In 2014, the Yangon Film School initiated its Travelling Cinema project. With cinemas a rarity in Myanmar, especially outside urban centres, and only limited chances for Myanmar viewers to see home-grown documentaries on television, the School decided to take its films to audiences, targeting hard-to-reach and/or marginalised communities across the country.
The YFS Travelling Cinema project enables student crews to travel to a particular area where they work with local communities to publicise and present a carefully selected programme of the School’s documentaries, fiction films and animations. An integral part of every screening is the Q&A session which gives audiences the chance to ask questions about the films and discuss the issues raised – often with one or more of the filmmakers present.
The Travelling Cinema project also aims to help the School recruit students from remote areas for its filmmaking programme – thus helping YFS to further increase the already impressive diversity of its student cohort.
Travelling Cinema placements are run hand-in-hand with the School’s participatory video facilitations which enable a group of local filmmakers trained by YFS students to make a video and screen it to their community