At the Movies

San Francisco is home to the San Francisco Film Society, and from September 24-26 the organization will present the NY-SF International Children's Film Festival.

This three-day event celebrates "diverse, enlightening, inspiring and entertaining films for kids and teens".  Along with feature films, the festival program includes a global sampling of documentaries, animation, and short films geared toward young people ages 3–18 and their families.

To support the work, the San Francisco Film Society has developed a youth education and school outreach program that includes interactive workshops and special screenings for school children and their teachers.

I am looking forward to Oblivion Island, which is a 3-D adventure movie from Japan. It shows on September 25th @ 2:15 pm and it has subtitles and is recommended for ages 8-16.

All of the films will be screened at Landmark’s Embarcadero Center Cinema. 

The program promises visits from some of the filmmakers and much more. Full details of the events are posted here.

Waste Not

The New York Times reports that a short film created by a Greenpeace veteran is the sleeper hit of the year. 

The Story of Stuff purports to show how "American habits result in forests being felled, mountaintops being destroyed, water being polluted and people and animals being poisoned. "

Over 5 million people have viewed the film on the filmmaker's website. The piece, which mixes animation with live action, has been shown in classrooms across the country and, apparently, it has made some people mad.

Art engenders a response.

Watch it here and decide for yourself: storyofstuff.com

I Can't Stand the Rain

It is Friday and I am out of here.

We are on Facebook.

I am on Twitter.

Also: Catherine Deneuve -  Les Parapluies de Cherbourg

Cinematic

Film Forum has been around since 1970 and they are now "New York’s leading movie house for independent premieres and repertory programming".

Costa Gravas' thriller "Z" is playing and you should see it.

Critic Pauline Kael called it "One of the fastest, most exciting melodramas ever made."

Also: I Lost it at the Movies by Pauline Kael.

Plus: Digital Animation, a technology mentoring program for young women in Central Ohio, provides this useful online tutorial on how to make a storyboard.

Take the Special

The NYC DOE Office of the Arts and Special Projects (OASP) is charged with supporting universal access to arts education through ArtsCount, an initiative that tracks and reports student participation in arts education and holds schools accountable for meeting New York State Instructional Requirements for the Arts. OASP also put together all of those nifty Blueprints for Teaching and Learning in the Arts. Arts Count has identified "Arts Education Liasons" in most of the NYC public schools and painstakingly typed their names in tiny print on this spreadsheet. For the list to be of any use, you'll need the school number and a magnifying glass.

We TAs should probably read all of this stuff if we want to be taken seriously by friends like these.

Short Film: Det Perfekte Menneske (Jørgen L.)

Il Dolce Suono

The exciting news, according to The New York Times, is that:

"The economic stimulus plan that Congress has scheduled for a vote on Wednesday would shower the nation’s school districts, child care centers and university campuses with $150 billion in new federal spending, a vast two-year investment that would more than double the Department of Education’s current budget."

My heart takes wing, but here is the problem.

I think I work in the field of "Education" but I'm mistaken.

We are professional Teaching Artists. Our field is categorized as "Arts-in-Education" or "Arts Education" or whatever is popular or accurate at the moment. I'm not a linguist.

Arts in Education versus Education.

It's a small distinction, but an exclusionary one as far as funding is concerned.

So we are out of luck unless we start yelling for our piece of the Education funding pie right now. The organizations that represent the field of Education will get the money and we will get the boot. There's going to be a line of wolves at the table and everyone loves pie.

Join something:

Americans for the Arts

NYC Arts in Education Roundtable

Association of Teaching Artists

Also: The Fifth Element is Love.

Digital Divide

Organizations like New York's Ghetto Film School and Chicago's Digital Youth Network are giving young people the tools they need to be innovative artists and critical thinkers.

I think fostering media literacy and offering young people access to technology is part of the new civil rights movement.

If you can't get online you're not able to participate fully in the new society.

If you don't control your own image, then who does?

Maybe you could donate your computer to the cause?

Reflection

This early film was shot in 1896:






This film was shot in 1963:

Redemption Song

In 1862, there was the largest mass hanging in United States history. In December of 2008, Lakota Jim Miller and friends organized a "reconciliation ride" on horseback. The ride was documented by a group of young filmmakers working for positive social change.

Watch the video

Read the blog