Britain’s next generation of film-makers are getting their work into the cinema while still at school. Pupils from Devon schools have made nearly 40 short films, many of them about poetry, and 12 documentaries about their local communities that have been shown in a commercial cinema. And their teachers havetravelled to Alabama in the Deep South of the United States and South Africa to produce teaching materials on Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” and Robben Island off Cape Town, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned.

Using Lottery funding, The City Screen Picturehouse, an independent company, supports film education by leasing out part of its Exeter cinema to Devon at a peppercorn rent. As well as showing the children’s films, the company also pays for an adviser’s time to develop film-making. In two years educational films have been shown to more than 5,500 children.

Devon has equipped the studio with standard hardware to be used by pupils and teachers. One big project is “The Crossings”, part of Devon’s anti-racism programme.

A CD-Rom on South African artists is in production, and a video-conferencing link will be established with the education centre on Robben Island. Pupils will be able to interview former prisoners of the apartheid regime.

A teacher-exchange scheme has been established with Cape Town and Devon’s English adviser, Martin Phillips, is raising money to send 10 pupils to visit Namibia.

Sue Jones