A group of young Sunshine Coast filmmakers will be joining some world-class company when the 2019 Reel Youth Film Festival is screened at Gibsons Public Library on Nov. 29.
The festival will feature 19 films – three to seven minutes in length – that represent some of the best youth filmmaking from around the world. The mini-movies, ranging from the funny to the urgently serious, have been selected by an international youth jury from more than 1,300 submitted entries from 100 countries. Also to be screened along with the juried selections are three short, animated films made by Coast youths during a day-long workshop at the library in August.
“The world looks very different to young people from Iran, Singapore, the Ukraine, and Indigenous communities across Canada, and their perspectives give rare insight into the next generation of leaders, change-makers, and visual artists,” said Danielle Arsenault, the library’s Child and Youth Services coordinator, in a news release.
“I personally am super-interested to know what young people from around the world care about and what they would choose to produce films about,” Arsenault added in an interview. “Normally we’d have to go to Vancouver to see those sorts of things but to have a collection of films like this come to Gibsons I think is remarkable.”
The three local films were made by 11 to 15 year olds in a workshop led by two Vancouver-based facilitators from the Reel Youth community-development program. They took the group through a brainstorming exercise to identify some of their top social and environmental concerns, which they used as subjects for their productions. The participants then learned a technique called claymation, reconfiguring plasticine figures and photographing them in tiny steps. The photos were later edited together to create the illusion of motion and tell a story.
“The focus of Reel Youth is to empower young people to produce films on social issues that they care about,” Arsenault noted.
After the screening, which is to take place in the main library area, viewers will be invited to fill out ballots to vote for their favourite films. The festival is rated PG (Parental Guidance) and is recommended for viewers aged 12 and older.
To help us ensure adequate seating, Arsenault asks that viewers please register by calling the library at 604-886-2130. Drop-ins are welcome if there’s room, she added.
