I am interested in film education that includes social conditions, that understands film as art, that is feminist, critical and experimental. I have been giving film workshops for children, young people and adults at schools, project spaces and institutions since 2018.
I am currently taking part in the 2-year KontextSchule training program (2022-2024) in order to specifically deal with and further educate myself in discrimination-critical perspectives in cultural education in schools. In the academic winter semester 2023/2024, I am giving a seminar at the University of Hildesheim. There, students have the opportunity to develop methods for critical film education and try them out in practice with school classes.

Below is a selection of my film education projects:

Film education has found its way into the interdisciplinary school curriculum in Germany. As part of media education, film education has the political mandate to impart skills in dealing with film aesthetics and understanding. In practice, however, it is often the case that the critical examination of structural norms and discrimination in relation to cinematic representations, production conditions and the film industry is neglected. An intersectional, anti-discriminatory perspective in film education is therefore particularly necessary in the context of schools, which are characterized by power structures and social inequality.

The aim of the seminar is for students to develop their own approaches and methods for film education in small groups and to try them out in practice at school. We will look at our own (film) biographies, consider different approaches to film education and draw inspiration from critical approaches in educational theory.
In this seminar with practical elements, we not only want to deal with the challenges and exclusion mechanisms of school, but also try out for ourselves in the group in a university context how we can create a framework for joint exchange and learning in which we feel comfortable.

In a neoliberal, capitalist society, the body has become an object of control. It is trimmed, measured and shaped with diets, sport and technology, digitally altered with filters. Girls and young women in particular are under great pressure not only to withstand the standardizing gaze from outside, but also to internalize it themselves. Normative gender roles and body images are not only defined by the social environment, but are also strongly influenced by the media, cinema and public space. 

With an intersectional feminist approach, the experimental film workshop invites us to take a closer look at the images and stagings of bodies and gender roles that surround us: 
Which body images visibly have a place in the public sphere? Which ones are not shown? How are gender roles staged? What views are cast on bodies?

In the 5-day filmworkshop the girls developped an experimental essay film which was selected for Schulterblick Film Festival in Berlin.

Analog Film Workshop 
30.10. - 01.11.20

Conception & Realisation
Svenja Simone Schulte & Dennis Vetter 

A project by bi’bakwerk.

Cinema, whether analog or digital, historic or brand new, is part of social reality. It is as political, as conservative, as progressive as those who shape the films, their venues and the film industry in their actions. To think about cinema today from a critical perspective requires coming to terms with its existing images.This confrontation can mean changing images, placing them in new contexts, sabotaging them.

In the workshop Bildsabotage, we therefore invite you to join us in practically questioning internationally popular images of US cinema. We want to take a closer look at blockbuster films of the past decades on the basis of their trailers on analog film reels, play with them, edit them and change their form. Using scratching tools, paints and adhe- sive tape, we want to get to the heart of the trailers.

Finally, completely new short films will be created from the found film material. Bildsabotage is aimed at anyone who sees images as political. No previous knowledge of analog film is required.

Initially planned as a video workshop at the Frauencafé at Staatstheater Dresden, due to the pandemic, no more physical encounters could take place. Instead, the video workshop was continued online during the lockdown and thematically adapted to our situation: technical knowledge on how to use our cell phones was taught in order to document everyday life in domestic isolation and, at weekly meetings, not only to share the video experiences, but also to meet with other people.

The result is the short film 7 by 35. The title refers to us, 7 women in 35 days of lockdown isolation.