What's On Your Plate?

Directed by Catherine Gund
Produced by Tanya Selvaratnam
Co-produced by Sadie Rain Hope-Gund and Safiyah Kai Russell Riddle
With animation by Hubbub Inc.: Emily Hubley and Jeremiah Dickey
Color, documentary, 73 minutes
All ages

Upcoming screening:

BAM Cinemafest/Afro-Punk Opening Night Outdoor Screening
Saturday, June 27th, 6:00 pm

I show my kids a lot of documentaries—more than they want to see, frankly. So when I pulled What's On Your Plate? out of the envelope and said, "It's about food!" my son put on his blah face. "I've seen a ton of that stuff. I know." He's used to home cooking, CSAs, the backyard garden (even if a groundhog has kept it from coming up this year), he knows everything there is to know about healthy eating. But when the rest of the family popped it in and started watching, he came in and got hooked.

Co-produced and 'hosted' by two 7th-grade girls, Sadie and Safiyah, who live and eat in New York City, What's On Your Plate? welcomes a kids-eye view of food politics. School lunches, family farming, the mystery treat "Funyuns," and diet-related diseases are some of the topics, but the 'girl guides' leading the exploration, Sadie and Safiyah, bring humor and energy that keep the material from being dry or didactic, and so do their lively interview subjects—chefs, food activists, and farmers. Director Gund has no wish to feed us a lot of talking heads—she'd rather follow the girls as they amble through the city, visit the Angels, a Mexican farming family, or select cucumbers at their CSA. You get to watch people eat a lot. And Sadie and Safiyah don't shrink from asking the heads of food for NYC schools why Snapple is considered a suitable beverage to be serving kids from machines. "They don't have to drink it," one says.

I think one reason my kids found What's On Your Plate? interesting is that it talks about what happens when the food we see being grown around us—in Ulster County, two hours north of the city—reaches New York City. How do city residents get to know farmers? How does farm-fresh food get distributed to schools? How do people go about changing what's on their plate?

Star Trek

The buzz was up about STAR TREK 2009. Good for kids, good story, very moving. My kids are now 12 and nearly 10, and maybe because they're a bit older now, tweens in fact, I talked them into going. My husband read me the review from Kids-in-Mind, but no red flags. Violence and gore got a 6 rating from them—compare to the 7 rating given PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN, which my kids saw over a year ago.

Besides, a younger friend of theirs had gone, and people were saying it's fine for kids.

Whoa, was I mistaken. Neither one of them liked the violence, the volume, the velocity—the three off-putting Vs of PG13dom. I don't know how Kids-in-Mind decided to rate the violence at 6. How could a man bound to a table to be tortured, a large insect forced down his throat, rate a 6? What kind of torture gets a 10? It feels like the world is getting less sensitive, but I'm becoming more grateful for my children's sensitivity.

My son is a particular fan of the MPAA ratings system—he even has it tacked to his bedroom wall. Because of him I've adjusted my attitude toward ratings. When I was single and living in New York, I once interviewed the director Abel Ferrara and recall his outrage that his teenage son might be prohibited from seeing whatever movie he liked. From his point-of-view it was a self-expression issue, and I agreed.

For my son, it's a self-protection issue. He values the ratings system because he's not ready for sexual themes, he doesn't like seeing cruelty, especially if it's aimed at animals, and Hollywood movies tend to overwhelm him with their explosions, constant orchestral climaxing, and endless chase sequences. He's the one sitting through the previews with his fingers in his ears.

Another reason my kids didn't go in for STAR TREK is that they lack the allegiance, formed over decades, to the series that my husband and I have. While we are not Trekkers, I for one spent a good deal of my youth with the crew of the Enterprise. Naturally I paid close attention to the women, the few there were: Nurse Christine Chapel, Yeoman Janice Rand, and the biggie: Lt. Uhura.

Uhura and the actor who played her, Nichelle Nichols, carry a lot of cultural heft. Nichols was one of the first Black women on a TV series not to play a domestic worker (Diahann Carol in the 1968 Julia was another trailblazer I watched without quite understanding, but maybe intuiting, the import—I was seven that year). An episode in which she kissed William Shatner broke a barrier. After the first season, she thought of quitting, but Martin Luther King, Jr. persuaded her to stay on, citing the impact she was having.

Her character never rose to the prominence many viewers would have liked, and struggled in relative obscurity even when STAR TREK crossed into feature film territory.

