Apr 1, 2014
Education, Festival
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 57th San Francisco International Film Festival(April 24-May 8). 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.
Thirteen narrative features, documentaries and shorts programs 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, Tim Hetherington, Mike Ott, Tanya Hamilton, Allison Bagnall, Jay Rosenblatt, Doug Pray, Jean-Marie Téno, Amanda Micheli, Ivy Ho, Les Blank, Peter Bratt, 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 fifth 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 inspiring narratives to in-depth cultural explorations and gripping exposés includingFed Up, Stephane Soechtig’s documentary about childhood obesity and the role played by the government and the food industry in one of the largest health epidemics in American history; Kat Candler’s powerful and poignant feature Hellion, starring Aaron Paul and Josh Wiggins, about a struggling father coping with the loss of his wife while blind to the emotional toll on his sons-a rebellious teenager and a sensitive pre-adolescent boy; School of Babel, Julie Bertuccelli’s revelatory documentary chronicling a year in the life of immigrant teens from around the globe who are living in Paris and enrolled in a “reception class” where they learn to speak French and assimilate into their new society; Zeresenay Berhane Mehari’s first narrative feature, Difret, a powerful drama inspired by a true story about a 14-year-old Ethiopian girl who is abducted and attempts to free herself from a future of forced marriage, setting off a legal firestorm that pits the law against an entrenched set of community beliefs; Cesar’s Last Fast, a documentary portrait of labor organizer Cesar Chavez, co-directed by Richard Ray Perez and Chavez’s former press secretary Lorena Parlee, that focuses on his 36-day fast in 1988 to protest the use of pesticides that led farm workers and their children to develop cancer at record rates; Freedom Summer, veteran documentarian Stanley Nelson’s in-depth exploration of the volatile summer of 1964 in Mississippi, when more than 700 student volunteers banded together with organizers and local African Americans to secure the right to vote for all US citizens; Thomas Balmès’ documentary Happiness, about a nine-year-old monk-in-training named Peyangki living in the mountains of Bhutan as television and technology rapidly encroach on his community and their ancient way of life; and Three Letters from China, Luc Schaedler’s distinct and illuminating portraits of contemporary life in China, revealing the upheaval and uncertainty of a rapidly changing nation through the deeply engrossing stories of its people.
For elementary schools, there will be three separate screenings of the Family Films shorts program, a diverse collection of animated and live-action films from, Canada, South Korea, Russia, and the U.S., including two new animated shorts from the Academy Award-winning Moonbot Studios-The Numberlys and Silent-and an animated adaptation of Jon Klassen’s classic children’s book I Want My Hat Back, directed by Galen Fott.
One additional film will be screening exclusively in the Schools at the Festival program but not in the regular SFIFF57 program. Bay Area filmmakers Marcia Jarmel and Ken Schneider will present their new documentary Havana Curveball, about their teenage son Mica who launches a grand plan to send baseball equipment to Cuba and encounters many obstacles, inspirations and life lessons along the way. Havana Curveball will screen Wednesday, May 7 at 10:00 am at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers.
Closing out the SATF program is the annual presentation of Youth Works, a short film program featuring a baker’s dozen 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 80,000 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.
57th San Francisco International Film Festival
The 57th San Francisco International Film Festival runs April 24-May 8 at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, Castro Theatre and New People Cinema in San Francisco and the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley. Held each spring for 15 days, the International is an extraordinary showcase of cinematic discovery and innovation in one of the country’s most beautiful cities, featuring 200 films and live events, 14 juried awards and nearly $40,000 in cash prizes, upwards of 100 participating filmmaker guests and diverse and engaged audiences with more than 65,000 in attendance.