Reflexivity and Bildung are challenging concepts and phenomena for all educational activities and relevant for teaching and learning on all levels in the school system. The point of departure for this paper is, however, the content of films made by children an youth from the age of ten up to twenty. Some of these films are made as parts of formal media education courses, others as parts of media workshops outside schools, and some also by young people completely on their own.

The possibilities for young people to present  their own films in the public sphere have been very limited. An important exception is the Amandus Festival in Norway, established in 1987. This festival constitutes a quite unique source to understand how young people have used motion pictures to express themselves in and about society. The aim of the paper is to go into a variety of films that have participated in the Amandus Festival, as well as look at how these films have been presented. We believe that by analysing the film's content, titles and how they have been described, we will be able to tell something about levels and kinds of reflexivity and perspectives on Bildung. Based on our material we will try to operationalize the concepts of reflexivity and Bildung. Furthermore, we will discuss how changes regarding reflexivity and Bildung can be seen in relation to dominating family patterns, the position of children in the family and society, and more general trends in social development.

The analysis is based on relevant theories of development of society, for example, Qvortrups (2001 and 2004) theories of three phases or trends, where each is characterized by a dominant social semantics governing the understanding of society. We will also include theories about the historical development of childhood as it is described by Thuen (2008). Besides, we are applying perspectives from our own research on Bildung and media (Haugsbakk and Nordkvelle 2010;  Fritze et. al 2012).

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