But it still shocked me, though maybe it shouldn't have, to see how little the capable Zoe Saldana has to work with in the new STAR TREK. While her brethren are given emotionally rich origin stories to add depth to their relationships, she is left with a gag about her first name and a running sex joke about her professional field of linguistics. It's implied that she wants to serve on the Enterprise in order to be near her boyfriend, Spock. Gone is the dignity of the TV version of Uhura, who once came upon a shipmate and began speaking Swahili with him (too bad he turned out to be a monster in disguise). I will never forget sitting in my suburban living room listening to Swahili and thinking it the most beautiful language I'd ever heard.

FLOW: For Love of Water

2008, color documentary, 93 minutes
Directed by Irena Salina
Produced by Steven Starr
8 and up



Salina's documentary views the global water crisis through the eyes of activists struggling for access to clean, free water. The stories told here are fairly easy to follow for 8 and up, and kids used to seeing plastic bottles of 'blue gold' for sale everywhere really ought to hear this side of things. Activist/thinkers Vandana Shiva and Maude Barlow figure prominently in this narrative of an essential question of our time: can nature—the very elements of life—be owned? Or are they aspects of the worldwide commons, our birthright, what we share and steward together?

In the Hudson Valley, this film is making the rounds as a fundraiser for water-related issues such as those raised in Rosendale,NY by Save the Lakes.

Preview + Review of Long-Awaited CORALINE

CORALINE is scheduled for release to theaters on February 6, 2009.

My son Ray has been making movies since he was six: stop motion animation, live action, and lately, CGI parodies of Star Wars. He reads film production books and bios of animators like Chuck Jones, and loves ‘making-of’ bonus features and little biopics about revered figures like Ray Harryhausen. One of his ‘mentors’ is Henry Selick, who has just completed his adaptation (for 3D stop-motion animation) of Neil Gaiman’s novel, Coraline.

It was our enormous good fortune—mine, my son’s, my daughter’s, my husband’s, and his mother’s—to visit the set of Coraline a couple of years ago, and a real treat to see a preview screening of the finished work the other night in Manhattan, with Henry Selick on hand to answer audience questions.

My son wasn't sure he wanted to see a "horror" movie. 
So we headed into NYC with the plan that he would shut his eyes, pull his jacket up over his face, and hold his hands to his ears if it all got to be too much. He was willing to endure, if only for the Q&A portion of the evening.

As it turns out, he didn’t have to worry too much. He only shut his eyes once, and not for long. While the idea of Coraline is truly terrifying—a girl is left alone to rescue her supernaturally abducted parents—its creators have allowed the idea to carry most of the weight of emotion, as with the best fairy tales, and haven’t piled onto it with 3D shock effects or long, anxiety-provoking suspense sequences. The Nightmare Before Christmas, with its cast of characters in varying states of decomposition, is more horrific—at least to me, and I think my son, who got to an age where he felt too uneasy to watch it, and wouldn’t go near the undead-dominated Corpse Bride, would agree.

Henry Selick has done a beautiful job of reconceptualizing the novel for the screen and for stop motion. From the first moments, when metal hands sew up a doll-sized version of the title character and cast her into a void, it feels like this is a movie partly about the animator and the animator’s art. These are the hands of the evil Other Mother, creator and destroyer of the Other World, but here they are, bare of fleshly trappings, primordial armature. We come to find that the energy of children is what makes the Other Mother’s material other world, and it is their life force that makes it beautiful, whimsical, and inviting.

If you have watched any of the featurettes about Coraline, you have seen artist after artist toiling and tinkering away, as artists always do on these projects, though now, with the Internet, in less obscurity. They can even blog about their work for Laika Studios. It’s hard to watch that image of armature hands making the Coraline doll and not think of all the human hands that have gone into the making of this supremely hand-made movie, and seeing in these moments a tribute to them all (certainly they deserve a tribute, including those several dozen Laika workers, I was sorry to read, who were recently laid off).

OtherMotherWorld is especially fanciful and so packed with detail it's hard to imagine not seeing the movie many times to try to take it all in. Henry S. has ensured that the Other Mother’s overture to Coraline is suitably seductive. She—and we—are truly tempted to stay and sample more delights from the animators’ cabinet of wonders. (And the wonders really are wonderful; we laughed throughout the early other world scenes.)

