Mar 29, 2011
Education, Festival
The San Francisco Film Society’s Youth Education program continues its year-round commitment to Bay Area students and educators with the 20th anniversary of the Schools at the Festival (SATF) program at the 54th San Francisco International Film Festival (April 21-May 5). The pioneering film literacy program exposes a new generation of viewers to the best in international and independent cinema, bringing thousands of Bay Area students to Festival screenings and engaging them with filmmakers from around the world. Students of all ages have the opportunity to participate in the Festival through private subsidized screenings at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas and interactive visits to classrooms by filmmakers whose work is being shown at the Festival. To commemorate the 20-year milestone, SFIFF54 will also feature a series of special public programs showcasing SATF programming past and present.
In honor of National Teacher Day on Tuesday May 3, SATF will host a Teacher Appreciation Night that includes a Schools at the Festival 20th Anniversary Celebration at 5:00 pm at Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, featuring clips of past SATF films; live stories from teacher, student and filmmaker participants; tributes to enduring SATF educators and youth filmmakers; and a reception with complimentary drinks and appetizers. The evening continues at 6:30 pm with the world premiere of Academy Award-winning director Vanessa Roth’s documentary American Teacher, which chronicles the stories of four teachers in different areas of the country, revealing the frustrating realities for today’s educators and the way our society undervalues them.
On both Sunday afternoons during the Festival, there will be a matinee screening of the English-language version of the new animated feature film from France, A Cat in Paris, a beautifully hand-drawn caper set against the cityscape of Paris, shown with the subtitled French short film Specky Four Eyes. Screening at 12:30 pm on Sunday, April 24 at Sundance Kabuki Cinemas and 12:30 pm on Sunday, May 1 at New People, the matinees are an opportunity for parents and their children to learn more about SATF and SFFS Youth Education. Recommended for ages eight and up.
For children ages 7-11, award-winning puppeteer Yvette Edery will lead the two-hour interactive Puppets in Film: An Animation Workshop for Kids on Saturday, April 30 at 10:30 am at the Festival Lounge (1493 Webster Street at Geary), where participants will learn puppet animation techniques. Edery is the director of the animated short Jillian Dillon, in the Do You See What I See? shorts program for young audiences (screening Sunday, May 1 at 11:00 am at Sundance Kabuki Cinemas).
For school groups only, the films screening in this year’s Schools at the Festival program include 15 narrative feature, documentary and shorts programs that are selected to suit a broad range of curricula and grade levels, with weekday matinees open to all Bay Area high school, middle school, elementary school and home school classes. Targeted subject areas include foreign languages such as Chinese, French, Spanish and German, as well as issue-based programming for school subjects such as language arts, environmental studies, ethics, history, journalism, politics, science, social studies and world affairs.
Thanks to the generous support of Youth Education sponsor Nellie Wong Magic of Movies Education Fund, all public school students and teachers will pay just $1.00 per ticket for all SATF screenings; all other students and teachers will pay the discounted ticket price of $2.50 for Festival admission. In addition, with the support of the Goldman Environmental Prize, admission to the Schools at the Festival screening of the documentary The Pipe on Monday, May 2 at 12:45 pm is being offered for free to students and educators (tickets are still required). Tickets for the program are available exclusively to Bay Area educators and students and may be purchased only through the SATF office by contacting Keith Zwölfer at 415-561-5040 or kzwolfer@sffs.org. Schools at the Festival tickets cannot be purchased through the regular Festival box office.
Supplementing a two-week schedule of educational screenings at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, dozens of local and visiting filmmakers will also travel to numerous Bay Area classrooms to screen their work and interact directly with students. Filmmakers who have visited classrooms in the past include Debra Granik, Tim Hetherington, Mike Ott, Tanya Hamilton, Jay Rosenblatt, Doug Pray, Jean-Marie Téno, Amanda Micheli, Ivy Ho, Les Blank, Peter Bratt, Lourdes Portillo, Michel Ocelot and Ousmane Sembène.
A set of study guides, developed by local educators and Youth Education staff, will be made available for select Schools at the Festival films. Each guide is designed to help teachers integrate the film’s content into their curricula, prepare students before screenings, direct postscreening discussions and provide additional resources, follow-up activities and projects. All SATF programs are designed to meet the Visual and Performing Arts Content Standards for California public schools.
