The Project

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Journeying the Screen is a subproject of a grander one -- MovTour*-- promoted by the Polytechnic Institute of Tomar (IPT) in cooperation with the Polytechnic Institute of Santarém and with the Centre for Social Sciences (CES) from the University of Coimbra.

Considering cinema’s transformative power as a travel inspiring art, as a dream shaper as well as a facilitator of the emergence of an imaginative and emotional bond between the audience and the portrayed settings, we aim at debating this connection while assessing if and how that influence does occur.

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In order to do that, three distinct yet interdependent activities will be carried out:

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1. Six cinema screenings, which ensue from the joint action of the Journeying the Screen’s team and Tomar’s Cinema Society, and that will be integrated in the latter’s programme. Journeying the Screen’s cinema cycle, in addition to inciting the public to ponder upon film tourism and inviting speakers to promote a debate, will also attempt at evaluating whether the chosen films motivate the viewers to travel for leisure to those destinations, even if speculatively. During the six sessions, surveys will be conducted aiming at determining the impact of film productions, in general, and of the screened films, in particular, in the audience’s potential leisure trip options;

2. The hosting of the international Colloquium Moving Pictures: Tourism, Cinema and Peripheral Areas on the 8th of June 2018. An academic event which aims at debating the role of Film and Creative Tourism in Portugal, while perceiving Portugal’s central region potential as a Film Industry setting option and, therefore, contribute to increase its tourist flow in a sustainable manner; and

3. The hosting of the event PANORAMAS:Para bom entendedor meia imagem basta, which will take place on the 16th of May, and whose main goal is to function as a networking and Q&A session. With this in mind, it wishes to promote an inter-institutional dialogue between local and external actors, both public and private, in order to raise awareness on existing mechanisms to develop Film Tourism in Portugal’s centre region.

 

Methodology

- Organization of several activities, both on an academic and non-academic frame of reference, connected to Film Tourism;

- Conception and conducting of surveys with the aim of finding out the respondents’ perceptions regarding cinema’s role as a possible influencer on their holiday destination choices;

- Implementation of cultural mapping strategies;

- Adoption of a pedagogical method which favours the inclusion of cinema as a foreign language teaching tool in the field of tourism. This method focuses on the students’ linguistic improvement as well as on the development of a more sophisticated visual culture;

- Inclusion of students of Tourism degrees in the many activities to be carried out, so as to meet the specificities of the Project-Based Learning methodology;

- Production of critical essays, done by the students, based on the visual texts screened during the Journeying the Screen’s cinema cycle.
 

Goals

- To consider, to debate and to foster the creation of tourist products that may stimulate tourism in Portugal’s center region, by organising several activities aimed at an academic as well as general public;

- To facilitate the dialogue between local government representatives and diverse entities associated to this tourism segment so that the former can have easy access to information and to the mechanisms available to reach out to the agents that will assist them in the development process of this tourism segment;

- To present existing examples, good and bad, national and international, so that those interested may make an informed decision;

- To allow access to accurate information so that the decision-makers may approach film tourism from a sustainable perspective with real benefits for the local population;

- To produce and publish two articles in international academic journals based on the collected data;

- To share the goals and the impact of Journeying the Screen in national and international conferences;

- To stimulate the consumption, mostly amongst younger generations, of cinematic genres which stand apart from the blockbuster type or from commercial cinema;

- To battle against visual illiteracy by stimulating the development of skills in this domain. This will be done by resorting to film screenings followed by a debate led by a guest commentator and by engaging the students in the many activities that will derive from this subproject;

- To develop a filmic route in Tomar along with a location-based game prototype based in the said filmic route;

- To promote the interaction between Tomar’s local population, IPT’s staff and students with Tomar’s Cinema Society so as to facilitate their access to a cultural and aesthetical product that invites them to enjoy alternative visual narratives;

- To serve as a model for similar and future projects to be carried out in the Medio Tagus Region and/or in other regions.

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Target audience

- local government representatives, local entrepreneurs, national and local film producing companies, tourism researchers and tourism students.

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* MovTour: Tourism and Culture for and with Society’s main goal is to promote and value cultural heritage, by creating a replicable action plan to be carried out in different regions.