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Real Good for Kids

Reel 2 Real's film fest of gems for children.

Dorothy Woodend 22 Feb 2008TheTyee.ca

Dorothy Woodend reviews films for The Tyee.

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See it: 'Red Like the Sky.'

In most children's films, getting rid of one's parents is pretty much de rigueur if you want anything to happen at all. What would The Famous Five have been if their damn parents had tagged along all the time? Ditto, the Narnia kids (the books, not the syrup-thick film).

In any kid's film (and book) worth its salt, kids spend a great deal of time alone or with other kids, and parents are relegated to the sidelines (which is really where they ought to be anyway) to do adult things like have affairs or anxiety attacks, or the two combined. Meanwhile, the kids are off saving the world.

This dictum holds true in many of the films that are screening in The Reel 2 Real International Film Festival for Youth which runs in Vancouver from Feb. 22 to 29. This year Reel 2 Real is celebrating its 10th anniversary. It's an auspicious occasion and one which ought to be supported. God knows it's difficult to find good films for kids. Not that they aren't made. They are. They just aren't shown in movie theatres very often. Thankfully, Reel 2 Real has a heaping helping -- some 48 films and 40 workshops in total, which should exhaust any young one.

Beautiful vision

The festival kicks off Feb. 22 at 6:30 p.m. at the Vancity Theatre with the Awards Night ceremony and Opening Gala screening of Cristiano Bortone's Red Like the Sky. The film tells the true story of Mirco Mencacci, a young boy who loses his sight as the result of an accident. After being deemed disabled, Mirco is separated from his parents and sent off to a school for the blind, a place which is little more than a sad warehouse for kids. Things look grim, but when Marco discovers an old reel-to-reel tape player, a whole new world of sound and story opens up. Mirco Mencacci went on to become one of Italy's top sound designers for film, a touch of verité that adds an extra layer of meaning to the film. Red Like the Sky has screened at a number of international festivals and picked up awards all over the place; this is Vancouver's first opportunity to see it. So, go already.

Other fine films on offer include Where is Winky's Horse?, the sequel to Winky's Horse (which screened a few months back at a Reel 2 Real event in the fall). Both films star the small bulldozer Ebbie Tam as the indomitable Winky Wong, a girl who won't be stopped in her pursuit of the equine, not by parents, teachers or even Santa Claus.

This time out, Winky finally has her horse, a lovely white mare named Amerigo. Every Christmas, Winky lets Santa Claus ride Amerigo to distribute presents to the local kids. The rest of the year, it's Winky's job to look after Amerigo, which she duly and dutifully does, biking to the stables every day to feed, brush and wash her large white friend. When her parents promise that she can take riding lessons for her birthday, Winky's happiness seems complete. But the course of true love never runs smooth and in the case of horse love, things get bucked off pretty quick. The arrival of a weird new kid who dresses like a Native American sets things off. Determined to ride Amerigo, in spite of being warned by her riding teacher, Winky saddles up and all hell breaks loose. Soon, Amerigo is missing and no one can find her. Will Christmas be cancelled this year, and will Winky's beloved horse be lost forever? I can't tell you, you'll have to go and find out.

U, too

Directors Serge Elissalde and Grégoire Solotareff's U is an extremely French animated film about a lonely princess named Mona and her unicorn friend named U. Mona lives in crumbling castle on the coast with her adopted parents, two rats who're not just rats in name, but also in behaviour. It's U's job to keep Mona happy in this unhappy place, which isn't a terribly easy process. One day a group of traveling musicians arrive, bringing love and its ensuing complications with them, and everything changes.

U is a lyrical and strange film, hand-painted and extremely lovely in a languid, very French fashion. It isn't really a film for small children since there is lots of French kissing, not just French people kissing, but animated tongue action. It's all sweet and soft and beautiful to look at, if you're over the age of 12. Anyone younger will probably be hiding beneath their seat when all the kissy bits are playing out. Gross!