Henry Selick’s Other Mother is a kind of ‘50s fantasy mom—she cooks brilliantly in heels, perfect make-up, and manicure and wears a stainless, starched apron. Other Father is affable, doting, and fun (aside from the saucy, riotous French and Saunders as the Misses Spink and Forcible, my favorite vocal performance is John Hodgman's as the Fathers Real and Other).

Coraline's real world parents, by contrast, are familiar to us as contemporary, overworked telecommuters (fortunate in that sense, they write at home on gardening) who share the work of their life equally, don’t exactly excel in the kitchen, and don’t have much time for their daughter.

That Coraline's creativity will rival the Other Mother's is intimated by a lovely scene that is not in Neil Gaiman’s book. Having returned from an early foray into the other world, Coraline finds her apartment empty; her parents have not come home from work and grocery shopping. Newly arrived in a strange place, friendless and now abandoned by her parents, she goes to bed alone, making pillow-people versions of her mom and dad to comfort herself—the Other Mother isn't the only one who can conjure power from a doll. I think Coraline's realization that they're not coming back is the scariest moment in the story (though Gaiman's protagonist is pretty brave at this point, as I recall). Henry S. wisely lingers long enough for us to feel her loneliness and her sadness.

A resourceful adventurer who is, like too few movie protagonists—even at the dawn of the 21st century—a girl, Coraline would be perfect if not for Henry S.’s addition of a boy to come to her aid in her time of need. Or so I thought when I heard about him. But Wybie (nicknamed "Why Be Born" by Coraline—I guess Henry S. knew some of us would resist), who gives Coraline someone other than a (really cool) cat to dialog with, adds a melancholy element to the other world, where he is more expressive for his muteness.

When my son and I came back up the Hudson River the day after the screening, and made our report to his sister, she said, “I think I’ve changed my mind. I do want to see Coraline.” I look forward to seeing it again with her.

We were too shy to ask for a shot of Henry S. with Ray, but here he is after the Q&A. Be sure to view through your 3D glasses.

I'll be blogging more thoughts on Coraline on my other blog, Oswegatchie. Look for the Coraline tag.

Children of Heaven (Bacheha-Ye aseman)

1997, color feature, 88 minutes
Directed and written by Majid Majidi
Producer, Amir Esfandiari, Mohammad Esfandiari
In Persian with subtitles
All ages

This Iranian film centers on a brother and sister forced to share a pair of sneakers when the boy Ali (played beautifully by Amir Farrokh Hashemian) loses his sister Zahra's newly-repaired shoes. A meditation on Iranian daily life (including scenes at a mosque), scarcity vs. plenty, and family bonds, Children of Heaven is also a suspenseful yarn. Its PG rating, as near as I can figure, has to do with Ali's father yelling "shit!" when his bicycle breaks stop working and he and his son are about to crash. Also, he is verbally harsh with his family, particularly at the beginning, but it quickly becomes clear that he is honest and loving, if overworked. Engaging, stunning to look at, a glimpse at Iranian culture that has a realistic feel. I'm giving this the "girl power" label because Ali's sister Zahra, played by Bahare Seddiqi, washes the dishes, tends the baby, cleans the house, and gets her homework done—one could imagine such a girl growing up to be a world leader.

Chisholm '72: Unbought and Unbossed

Shola Lynch, 2004
76 minutes, documentary
Best for ages 5+

I was 11 in 1972 when Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm became the first woman and first black person to run as successfully as she did for president of the United States, and my son is 11 now. Watching this documentary with him and my 9-year-old daughter really put this year's campaign in perspective. The footage here demonstrates some of the long road that has led to Barack Obama's candidacy, reveals by contrast the shallowness of the media analysis of race and gender in the current campaign, and offers a refreshing, even bracing introduction to a candidate who was not afraid to speak out and take strong, clear, progressive positions. "I want to be remembered as a woman who dared to be a catalyst for change," said Chisholm. A great introduction to a figure your children should know about (even if they don't understand all of it), a primer in issues that come up in every campaign, and some good context related to the movements for the rights of women and African-Americans.

Women. We'll Settle for Half.

