Face to Face–Anti Bullying Movie

Anti-bullying promoted with ‘Face to Face’ Movie Premier at Kangan Institute

Thanks to Les Cameron from Worksafe for sending this in:

The Building and Construction department at Broadmeadows has pulled off a coup in the form of being the first to hold a TAFE based movie premier.

While this was not the first showing of the movie, it was the first time the movie has been used as an educational tool.

The movie titled Face to Face is based on a John Williamson play by the same name and was directed by Michael Rymer. It stars such Australian greats as Vince Colosimo, Sigrid Thornton and Matthew Newton with a cast of up-and-comers including a stellar performance by Luke Ford as a troubled teenager.

The premise of the film is based around dispute resolution resulting from workplace bullying. It’s an in-depth look at how a joke can easily turn into something much more sinister.

The event proved to be entertaining and thought provoking by highlighting the consequences of workplace bullying.

In attendance were around 130 VET students (from certificate III and diploma) as well as staff.

Also in attendance were some key speakers.

• Chris Doolan from Proskill workwear gave an introduction to the movie.
• Pro Skill/Mascot were major sponsors to the film and a critical part of negotiations with the producers to enable Kangan Institute to hold this event.
• Pro Skill also had a small display of their high end workwear which was of great interest.
• Phill Murphy spoke, bringing to everyone’s attention Kangan Institute’s policies on bullying and urging people to not only refrain from bullying, but to also report bullying to the appropriate people.
• Khan Churchill and Lewis Burnside from INCOLINC came along and gave a brief talk on drug and alcohol counselling along with support offered to apprentices.
• The final speaker was Les Cameron from Work Safe. Les spoke about bullying cases that had reached the court systems, citing examples that were extremely relative to apprentices. E.g. a lad who had thinners sprayed on him by his work colleagues then set alight as a “joke”.

To finish the morning off, those in attendance were asked to fill in a short survey. 82 surveys were returned with some surprising and shocking results.

A pleasing result was that 99.5% of the people took a positive message away with them

The result of most concern was that a staggering 45% of the people surveyed admitted to being the victim of bullying.

This helps highlight what a massive problem this is when even in our own TAFE, learners are being bullied. Hopefully Facilitators may now have one more tool at their disposal to wipe this bullying mindset out.

There is no doubt that this is a world-wide problem which, thankfully, we now recognise takes many forms.

This movie showing has been a positive experience and with a little work we can all continue to chip away at this dreadful issue.

Please take the time to have a look at the movie trailer for which I have included at the bottom of this article. Again a big thank-you to Chris Doolan from Pro Skill Australia.

www.facetofacethemovie.com