The Pisa University Language Centre has recently signed an agreement with the Berkeley Language Center, University of California to collaborate in the development of Berkeley Language Center's Library of Foreign Language Film Clips (LFLFC), a digital database which contains specially selected and tagged clips from films to be used as part of a foreign language course curriculum.
This agreement will allow the Pisa University Language Centre, which has already begun research in this direction through a project of its own, to make use of the tools and materials of the Berkeley Language Center, University of California, and the Pisa University Language Centre will in turn offer a contribution in the form of specialized educational courses. The project will see the participation of Professor Marcella Bertuccelli, Director of the Pisa University Language Centre and promoter of the initiative, other Professors of English, among whom Professor Silvia Bruti (photo) who has been interested in the language of the cinema and audiovisual translation for quite some time, and Professor Belinda Crawford, an expert in specialist language and multimodality.
"The underlying concept is that audiovisual material and films in particular, represent a considerable resource for the acquisition of a second language," explained Professor Silvia Bruti. "They have the advantage of portraying a wide variety of sociolinguistic scenarios. The idea is to use specially selected clips which can be accompanied by an analysis of the communication process (gestures, looks, movement), a transcription of the original script and subtitles in the original or the target language."