María del Mar Azcona, IP of the project, has been interviewed for the book Educar la mirada: Ciclo de entrevistas a expertos de la industria del cine, festivales de cine educativo y centros productores de cine escolar, coordinated by Fernando Yarza.
The interviews were conducted in the framework of the PISOC project “Educa-acción! Cine y Educación para la Transformación Social”, developed around the first and second editions of the Festival de Cine Escolar of the Facultad de Educación of the Universidad de Zaragoza. The volume brings together interviews with experts from the film industry, educational film festivals, and schools involved in audiovisual production, all united by a commitment to film literacy as a tool for critical citizenship. Other contributors include Miguel Ángel Lamata (screenwriter and film director), José Manuel Herráiz (producer, director and screenwriter, Albella Audiovisual), Ángel Gonzalvo (coordinator of the Un Día de Cine programme, Government of Aragón), and representatives of educational film festivals including Ecozine, Cine y Salud, Fescila, and the International Youth Film Festival Plasencia Encorto, among others.
In her interview, Azcona reflects on how cinema functions as an ideological vehicle rather than mere entertainment, arguing that learning to read film is inseparable from developing critical thinking. She describes the four film analysis courses taught in the English Studies degree at the Universidad de Zaragoza and emphasises that audiovisual literacy equips students to identify and question the ideological discourses embedded in the images that surround them daily. On the role of the university beyond its walls, she highlights the research project’s ongoing outreach activities in schools, including sessions exploring the sexualised representation of female characters in animation, designed both to raise awareness among students and to provide teachers with tools they can replicate independently. Asked about the evolution of her students over twenty years of teaching, she notes that concepts like patriarchy are now part of their everyday vocabulary — though the deeper analytical work of reading texts critically, she argues, remains as challenging as ever.
“From the very first day we insist that cinema, as part of popular culture, not only reflects the society we live in, but also helps to create it. Films represent patterns that then become part of us and of the way we behave in response to some of the things that happen to us. Learning to read images and audiovisual texts teaches us to identify key elements of mise-en-scène, framing, editing and sound — and at the same time to reflect on their narrative and ideological implications. In our courses, we always stress that in a film, what is not said and not shown is just as important as what is.” — María del Mar Azcona
The book is available open access at festivalecozine.com.
