In addition to the extensive schedule of film screenings for schools, another significant part of the Education Program involves bringing filmmakers into the schools to meet and discuss their films with students in a smaller classroom setting. These interactive visits allow students to engage with filmmakers from around the world and give the artists the opportunity to show their films to new audiences and gain valuable feedback from a youth perspective.

If you are interested in having a filmmaker visit your classroom, contact Keith Zwolfer at kzwolfer@sffs.org or 415-561-5040.

Recent School Visits

Lisa Merton, director, Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai
Thursday, November 13, 2008, Julia Morgan School for Girls
The 8th grade Julia Morgan students viewed this inspiring documentary, which tells the story of the Green Belt Movement of Kenya and its founder Wangari Maathai, the first environmentalist and first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. The film captures Maathai’s infectious determination and unwavering courage and presents an awe-inspiring profile of her 30-year journey of courage to protect the integrally connected issues of the environment, human rights and democracy. Watching the film along with the students, director Lisa Merton then engaged them in a lengthy post-screening discussion about Wangari’s remarkable work and her unique role as an African woman and successful and fearless activist. The students were also extremely interested to learn about Merton’s experiences in Kenya and her path to becoming a filmmaker.

Xiao-Yen Wang, director, The Monkey Kid
Thursday, March 20, 2008, Julia Morgan School for Girls
As a supplement to their unit on Chinese history and culture, the 6th grade screened the Mandarin-language film The Monkey Kid, the autobiographical story of a nine-year-old girl in Beijing during the Cultural Revolution. Director Xiao-Yen Wang introduced the film by explaining the different stages of the Cultural Revolution and encouraged students to compare their own experiences to those of the film’s protagonist. In a post-screening discussion, the students asked questions about events in the film and about Wang’s life in China at that time, when most children lived alone in the cities while parents were sent out to the countryside to work. There was also much discussion about the making of the film and Wang’s experiences shooting a film in China about a subject generally forbidden by the government.

“Thank you again for arranging our viewing of The Monkey Kid. The girls enjoyed seeing the film, and many of the girls who are able to conceptualize and critically think about the Cultural Revolution got a lot out of seeing a visual representation of the period.”—teacher, Julia Morgan School for Girls

Karina Epperlein, director, Phoenix Dance
Friday,December 21, 2007, Julia Morgan School for Girls
East Bay filmmaker Karina Epperlein paid a visit to the seventh grade classes of the Julia Morgan School for Girls in Oakland to show her short film Phoenix Dance (SFIFF49) and discuss art, filmmaking, disability, body image, dance and women’s issues with the students. Before showing the 17-minute film about dancer Homer Avila—who lost his leg to cancer but continued dancing and performed a beautiful pas de deuxchoreographed by Alonzo King— Epperlein began with a movement exercise with the girls in which they practiced moving around the room on just one leg. After the screening, the students had many questions about what it was like to film such an emotional subject and how she became involved with the project. Epperlein also discussed her experiences and challenges as a female filmmaker and how she evolved into that role from being a dancer, artist and teacher. The students were so engaged by Epperlein and her work that they requested to view a portion of her first feature documentary, Voices from Inside, about a workshop she taught with women in a federal prison. After viewing the first 15 minutes of the film, the girls had a slew of questions about the women featured in the film, their stories and their current situations and what it was like for Epperlein to work with them. Epperlein’s key message to the girls was to truly learn to trust in themselves and not allow others to sabotage their better judgment—or their lives. The students and teachers will be viewing the DVD of Voices from Inside in its entirety after the winter break with the possibility of Karina returning to the school to further discuss the film with them.

Amir Bar-Lev, director, My Kid Could Paint That
Friday, October 12, 2007, Berkeley High School
The senior film students in the Berkeley High School CAS program screened the documentary My Kid Could Paint That, followed by a discussion with filmmaker Amir Bar-Lev, who is also an alumnus of Berkeley High (class of 1990). The two classes sat fully rapt for the feature-length film about a four-year-old girl hailed—and then doubted—as a prodigy of abstract impressionist painting. Students raised questions about the objectivity of filmmaking and journalism, the identification of modern art, and issues of parental responsibility. Bar-Lev described his own journey from BHS grad to nationally distributed filmmaker, and, after hearing about the facilities and equipment now available to the students—who are each making five to six movies per year in BHS’s CAS communications program—Bar-Lev noted that the equipment they were using was actually superior to what he had used to make the film they’d just seen.

Rajnesh Domalpalli, director, Vanaja
Friday, October 5, 2007, The Marin School
Indian director Rajnesh Domalpalli visited the film class at the Marin School while he was in the Bay Area for the theatrical release of his feature film Vanaja. The students viewed the first part of the film in class prior to his visit and engaged in an hour-long discussion with the young director the next day. Domalpalli answered a wide range of intelligent questions, including: the logistics and benefits of crane shots; the meaning of the unique way that Indians nod their heads; what to look for when choosing your actors; how to work with child actors, nonprofessionals and actors who can’t even read or write; and how to get actors to cry or go to deeper, more emotional places. Domalpalli also counseled the young filmmakers on how to survive as a filmmaker artist and emphasized what he feels is the most important aspect of filmmaking: the writing. The director wrapped up the session by asking each student what kind of filmmaker they wanted to be and what kinds of films interested them most. He was surprised by the great diversity of their responses and their interests, which ranged from psychological films to musicals, documentaries to cultural stories and non-traditional narratives.

“Although Vanaja had been shown in several children's film festivals, I had rarely had an opportunity to interact directly with children and see how they were reacting to the film. I went in, expecting that I would bore them—desperately thinking of ways to interest a group of teenagers whose attention spans would be my nemesis. To my surprise, I found that not only did their attention last the duration of my talk, but their questions came not just from left-field but from up, down, center, rear and every other direction that I had assumed no one would ever take. In the final analysis, I think I learned more than they did.”—Rajnesh Domalpalli, director

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