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Won’t Someone Think of the Film-Going Children?
Still from Martin Koolhoven’s Winter in Wartime courtesy Alma Parvizian.
One of the misconceptions about TIFF (née the Toronto International Film Festival) is that it’s just some celebrity gawk-fest that lasts for a couple of weeks every September. Au contraire: TIFF, especially in recent years, has dedicated itself to strengthening local film culture year-round, with numerous subsidiary festivals and screening programs adding to the festival’s already robust presence in the city.
One of these supplementary TIFF programs is Sprockets. Not to be confused with those SNL bits from the ’90s where Mike Myers plays a humourless German stereotype who likes to boogie (though those were pretty great too), Sprockets is an annual film festival aimed at children. According to their mission statement, Sprockets (formally, the Sprockets Toronto International Film Festival For Children), “is an initiative of TIFF that offers children and youth the opportunity to learn about cultural perspectives from around the world through the power of the moving image.” According to Allen Braude, co-director of Sprockets, the aim is to bring the kind of comprehensive film-festival culture TIFF is known for to a younger demographic. “We have this outstanding festival in Toronto of international cinema geared towards adults,” says Braude. “But what about cinema that’s being produced internationally for younger audiences?”
Now in its thirteenth year, Sprockets’ growth is matching the pace set by its higher-profile big brother. Sprockets 2010 sees sixty-eight films (twenty-nine features and forty-one shorts), representing twenty-three countries and twenty languages, from Ireland to Indonesia, German to Farsi, screened at two Uptown cinemas—the Famous Players Canada Square (2190 Yonge Street) and the Cineplex Odeon Sheppard Centre Cinemas (4861 Yonge Street)—between April 17 and 23.
And if the idea of a film festival aimed at children three and up conjures images of a Land Before Time retrospective or those Movies For Mommies matinee screenings you might find at your local multiplex, well, fret not. While Sprockets does program kid-friendly fare (there’s plenty of goofy animated shorts on hand for viewers with shorter attention spans), the festival aims to outshine the usual after-school special moralizing that often bogs down more serious cinema aimed at children.
Still from David Lee Miller’s My Suicide courtesy Alma Parvizian.
“As children grow up, we want them to continue to enjoy a lot of the excellent work out there that’s about youth protagonists,” explains Braude. “These are films addressing common concerns to young people today.” Certainly, something like the award-winning My Suicide (recommended for ages 16+), grappling as it does with the forms of depression and angst endemic amongst teens, offers a welcome antidote to the wash of adolescent sex comedies that typically lay siege to the imaginations and hormones of teenage filmgoers. Ditto Winter in Wartime (Oorlogswinter), a co-produced coming-of-age story from the Netherlands and Belgium about a fourteen-year-old boy living in a small town under Nazi occupation.
Apart from its public screening program, Sprockets also works in conjunction with elementary and secondary schools to help facilitate thoughtful movie-going practices, while also helping educators meet media-literacy requirements. “It helps to broaden the horizons of the students,” says Braude. “And when you have broader horizons, you can accept more ideas. It just builds a more diverse world.”
Lofty and noble goals to be sure, but it is further proof for doubters that TIFF is about more than facilitating candid red-carpet photographs of George Clooney on an annual basis. And with younger talent emerging in Canadian film-—just look at Xavier Dolan, the twenty-one-year-old Quebecois wunderkind whose debut feature, J’ai tué ma mère (I Killed My Mother) received heaps of critical praise, only to be summarily snubbed at the Genies earlier this week—providing children and teenagers with comprehensive film studies education at an early age may help breed the next generation of Don McKellars, Bruce McDonalds, or David Cronenbergs that will shape the future of Canadian film production.
Tickets for the 13th annual Sprockets Toronto International Film Festival for Children are on sale now. For more info, tickets, and schedules, head to the Sprockets website.