films for children or children films, which is the right term and why?
Adult filmmakers mainly make films for or about children and this is the first step to misrepresentation. Children should produce children's films to familiarize the audiences who are genuinely interested in the children's issues and truthful expressions.

6) Why should we consider it a genre?
Because of its hybrid form and content.

7) Which is the main condition to consider a film apt for children, the age of the public, the age of the main character, or the story itself?
If I have to choose between the three, I will go with the story.

8) Why is a children jury relevant to any children's film festival?
This is the only time that children and youth can have an input on the productions that are for or about them by adults.

9) How do you view your input in CIFEJ?
To encourage children and youth to produce moving images either through film, video or new technology in order to explore their real identities and issues. As well as introduce, promote and distribute children and youth produced works globally to wider audiences.

10) How important is the work of CIFEJ to you?
CIFEJ was established by UNESCO and UNICEF nearly half a century ago and is a significant platform in addressing issues that surround children and youth and it can be very influential in implementation of various strategies to empower children and youth globally.

11) If you were allowed one wish, what would it be?
To witness the time when children and youth of the world are empowered to express themselves freely about their social, cultural, economical and political concerns of the presence as well as their visions for the future.