For 30 years, the Magic Lantern has been inviting children to discover cinema – rts.ch
For 30 years, the Magic Lantern has amazed children all over Switzerland and invited them to discover cinema. At a time when the dark rooms are emptying, this anniversary has a very special resonance.
When they go to the cinema, children always have this magic in their eyes. “I find it extraordinary to imagine that in 30 years, the whole world has changed. That the ways of consuming culture have completely changed, but that children have not changed”, analyzes Adeline Stern, designer and co-screenwriter at the Magic Lantern, Saturday at 7:30 p.m.
To celebrate this thirtieth anniversary, the famous children’s film club is organizing free birthday screenings open to all, free of charge and with no age limit, throughout Switzerland until the end of September.
Image education mission
In Neuchâtel, parents were invited to the traditional pre-film presentation, hosted by Adeline Stern. “There are still a lot of children who come to the Magic Lantern, even if, I tell you in passing, there are many people who have lost the habit of going to the cinema”, notes the screenwriter.
Dark rooms are in danger today. This decline in attendance reinforces the association’s image education mission.
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“We still believe in the impact of cinema in theaters, especially on young audiences”, explains the co-founder of the Lanterne Magique Vincent Adatte.
“We have the impression that this exercise of being together, of living together, of communicating on an object that is the film, only the cinema can do it”, he continues.
A parent-to-child tradition
Since its inception, the Magic Lantern has won over more than 500,000 children across the country, with a well-known recipe that has passed down through the generations: a film, its illustrative diary and its animation before the screening.
“Parents were members of the Lanterne Magique and today register their children, because, I don’t know why, they are nostalgic for it. They want to share in turn this pleasure of discovering cinema on a large screen, which is still something incomparable”, rejoices Vincent Adatte.
Gilles de Diesbach/jfe
