Unique Films With JBFC Kids

By Faculty and JBFC Kids Curator Emily Ohara 

The movie credits are rolling and the lights are slowly coming up in the theater. A child raises their hand and exclaims, “That was so funny!” causing me to start with excitement and quickly ask, “Why?” The usual response, “Because it just was!” “Yes, but can we figure out what made it so funny?”

These are the types of exchanges that I eat up when teaching film to students in Cinemania, an afterschool film club for 7th and 8th graders. It has become the place where kids know not to expect the usual sugar coated big blockbuster affair. Instead, they are greeted with a carefully chosen lineup consisting of mostly current wildly original global stories featuring children their own age. You would think telling a room full of students that the films will be foreign, nonfiction, unknown to them, and may even HAVE SUBTITLES, would send them running for the nearest exit. But no, instead I have children who are blown away, become extremely inquisitive, and crave more!

Glancing over the list of kid films playing in multiplexes today, it can at times be discouraging. Our new program, JBFC Kids, will allow us to reshape the way children see and interact with a movie theater. I am lucky enough to be this new initiative’s curator, and just as the Cinemania students do, I want children in the audience to engage in conversations not only with the instructor, but also with each other. I want kids to realize that even though the character on screen is speaking a different language they can still identify with them. I want our audience to see stories focusing on real kids with real dreams.

My goal is to do just this – provide a thoughtful kid-centric program that will revisit classics and highlight current global movies in a safe and creative space.

In the coming months, JBFC Kids will be poring through past and future international children film festivals; Seattle International Film Festival, New York International Film Festival, and Toronto International Film Festival for Kids (TIFF Kids), to provide our youngest viewers with the same quality of new and international film programming as we have delivered to our general audiences over the past 15 years.  My first visit to TIFF Kids in Toronto has already sparked many creative ideas for international film programming and innovative ways to ignite curiosity and play for kids of all ages here at the Jacob Burns.

I look forward to personally greeting you all on Art House Theater Day (Sept. 24) with our two wonderful international kid shorts programs.

See you at JBFC Kids!

Learn more about JBFC Kids and get tickets to JBFC Kids films here.