A mysterious mind machine

Much more suited to younger appetites is the German kids' adventure TKKG and the Mysterious Mind-Machine, based on the popular book, TV and video game series. TKKG stands for Karl, a whiz kid inventor; Gaby, the group's level-headed girl; Klumpling, a chubby rich kid who loves chocolate and Tim, the leader of the pack -- four friends who solve mysteries and thwart evil when they're not doing homework.

When their beloved science teacher introduces the subject of brain development, and a schoolmate invents a machine that boosts mental performance, things get seriously strange for the TKKG gang. Add in some missing kids, a mad scientist and a megalomaniac television host, and the friends are forced to solve the mystery or fall victim to the mind-machine themselves. First, however, they must get rid of their meddling parents, which is done easily enough with the help of Klumpling's devoted butler/chauffeur.

When the gang stumbles upon a prototype of the mysterious machine, the effects of the infernal device soon become apparent. While it provides some positive benefits (e.g., the ability to solve a Rubik's Cube in under a minute) the side effects are truly dreadful. This is definitely a film for older kids, as there are a couple frightening scenes, but it's fun and oddly thoughtful, much like an after school special with strange Teutonic overtones.

Sweden meets Iraq

Director Petter Naess's Leaps and Bounds (Sweden/Iraq) is another film that does not scrimp on the difficulties of childhood, especially if you're an Iraqi boy hiding from the authorities in Sweden.

From the opening scene of the movie where Tigris and his little brother Azad are training for the high jump, like their heroine the Swedish champion Kajsa Bergqvist, this film pulls no punches about the harshness of life for kids during a war. The boys survive a bombing raid by hiding in a wicker basket, but the experience is so traumatic that Tigris loses the ability to speak. Their parents are determined to get them out of Iraq, but in order to seek asylum in Germany, the boys must travel to Europe alone. Tricked out of their plane tickets to Germany, they end up stranded in Sweden, hiding with another Iraqi family and trying to fit in.

The title Leaps and Bounds pertains not just to high jumping, but to the process of growing up, a fact that is made explicitly clear in the film's final thrilling sequence.

Nice shorts!

The shorts program at Reel 2 Real features a number of local filmmakers including Julia Kwan (Smile), the extremely lovely Caroline Coutts (DogBoy) and Izabela Bzymek with her film Oma's Quilt, the sweet story of an elderly lady who must leave behind her home and her history when she moves into an old folk's home.

Other fine short films include Jody Kramer's Lost Monster Hop, Anna McRobert's Windfisherman, José Pablo Gonzalez's For You, My People, Kevin Langdale's Crank, Richard Reeves' Sea Song and Jeff Chiba Stearn's What Are You Anyway? Whatever you do, don't miss Claudia Morgado's No Bikini, the story of a little girl who pretends to be a boy during swimming lessons. I loved this film. It's a call for self-determination and freedom, as smart as it is lovely to look at.

Singer/songwriter and all-around super dude Rick Scott will also be in attendance as will local animator Gail Noonan, who has chosen some animated classics to share including the Oscar winning film Father and Daughter (this is another must see film, it's unbelievably lovely) and the Academy Award nominated film When the Day Breaks from the deadly duo of Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis.

Kids can handle art

It's easy to forget sometimes that children aren't cream puffs, that they can endure hardships that would snap an adult in half. But sometimes it is this very degree of difficulty that makes it hard to program international kids films here. In North America, we're just too damn soft, or perhaps too hyper-vigilant in exactly the wrong way about what kids should see or not see.

The New York Children's Film Festival is also running this week, and like Reel 2 Real, it has encountered some perceptual challenges about what actually constitutes a kid's film. If you go by what's on offer in movie theatres, you might think it's only racist, sexist, consumerist-driven piffle that you wouldn't force on an adult, but children? Sure . . . What the hell.

A little blunt reality would seem a far sight better than a plastic fantasy, like the kind available in most mainstream kids' films. (You take your soul in hand when you venture into anything bearing the Disney insignia.) Kids' can take swearing, suffering, even tragedy, but they shouldn't have to take being pandered to.

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