Kids’ stuff

At this year’s International Film Festival for Children and Youth, the artistic director is focusing on quality, cultural origins and breadth of style.

By BARRY DAVIS
Superbrother_521 (photo credit: Courtesy)
Superbrother_521
(photo credit: Courtesy)
As most parents will tell you, kids’ entertainment does not always provide quality engagement. There are plenty of below-par products out there with some of the more nefarious, or inept, providers looking to make a quick buck, basing their marketing attack on the fact that, as intelligent and sensitive as children may be, they are also the most accepting of patrons when it comes to accommodating what is dished out to them.
Omri Levy is at pains to point out that he takes an entirely different view of the fourth annual International Film Festival for Children and Youth, to be held at the Jerusalem Cinematheque from Monday to Thursday. “You get all these people who organize parties and other activities for kids and it is so bad, almost embarrassingly so, and normally delivered as loudly as possible,” says the artistic director. “I try to offer children a quality of entertainment that I would be happy for my own kids to enjoy,” adds the father of four. “I want to bring things made by people who don’t look down on their audiences.”
Judging by the festival program, Levy is putting his money where his mouth is. The four-day event is chockful of hands-on activities and sit-back-andenjoy items patently designed to entertain in the most meritorious manner possible. For starters, there is the interactive Animation as Language workshop for the whole family, which takes a look at the evolution of animation through the years.
Then there is a two-hour session entitled Pixelization, which sheds light on the titular technique and offers children an opportunity to play the role of the principal characters of animated films.
“It’s like at the Olympics, where people make up shapes and letters with their body,” explains Levy.
“The children will act as the individual pixels to make an image and create a story. And different children will take turns being the director, to instruct the children how to place themselves to make up the picture or frame.”
Meanwhile, the two-and-a-half-hour Stop Motion workshop enlightens kids about four different animation techniques, using sand, plasticine, everyday objects and video. As space is limited, the festival organizers advise booking in advance for all the workshops.
There are also a number of workshops that delve into other areas of the field, including an acting session led by actress and acting teacher Neta Shachar, and a glimpse at the magic of film makeup.
Dubbing is also in the festival’s educational lineup, with the team responsible for the Hebrew versions of such local box-office hits as The Smurfs and Bob the Builder on call, while Jerusalemite Michael Kichka will enlighten his junior audience about the techniques they need to bring human characters and objects to life at an hour-long comics drawing workshop.
At the end of the day, however, it is the films that the children and their parents will come to see. Here, too, Levy has gone for quality and for breadth of style and cultural origins. There are a number of classics in there including, most notably, a screening of Danish gem Pelle the Conqueror with Max von Sydow on August 24 (9 p.m.) and Ari Fulman’s acclaimed Saint Clara, which tells the story of a teenager with special powers living in a development town in Israel.
Another big seller will close the festival, at 7:15 p.m. on August 25, with Jim Carrey starring in recent release Mr. Popper’s Penguins. There are also a couple of delightful items from Norway.
Superbrother mixes fantasy with some common or garden sibling strife and love, and Rafiki is a tale of an enduring childhood bond in the face of a harsh external reality.
“I try to bring movies to the festival that children don’t normally get the opportunity to see,” explains Levy. “That’s because they may not necessarily have strong commercial appeal. Most of the films aimed at the junior sector, which are available to children, are American and are big movies. I’m not saying that all kids’ movies from America are poor, some are excellent, but they are all made on a grand scale. Children don’t get much of a chance to see a more intimate sort of film, let’s say about two nine-year-old friends who have to separate because one of them has to return to Japan with her mother. It’s a great story but made as a low-budget production. That’s not the kind of movie you’ll find at shopping-mall cinemas. They are closer to children’s reality, and it is important for kids to see them.”
The festival also does its best to spawn new fruits in the industry through the short films for kids competition, which incorporates five movies, ranging from four to 13 minutes in length, made by film students from up and down the country. The competition also offers some financial incentives, courtesy of the Culture Ministry, with the children’s jury prize worth a hefty NIS 12,000 with an additional audience award of NIS 3,000. The former panel consists of six children aged 9 to 11, from different locations in Israel, who underwent special training for their role in the festival. Any juniors out there with a penchant for passing judgment on visual works of art can try to get onto next year’s children’s jury.
Throughout next week’s festival there will be a box outside Hall 1 of the Cinematheque where children can place notes with their opinion of the movie they saw. Kids writing the most interesting and original reviews will be considered for film festival jury service next year. Judging by the candidate list for this year’s jury – Levy says he plowed his way through 300 applications – there is plenty of interest in taking on a proactive role in the festival.
Prior to the short film there will be a screening of a movie on a serious and painful topic. Syawal Was Very Scared, made by Dutch director Wilma Ligthart in 2009, tells the story of 12-year-old Syawal from Banda Aceh, Sumatra, whose mother and sisters perished in the tsunami of 2005. The program also includes a special event, with the screening of Israel’s first nature documentary, Land of Genesis, on Tuesday at 4 p.m., followed by a guided tour of the Jerusalem Bird Observatory.
The Jerusalem children’s film festival started four years ago, one year after the Tel Aviv version, and Levy says he would like to see the two events join forces. “I’d like to cooperate with the people in Tel Aviv. In a sense we are rivals, but I don’t think there’s a problem, for instance, with showing the same movie here and at the Tel Aviv festival. A young kid is hardly likely to go to both festivals. We could cut costs by sharing films.”
Unfortunately, Levy says the wished-for collaboration has yet to materialize.
Costs aside, at the end of the day, Levy says it’s all about having a good time. “I picked the movies very carefully – I even used the services of a clinical psychologist as an adviser. This festival has grown a lot since it started out, and I think it offers quality entertainment.”
For more information about the International Film Festival for Children and Youth: 565- 4333 and www.jer-cin.org.il.