That's the official t-shirt of an organization called See Jane, founded by Geena Davis to correct the remarkable continuing disparity between male and female characters in programming aimed at young people. Incredibly, the entertainment industry needs more studies and data to convince it that girls, and female smurf-like characters and animals and so forth, are still largely missing from the sewage system that is mass media. Such activities keep the Annenberg School in business, I suppose, but sheesh, we all know TV and movies are male-dominated stories told from male perspectives with a pink bow slapped on here and there, and rather frequently a dead mother, to make us shed a tear. What a crushing bore! If it weren't for the exceptions, many of them celebrated right here at Alternative Films for Kids, we'd give up. But the exceptions shine so gloriously that we, like the good people at See Jane, prefer to keep pushing for improvement. Davis spoke about See Jane recently at the National Conference for Media Reform. (After watching Geena, have a look at the amazing keynote by Bill Moyers).

More good news for girls: Henry Selick is now in production with an animated screen adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Coraline. This is a story about a girl. That's it! No boy sidekick, no brother, and very few male characters to distract from the strength, determination and loving maturity of the girl who travels to the dark side on a rescue mission and finds her way back again—without a Frodo, a Skywalker, a Buzz Lightyear or a Sully to help her.

Musik und Zaubereien & Märchen und Fabeln

250 minutes, released 2007

150 minutes, rel. 2006
Lotte Reiniger
Black & white shorts compiled on DVDs
All ages

If you've seen The Adventures of Prince Achmed (scroll down, it's there somewhere), you and your children will no doubt be delighted that more of the work of Lotte Reiniger, the brilliant German animator who lived from 1899 to 1981, is available on DVD. The delicate silhouettes, in black & white, tinted, and in color (though they're best with the more muted backgrounds), enchant in these versions of popular fairy tales such as "The Golden Goose," "Cinderella" (note for younger viewers: the sister slices off her heel and makes a bloody mess!) and "Jack in the Beanstalk." Musik und Zaubereien gives us a Magic Flute with the best bits of Papageno—as he sings, women turn to birds and fly away, eggs hatch to reveal Papageno & Papagena's babies. "Carmen" has a happy ending and a feminist spirit that infuses many of Reiniger's short films. Hours of stunning animation here, mostly suitable for all ages. These may be hard to rent but can be ordered from Amazon.de—I was surprised to find that my U.S. account and password transferred without a hitch.

Whale Rider (in Maori: Te kaieke tohora)

Niki Caro, 2003
color feature, 101 minutes
Rated PG-13
Could be ok for ages 5 & up but prescreen it and judge for yourself!

I had to wait a few years to show my 7-year-old daughter this amazing tale of a girl who turns life around for everyone in her New Zealand Maori village, because the conflict that drives the story—her grandfather's rejection of her leadership because she is a girl—is so unsettling and sexism is a complex topic. Keisha Castle-Hughes is perfect as Paikea, a girl born into a long line of male chiefs in a society drifting away from its roots. The PG-13 rating seems to come from fly-by uses of d*** and b******, but the real caution is the harshness of grandfather, played beautifully by Rawiri Paratene, who requires a miracle to convince him of the rightness in his family line. This is a story of love among family, community, ancestors and planet that defies gender expectations all around.

A Wrinkle in Time

John Kent Harrison, 2003
color feature, 128 minutes
This Canadian adaptation of Madeleine L'Engle's classic would surely not have been as compelling had it been made in the States, where one never finds this much feminism packed into two-hour movies, particularly for children. We have a teenage girl protagonist/hero, three cosmic beings led by Alfre Woodard as Mrs. Whatsit representing Divine Love, a worm-like being with a masculine face representing God-the-Authoritarian-Father, and a very human father too injured to be the one to rescue his young son. Kate Nelligan as Mrs. Which and Alison Elliott as Mrs. Who, a family in which both parents are Ph.D.'s, Aunt Beast (yes! even a Wookie-like monster is female!—this one with magical healing powers) round out this experience of non-stop woman power. Brava! Every kid should see this; my kids have rented it twice; recommended for 7 or 8 and up.
Hollywood please take a lesson from our neighbors to the north.

Making Grace

Catherine Gund
87 minutes, color documentary
All ages

A warm document of the journey of a couple, Anne Krsl and Leslie Sullivan, toward motherhood, following them through several visits to a doctor for insemination and culminating in the birth of their daughter, Grace. I watched this with my seven-year-old daughter and during and after, we talked about the various ways families are created. She loved it. When I asked her what she loved about it, she said "Everything." When I asked her what images stayed with her from the movie, she said "Grace." I think she got the idea. It's about love, perseverance and naturally, grace. Incredibly moving to see how a child's birth can heal a family and create community.

