Vancouver's leading youth film festival took a break from grooming the next Alfred Hitchcock to help find the next Pauline Kael over the weekend, holding workshops on film criticism for elementary and high school students.
The two-day workshop — entitled Reel Attitude — was put by the Reel 2 Real International Film Festival for Youth to help young people appreciate film and sharpen their critical eyes.
Film study has long been a staple of university education arts programs, but the workshops were unique in that they reached out to a much younger audience.
They held two workshops at the Emily Carr Institute this past weekend: one for kids Grades 5 to 7 and another for Grades 8 to 12.
Mikaela Hudson, a 12-year-old in Grade 7, appreciated the chance to see movies in a new light.
"I just thought 'Oh, a movie.
'"
"I only viewed it as a whole," Hudson told CBC News.
"It's almost like fractions. You know how when you see a whole number you think that's one number, but you don't realize there are little numbers adding up to that.
"
The idea of teaching film at a young age would likely please Kael, a legendary critic with the New Yorker for over 20 years.
"Kids start awfully early on movies," she told NPR in 1991. "It's such a total medium in the way it hits us.
"
Hudson has taken part in the festival before and had already had experience in making a film with others. So, she understood the time required to complete even a five-minute segment.
"You could really appreciate those long, two-hour feature films that you usually take for granted," said Hudson.
"There's a lot of work that's gone into it. It's not just the actors getting their scripts, saying a few lines and walking off."
Reel 2 Real's film festival enters its ninth year next February.
It also runs a summer animation camp at the Vancouver Museum.
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