A FROME teenager has been spending his gap year teaching filmmaking to young people, with friends from Frome’s twin town in Germany.
Harry Foreman, who finished his A-levels in July, then started ‘Films 4 Europe’, an international film project finishing up in Frome last month.
Harry, 18, joined friends Claramarie Sternagel and Olga Berroth, both from Murrhardt, Germany, to run the project, teaching filmmaking to young people in all of Frome’s twin towns.
Harry told Frome Times, “It has been really great to work with young people on something that excites and engages their interests and passions.
“In the project we made four films from four countries in Europe. We will combine them into one ‘Film4Europe’, which will be used to promote town twinning, cultural exchange, and will hopefully encourage young people to be more engaged with their friends abroad.
“Frome has a very successful twin town network but there are few young people involved; our project aims to change this.”
Harry, Claramarie and Olga held four-day workshops with groups of around seven young people in Murrhardt, Frome, Rabka-Zdrój in Poland and Château Gontier in France.
The team blogged about the project online at www.films4europe.eu and on their ‘Films4Europe’ Facebook page.
“We explored different ways of making films and then helped the groups to create their own films about their hometowns,” Harry added.
“The young people also created separate videos by themselves in which they introduced who they are, their interests and posed a question to a participant in another town. This meant they could really start to get to know each other and exchange their ideas and views.
“Alongside the filming we also wanted to encourage a cultural exchange and build international relationships between the groups, especially as so many negative things are happening in the news at the moment.”
Above: Harry (back left) with the group in Frome.
