Mar 31, 2015
Education, Festival
San Francisco, CA – The San Francisco Film Society’s Education program continues its year-round outreach to Bay Area students and educators with the annual Schools at the Festival (SATF) program at the 58th San Francisco International Film Festival (April 23–May 7). 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.
One narrative feature, eight documentaries and 27 short films have been carefully selected for this year’s Schools at the Festival program to suit a broad range of curricula and grade levels, with scheduled 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 and Spanish, as well as issue-based programming for school subjects such as language arts, ethics, health, history, journalism, politics, science, social studies and world affairs.
Thanks to the generous support of the 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. Tickets for the program are available exclusively to Bay Area educators and students and may be purchased only through the SATF office by contacting Youth Education Manager Keith Zwölfer at kzwolfer@sffs.org or 415-561-5040. 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 Justine Malle, Zachary Heinzerling, Debra Granik, Stephen Gaghan, Tim Hetherington, Mike Ott, Tanya Hamilton, Allison Bagnall, Dice Tsutsumi, Jay Rosenblatt, Doug Pray, Jean-Marie Téno, Amanda Micheli, Ivy Ho, Jose Antonio Vargas, Les Blank, Leland Orser, Lourdes Portillo, Michel Ocelot and Ousmane Sembène.
A set of study guides, developed by SFFS Youth Education staff, will be made available for most 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 post-screening discussions and provide additional resources, follow-up activities and projects. All SATF programs are designed in alignment with the Common Core and the Visual and Performing Arts Standards for California public schools. SATF study guides will be available for download on FilmEd., the Film Society’s online community and toolkit for media viewing and media making in the classroom. Visit filmed.sffs.org for more information.
The program will also include the sixth annual Schools at the Festival Student Essay Contest, funded by the Nellie Wong Magic of Movies Education Fund, which aims to cultivate students’ imaginations, enhance their critical thinking and creative writing skills and instill a greater appreciation for the magic of movies in young audiences. Students in grades 2–12 are invited to submit essays in response to designated questions about select Schools at the Festival films. Contest winners receive cash awards ranging from $50 to $500 and will be announced in late May.
Films in the SATF program offered to middle and high school students range from complex narratives to in-depth cultural explorations and gripping documentaries including All of Me, The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Democrats, Red Amnesia, Romeo is Bleeding and T-Rex.
For elementary schools, there will be four separate screenings of the Shorts 5: Family Films program, a collection of animated and live-action films from Spain, New Zealand, France, Switzerland and the United States. This diverse program includes the newest animated short from Pixar Studios, Lava, and an animated adaptation of a long lost Howard Ashman and Alan Menken tune, Aria for a Cow, directed by Disney animator Dan Lund.
Three additional films will be screening exclusively in the Schools at the Festival program, but not in the regular SFIFF58 program. Bay Area filmmakers Mina T. Son and Sara Newens will present their new documentary, Top Spin, in which three teenagers battle their way through the world of competitive ping pong, one of America’s most under-appreciated sports. The girls face unusual challenges coming of age in a niche sport, and the film reveals the passion it takes to pursue their Olympic-sized dreams. Top Spin will screen Thursday April 30 at 10:00 am. Another Bay Area filmmaker, Dana Nachman, will be screening her documentary, Batkid Begins, which chronicles the making of San Francisco Make-A-Wish’s overnight international phenomenon, BatKid (Miles Scott). Batkid Begins will screen Tuesday May 5 at 10:00 am. The film We Did It on a Song, directed by French filmmaker David Andre, will screen Wednesday April 29 at 10:00 am. This innovative documentary follows a group of friends from Boulogne-sur-Mer, a French town hit by the financial crisis. A year passes between dreams and disillusion, imagined by teenagers from a working or middle class background, with songs that regularly add poetry, laughter and emotion to reality.
Closing out the SATF program on Thursday May 7 at 12:45 pm is the annual presentation of Shorts 6: Youth Works, a short film program featuring ten of the best new narratives, documentaries, experimental works and animation by media makers aged 18 and under from the Bay Area and beyond.
SFFS 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 85,000 Bay Area students and teachers from more than 500 educational institutions.
For general information visit festival.sffs.org.
To request interviews or screeners, contact your Festival publicist.
For photos and press materials visit sffs.org/pressdownloads.
58th San Francisco International Film Festival
The 58th San Francisco International Film Festival runs April 23-May 7 at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, Castro Theatre, Landmark’s Clay Theatre and the Roxie Theater in San Francisco and the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley. Held each spring for 15 days, SFIFF is an extraordinary showcase of cinematic discovery and innovation in one of the country’s most beautiful cities, featuring nearly 200 films and live events, 14 juried awards with nearly $40,000 in cash prizes and upwards of 100 participating filmmaker guests.