Have you ever wanted to attend a big European film festival, walk the red carpet, get mobbed by the press, see dozens of great movies, and rub elbows with the rich and famous? This week, five lucky teens from Chicago are doing all of that and more.
The 2005 Chicago International Children's Film Festival (CICFF) sent five graduates from its Young Chicago Critics (YCC) Program —held at Facets Cinemateque, 1517 W. Fullerton Ave. — to attend the Giffoni Film Festival in Italy: Michael Cunningham (14), Raven Evans (14), Charlie Schmidlin (14), Dane Shubert (14), and Abbey Wolfenson (13). The YCC program is an intensive eight-day summer camp that teaches children to watch and discuss films critically. These YCC graduates are putting that knowledge to good use, judging international films on Giffoni's Free to Fly jury. The kids left for Italy July 14 and will return July 25.
The Giffoni Film Festival is the largest children's film festival in Europe. This year, Giffoni welcomed over 1,000 children from 30 countries around the world. Young jurors are seeing more than 50 films and discussing them with guests like Claire Danes and Haley Joel Osment.
In addition to forming lasting friendships with fellow jurors during the Festival, each child is staying with an Italian host family. The experience of being fully immersed in another culture and the intellectual challenges of evaluating cinema for up to 10 hours each day broadens their horizons and strengthens the children's self-reliance and confidence.
For more information, contact Kathleen Beckman at (773) 281-9075 or
kidsfest@facets.org. |
