Guest Post: ‘Hair Love’ Filmmaker Matthew Cherry Spends Time with SFFILM Education
Guest Post: ‘Hair Love’ Filmmaker Matthew Cherry Spends Time with SFFILM Education
In late October, SFFILM Education brought the creators of the Sony Pictures Animation short film, Hair Love to San Francisco. We hosted school visits, special screenings, and an animation workshop giving Bay Area students, teachers, children, families, and animation enthusiasts the opportunity to engage with the film’s director Matthew A. Cherry and its executive producer Frank Abney III. Matthew and Frank were able to speak about the inspiration behind the story and elaborate on the film’s themes of family and diversity.
Our Education Coordinator Maddy Leonard and Education Intern Hannah Wheeler wrote this wonderful recap of the multi-day events.
We kicked off our Hair Love events with a screening at Alamo Drafthouse. The audience had the chance to view the short film, and then engage with a special “Behind the Making of Hair Love” presentation. Matthew and Frank shared insights into their filmmaking process and showed examples of animation and character development. At the end of the presentation, Frank lead a “draw along”, and the audience was encouraged to follow along as he drew the main character Zuri.
Later that afternoon, SFFILM Education and the Hair Love team brought the short film to SFFILM’s Filmhouse for a workshop. Close to 30 young participants screened the short then watched a presentation that highlighted the way the story, characters, and overall aesthetic of the film evolved throughout the filmmaking process. After the presentation, the participants engaged in a Q&A session with the creators, sparking their curiosity by allowing them to individually engage with the industry professionals.
The event concluded with a hands-on activity in which participants were guided through the process of creating the main character Zuri. They were then encouraged to take the activity a step further by creating their own characters. After learning how Matthew created Hair Love out of a lack of representation of different identities in animation, the participants were inspired to come up with a character of their own that represented either themselves or someone in their community that they would like to see up on the big screen!
The following Monday afternoon, SFFILM Education hosted about 275 students from multiple Bay Area Schools at SFMOMA for another special Hair Love presentation. The students were incredibly engaged throughout the presentation and had many questions for Matthew during the Q&A. The event concluded with a meet and greet, allowing one-on-one interactions between Matthew and the students and teachers!
Finally, SFFILM Education brought Hair Love to three separate San Francisco classrooms. We visited 4th and 5th graders at Sanchez Elementary, high school youth at Woodside Juvenile Learning Center, and a class of after-school elementary and middle school youth at San Francisco Community School. Matthew presented the film to the students, gave its back story, and answered all of their questions. The students at every school reacted to the film extremely positively and were able to connect with its themes. Multiple students expressed how the film related to their relationships with their parents or to challenges they have faced in their own life. Some young animation fans, loved the more technical aspects of the presentation, and were inspired by Matthew to continue working towards their goals of becoming animators themselves one day!
