Jerusalem Film Festival to debut Cinema Park

The park and its activities will be geared toward children and the entire family. It will be open each day from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m..

JULY 3, 2016 14:34

‘Kubo and the Two Strings.’ (photo credit: JERUSALEM FILM FESTIVAL) — ‘Kubo and the Two Strings.’

(photo credit: JERUSALEM FILM FESTIVAL)

As part of the 33rd Jerusalem Film Festival, which will take place at the Jerusalem Cinematheque from July 7 to 17, a Cinema Park will be open from July 10 to 14 in Independence Park for the first time.

The park and its activities will be geared toward children and the entire family. It will be open each day from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.

The Cinema Park is billed as a center for cinematic activities and creation.

There have always been films for children at the Jerusalem Film Festival, but the Cinema Park is a welcome addition to the festival’s offerings, and shows a serious commitment on the part of the film festival management to developing children’s knowledge of and love for movies.

Dr. Noa Regev, the executive director of the cinematheque and the festival, said, “Each year, the Jerusalem Cinematheque runs a variety of initiatives to foster a love of cinema and understanding of the medium among children. We believe that children deserve to enjoy quality cinema and therefore we create events throughout the year that are fun and educational for children.”

Regev, who specialized in children’s films in her doctoral studies, continued: “The festival features a competition for international children’s films and the judges are members of a group of a young film critics from the cinematheque, the Film Critics’ Club and children aged 11 and 12 who studied with us all year to learn about movies and to enjoy them. This year the highlight of the film festival for children will be the new interactive complex that will be erected at the Wilf Garden in the center of the city that will allow children to actively experience different aspects of film art and the creation of movies.”

The complex includes several stations that will teach children and their families about cinema, with a special focus on animated movies.

The Flipbookomega will be a 100-meter zipline opposite a wall of paintings that turn into an animated movie as the children move along the length of it. The individual pictures of a galloping horse, the symbol of this year’s festival, will morph into a movie of horse as the children fly past it, just as pictures do when you hold a flip book in your hand. It will teach children the basic principles of animation, while they are having fun.

At the Green Screen booth, there will be a model car in front of a screen and a closed-circuit camera. Children sit in the car and can change the video backgrounds on the screen by clicking on a board. There will also be wigs, costumes, makeup and accessories available.

At an arts-and-crafts tent, children will be able to create zoetropes (strips of pictures, a precursor to modern movies), stop-motion movies, sound recordings and other projects. It will also feature record players and other technology on which they can play their work. Children will be able to upload their finished work to the Internet.

An interactive dubbing station will teach children about sound effects and dubbing.

The Popcorn area, which is aimed at preschoolers, will feature a trampoline and a mountain of popcorn-shaped sponges they can climb.

The film festival will include many movies for children, which will be shown at the Cinematheque, among them the stunning animated feature The Red Turtle by Michael Dudok de Wit, which has no dialogue; Ira Sachs’s Little Men, about two boys who become friends in Brooklyn; The Boy and the Beast, an animated movie by Mamoru Hosoda about a boy mourning the death of his mother, who wanders into a parallel universe of talking animals (this film is in Japanese, with Hebrew and English subtitles); and Travis Wright’s Kubo and the Two Strings, another animated film about a boy who joins forces with animals to find a magical string instrument.

Admission to the Cinema Park is NIS 46 for children, but an accompanying adult can enter free of charge.

For more information: jff.org.il.