Films offered to middle and high school students range from inspiring narratives to in-depth cultural explorations and gripping exposés including Yoav Potash’s Crime After Crime, an intimate look inside the case of Deborah Peagler, a woman imprisoned for her involvement in the murder of her abuser, and the pro bono legal team who fight for her release; Romain Goupil’s French-language feature Hands Up, the story of a close-knit group of children who go into hiding to try to prevent the deportation of their friend, an undocumented Chechen immigrant; Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s eye-opening documentary Miss Representation, an exploration of women’s underrepresentation in positions of power and its connection to their limited, often disparaging portrayal in the media; Carlos César Arbeláez’s Spanish-language feature The Colors of the Mountain, about a group of young Colombian boys with a passion for soccer who are caught in the middle of a conflict between right-wing paramilitary groups and leftist guerrillas; Régis Sauder’s documentary Children of the Princess of Cleves, which makes an inspired connection between classic literature and contemporary teen life in modern-day Marseille; the Mandarin Chinese-language documentary Let the Wind Carry Me, by Chiang Hsiu-chiung and Kwan Pun-leung, about Mark Lee Ping-bin, one of the most acclaimed and prolific cinematographers in Asia; and Marathon Boy, Gemma Atwal’s documentary about a scrappy slum kid with a gift for running who meets a driven judo instructor with dreams of Olympic fame and the complicated relationship that turns India upside down.
This year’s elementary school program, Do You See What I See?, is a diverse collection of animated and live-action short films from Japan, Canada, France and the U.S. including the animated short The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore by children’s author William Joyce (Rolie Polie Olie) and Brandon Oldenburg, which brings stacks of storybooks to life in a whimsical tale of hurricanes, libraries and the love of reading; and Pixar animator Carlos Baena’s live-action short Play by Play, the story of a boy with dreams of baseball glory who runs up against the class bully and uses his ingenuity and creative writing skills to give their power dynamic a new spin.
Two additional films will be screened exclusively in the Schools at the Festival program and not featured in the regular SFIFF54 program: Anne Buford’s documentary Elevate, about the extraordinary personal journeys of four Senegalese teenage boys with NBA dreams who accept basketball scholarships to schools in the US and face the challenges of alienation, a foreign language and an unfamiliar American culture rife with African stereotypes; and veteran German documentarian Thomas Riedelshiemer’s Soul Birds, a lovely and emotional account of parents caring for children with leukemia. Elevate will screen Thursday, April 28 at 12:30 pm at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas. Soul Birds will screen Thursday, April 28 at 10:00 am at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas. Both screenings will be followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers (Riedelshiemer will participate via Skype).
Students will also get the opportunity to take a trip back in time to revisit one of the more than 200 films shown in the SATF program since 1991 during the Schools at the Festival Flashback program. Director Vanessa Roth (American Teacher) returns to the Festival with her documentary on middle school elections, The Third Monday in October (SFIFF 2007).
Closing out the SATF program is the annual presentation of youth-made short films, Youth Media Mash-Up, featuring a dozen of the best new works by mediamakers aged 18 and under in every genre from documentary to narrative to animation.
SFFS Youth Education and its Schools at the Festival program are designed to develop media literacy, broaden insights into other cultures, enhance foreign language aptitude, develop critical thinking skills and inspire a lifelong appreciation of cinema. Since its inception in 1991, SATF has served more than 60,000 Bay Area students and 3,000 teachers from more than 500 educational institutions. Founded by the late Robert S. Donn, a retired San Francisco public school teacher with a tremendous passion for film, the program currently is coordinated by program manager Keith Zwölfer.
Schools at the Festival is made possible this year with support from Visa, Dexter F. & Dorothy H. Baker Foundation, the San Francisco Foundation, Tin Man Fund, Union Bank Foundation, Wells Fargo Foundation, and Nellie Wong Magic of Movies Education Fund.
For more information visit fest11.sffs.org.
For photos and press materials visit sffs.org/pressdownloads.
54th San Francisco International Film Festival
The 54th San Francisco International Film Festival runs April 21-May 5, 2011 at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, the Castro Theatre, New People and SFMOMA in San Francisco and the Pacific Film Archive Theater in Berkeley. Held each spring for 15 days, the International is an extraordinary showcase of cinematic discovery and innovation in the country’s most beautiful city, featuring 15 juried awards, 200 films and live events with upwards of 100 participating filmmakers and diverse audiences of 75,000+ people.