The Cinemagic festival offers young people the chance to get up close and personal with the world of film-making, writes DAVIN O'DWYER
IT'S tempting to fill the programme of a children's film and television festival with Pixar movies and puppetry workshops, so all credit to the organisers of this year's Cinemagic Festival for putting together an impressively diverse collection of screenings, competitions, masterclasses and film journalism tutorials. With a line-up this strong, it's enough to make any film lover yearn for a Freaky Friday-style second chance at being a "yoof".
The big screenings include Tooth Fairy, starring The Rock as an unlikely molar-collector, and the Irish-set fantasy A Shine of Rainbows, while the closing film on May 12th will be Julian Fellowes' From Time to Time.
A series focusing on literary adaptations features two of the best, the fairly fantastic Fantastic Mr Fox,and Brad Bird's criminally underappreciated masterpiece, The Iron Giant. Screenings of movies such as Moonand Hayao Miyazaki's latest animation, Ponyo, will be accompanied by discussion panels. A nature-themed documentary strand includes this year's Oscar-winning documentary feature The Cove,while a Tim Burton retrospective will provide an opportunity for young viewers to catch up on the work of that most distinctively visual of modern directors.
Key to Cinemagic’s appeal is the active engagement it offers its target audience – the festival isn’t restricted to those screenings, but also features a wealth of film-making workshops and events that will appealing to anyone with an interest in the moving image, not just school-goers.
The jury for the short film award categories will be made up of young consultants in two age groups; workshops for primary school children cover everything from storytelling to storyboarding; commissioning editors from RTÉ will reveal how to pitch TV ideas; the vagaries of film classification will be discussed by IFCO; and there will be an opportunity for budding film reviewers with a competition for Young Film Critic of the Year.
The festival has also assembled an impressive line-up of familiar faces from the world of broadcasting, with Ray D’Arcy, Laura Whitmore, Dermot O’Leary, Karen Koster, Craig Doyle and Aidan Power all delivering workshops on presenting skills, Kirsten Sheridan gives a talk on film directing, and the great Scottish actor Brian Cox will also be revealing the secrets of film acting.
This is the festival’s third year in Dublin, though 2010 marks the Belfast-based charity’s 20th anniversary. In a sign of how successful Cinemagic’s formula has now become, it will also be responsible for events in the UK and France this year, and is also expanding to the US with Cinemagic festivals in New York and Los Angeles. Chief executive Joan Burney Keatings expects more than 35,000 young people to be involved with Cinemagic events in 2010.
Cinemagic runs at venues around Dublin from May 5th to 12th. cinemagic.ie
