The summer before my senior year of college, I was fortunate enough to be the programming intern for the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival. My duties were varied and mentally satisfying—the worst of it was assisting the registrar input applicant data into an Excel spreadsheet, but hey, I was not a business major or an enginerd in college, I was in the liberal arts, so how else was I supposed to learn Excel? Usually, however, I
- viewed festival entries and screened them for objectionable content. I was very good at this because my mother was of the overly strict, overly protective strain, and the very worst kind of strict and overprotective, as she is Asian and devout Roman Catholic. That is like the double whammy of overreactive pearl-clutching. You would not believe what some filmmakers submit as acceptable viewing for an audience of American 5-13 year olds. It was heartbreaking, because a lot of the films were legitimately well-made and awesome, but probably would have prompted a lot of angry parent letters. The French were unsurprisingly lax about sexual topics and nudity, but I remember the Scandinavian works as being particularly violent, profanity-riddled, and generally advanced overall. I did get to see a lot of excellent films this way though—two of them ended up being nominated for Academy Awards that year.
- attended jury meetings. The CICFF is interesting because it is one of the few children’s film festivals that actually includes children on its jury. The children apply to be included—and really, they were some of the most articulate and intelligent kids I’ve ever met. I was ten years older than most of them and I found them genuinely intimidating. They also all attended extremely selective Chicago schools, and transcribing their opinions—and then comparing them with the written work of friends teaching much older children in the public high schools—was a big reason for why I decided to go into education reform. Those 11-year-olds already possessed a much wider verbal and cultural vocabulary than many of the adults in the neighborhoods in which I used to teach, and that’s sad and unfair.
- wrote synopses of accepted films for the festival program. I don’t have much to say about that except that I have a newfound respect for the people who write movie taglines and the people who compose the text found on the backs of DVD boxes.
- organized youth filmmaking sessions with area professionals. Do you know how hard it was in 2004 to find contacts online for professionals in the film industry? In CHICAGO? Especially ones willing to commit to leading a workshop for kids? For very little money? It’s not so much anymore, but not so long ago Chicago was a somewhat financially hostile environment for people who wanted to work in film, mostly because the city’s film office was notoriously reticent to hand out permits. (Rumor has it that Blues Brothers filming scared the hell out of Chicago.) Most movies used to just film in Toronto, where it’s cheaper anyway, instead of filming a movie set in “Chicago.” But anyway! I had to get over my cold-calling phobia fast for that job. And I don’t want to toot my own horn, but I was also instrumental in getting a then little-known (to the non-Disney demographic, anyway) actor named Shia LeBoeuf, who had quietly submitted his own entry to the festival, to be a CICFF Special Guest.
Going back to that first item on the list, however—in the area of films we had to reject for their not-entirely-appropriate content, was a little short called Salad Fingers. At the time I was alternately repulsed and fascinated and thoroughly creeped the fuck out by this odd movie, which was pretty much how we all felt on the Festival staff. We conceded that while it was certainly expertly animated and originally conceived, it would have had a dubious appeal for, say, 3rd graders. Maybe some budding goth 3rd graders might have liked it. I don’t know.
I will say that I was surprised, many years later, to find out that not only had Salad Fingers been expanded into a whole series of shorts, but that they each became a viral sensation in their own right. I read last night that its animator, David Firth, has become a pretty successful artist. I’m glad he’s still doing what he apparently loves and is very talented at. Enjoy!