Sita Sings the Blues/The Sitayana

Artist Nina Paley
Sita Sings the Blues/The Sitayana; Viewable online

The Ramayana and the blues of the 20s (via vocalist Annette Hanshaw) get an exhilarating animation treatment from Nina Paley in this movie that's an accessible retelling of The Ramayana from Sita's perspective, and a fiery cross-cultural mash-up. Paley has been slowly building this work for years. When I first posted about it, Sita Sings the Blues was in progress and Paley was posting it to her website in chapter-sized chunks—now it's finished and collecting awards at festivals.

Here's a New York Times piece about it and how Paley developed the idea—a great story for people of any age about how creativity can be fueled by personal circumstance.

Despite Paley's difficulty in securing copyrights for some of the music in her animation, beginning February 26, 2009, Sita Sings the Blues will be viewable online through Channel 13, which is allowed to show it as a public broadcaster. This should be an active link to that.

For more of artist Nina Paley's work, including her graphic contributions to the Christmas Resistance Movement, visit
http://www.ninapaley.com/

Touch the Sound

Thomas Riedelsheimer, 2005
99 minutes, color documentary
All ages

Evelyn Glennie, a deaf percussionist, plays a variety of instruments with several collaborators in this portrait of her that focuses on the question of what is sound, exactly, and how do we hear? The body as a resonator, synaesthesia, the sheer joy of having a huge space to bang a gong in—like Rivers and Tides (see below), Riedelsheimer's portrait of this sound artist is an exploration of how humans play in the world, this time focused on the vibrations around us. Interview footage with Glennie is alternated with various performance pieces, including several lovely marimba duets with guitarist/musician Fred Frith. My eight year-old said, "I thought it was about different instruments—how you don't have to use an instrument for the thing it was made to do." In theaters as of this writing; waiting for DVD might be a good idea, as watching it in pieces will help restless viewers. Riedelsheimer does not rush his material.

Beatrix Potter: Artist, Storyteller & Countrywoman

1993, Produced and directed by Cari Best, Paul Gagne and Judy Taylor
55 min., documentary
All ages

This documentary about the life of Beatrix Potter, the brilliant writer/artist behind Peter Rabbit, Mrs. Tittlemouse, Squirrel Nutkin and a dozen other memorable animal characters, gives a great sense of how she became such a fine observer of animals, the role solitude played in her creative development, and the means by which her work was introduced to a wide audience that continues to grow. Includes archival photographs and drawings. Late in life Potter bought land in the Lake District of England and became a conservationist, leaving 4,000 acres to the National Trust when she died. A must-see and a great accompaniment to the Royal Ballet's Tales of Beatrix Potter.

Radical Harmonies

2002, Dir. Dee Mosbacher
90 minutes, color documentary

The story of the Women's Music Cultural Movement includes interviews and performances of some of the great feminists who revolutionized the music industry with women's festivals, women-owned music labels and women sound engineers. Here is a positive tale of how women seized the means of production at a time and in a field dominated by men. This is also a chronicle of rising lesbian awareness and what it meant to women to attend women's music festivals during the years when they were just getting started. Check out the production company, WomanVision.

One complaint: the performances are interrupted; wish we got to hear full songs interspersed with the interviews.

Ages 5 and up, but as always, pre-screen to verify your comfort level with the material.

Hardihood

2001 / Dir Nicole Hahn
75 minutes, documentary

Women's athleticism is celebrated in this film about mountain bikers that features several lesbians. The grueling practice and racing scenes kept my children engaged. The strength and endurance of the women, and the way they defy narrow gender roles, dominate in this rugged little movie that you should pre-screen with your 5+ child in mind.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed

1926, Dir Lotte Reiniger
65 minutes, black + white silhouette animation

I am so sorry it took me so long to see The Adventures of Prince Achmed by Lotte Reiniger. The exquisite silhouettes and the tints of the restored print now available on DVD captivated my family, my kids stayed up past their bedtime to see the whole thing. My daughter fell asleep during the little biopic about Reiniger that follows, but the rest of us were rapt at the story of this woman who single-handedly (literally—she did all the silhouette cutting) pioneered the animated film and invented the silhouette film, supported enthusiastically by her husband, Carl Koch and three other men who formed her production team. Their collaboration and their vibrant cultural life led to friendships with Jean Renoir and Bertolt Brecht. Racial stereotyping of the villains necessitates some discussion.

Recommended for all ages.