This Christmas, St James Cavalier is proud to present its first festival of Children’s Films. With the collaboration of The French Embassy, the China Cultural Centre, the Slovak Cultural Institute and KRS Film Distributors, St James Cavalier is offering children and adults the opportunity to see some of the best world cinema dedicated to children.
The choice of films varies from live action adventure to animation, from documentaries to mythical legends, as the festival takes audiences on a magic carpet ride from mediaeval Slovakia to freezing Antarctica, from the love story and triumphs of a blind Chinese athlete to the hardship and exhilaration of the New York ballroom dancing championships.
Each film has been specially selected to provide hours of entertainment and education, bringing together the lyrical poetry of the Hans Christian Andersen story of The King and The Mockingbird and the buccaneering adventures of The Island of Black Mor.
The festival is on every day from 26 to 31 December, with two shows daily. Tickets are Lm1.25.
Synopsis of films
L’Ile de Black Mor (Black Mor Island)
Director: Jean-Francois Laguionie, Genre: Animation; French with English subtitles
The year is 1803 and a 15-year-old boy nicknamed “The Kid” manages to escape from an orphanage on the coast of Cornwall, where he is held captive.
He doesn’t know his real name and his only possession is a map of a treasure island that fell from a book about Black Mor, a notorious pirate, who the boy longs to be.
In search of his identity The Kid is not as tough as he thinks and many adventures await him before he arrives at Black Mor Island. The richly animated story from pre-eminent French director Laguionie has been compared to Totoro meets Tin Tin, and is reminiscent of the recent Triplets of Belleville.
The King and the Mockingbird
Director: Paul Grimaut – Genre: Animation – In French with English subtitles
Le Roi et L’Oiseau (The King and the Mockingbird) is one of the true classics of animation in France, and although its fame and popularity haven’t made it across to the other side of the channel, it has been a source of inspiration for many of the current generation of Japanese animators. Written by the celebrated poet Jacques Prévert, (who also wrote Quai de Brumes and Les Enfants du Paradis), designed by the master of French animation Paul Grimault and based on a story by Hans Christian Anderson, Le Roi et L’Oiseau’s credentials are impeccable and its reputation unassailable.
Originally conceived and created as a short animated adaptation of Anderson’s The Shepherdess and The Chimney Sweep in 1952, the film was never finished by Grimault. He bought back the rights to the original print of his work 20 years later and collaborated again with Prévert, interweaving Anderson’s story into a new creation, Le Roi et L’Oiseau. Working again with his old team of animators and a group of brilliant young animators, new sequences were added, each of the animators feeding off the others’ experience and freshness, contributing to create a classic of modern animation.
Mad Hot Ballroom
Director: Marilyn Agrelo – Genre: Documentary
Spellbound meets Shall We Dance? in Mad Hot Ballroom, a feel-good documentary about a hoofing contest for New York schoolchildren. Instead of the three Rs, these kids learn the rumba – as well as the tango, fox trot, merengue and swing dancing. But which – if any – of our three chosen classes will be crowned city champions? It’s a tale of tears, triumph and tread-upon toes; it may wear you out, but it will also put a spring in your step.
There are big differences between these Big Apple tykes: one of the 11-year-old troupes hails from well-off Tribeca, while another is based in a Dominican neighbourhood that has a 97 per cent poverty rate. And then there’s the half-Italian, half-Asian school in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. It’s a sweeping portrait of ethnic and economic diversity. The trouble is, it’s hard to get intimate with individuals when there’s so many of them. Best just to go with the flow as the film sashays between practice sessions and scenes of junior Gingers and Freds gassing about families, social issues and, most amusingly, the opposite sex. It’s cute, yes, but it doesn’t cloy. Well, only a little...
Thomas the Falconer
Director: Vaclav Vorlicek – Genre: Action/Adventure – In Slovak with English subtitles
Set in mediaeval Slovakia, it tells the story of a young boy, played by popular 14-year-old actor and singer Brano Holicek, who has the gift of understanding animal speech.
He lives with his family high in the mountains, until the tragic death of his father. In order to provide for his family he sets off for the formidable Balador Castle. There he meets and befriends Balador’s daughter Formina. However he soon finds himself caught in a web of intrigue and runs away. While on the run, he meets the falconer Vagan and takes refuge in his lodge in the mountains.
Thomas’ ability to communicate with the animals helps him gain the legendary royal falcon and, with the falcon’s help, he fights for justice and his own freedom.
Winner of two international awards, Thomas the Falconer has become a classic of Eastern European children’s cinema.
The Lotus Lantern
Director: Guang Xi Chang – Genre: Animation – In Chinese with English subtitles
This is an ancient Chinese fairy tale about a child who saves his mother by overcoming numerous challenges.
San shengmu, a female deity, falls in love with mortal intellectual Liu Yanchang. Disregarding the god’s (her brother Erlang) objection, San shengmu elopes from heaven with the lotus lantern to marry Liu Yanchang in the mortal world.
Seven years have passed, and Chen xiang, their son, is growing up and living a happy life with his mother.
One day, unfortunately, the god Erlang finds them through the light of the lotus lantern. To defend the rules of heaven, he forces Chen xiang to persuade San shengmu to hand over the lotus lantern.
This animation is unique in Chinese film industry in that it is one of the few – and one of the first – to adopt a Chinese ethnic minority
legend as its plot. Yi is the ethnic minority that resides in southwest China.
The Colours of the Blind
Director: Guang Xi Chang – Genre: Drama – In Chinese with English subtitles
Ding Lihua, a blind girl, is full of vigour and courage and cherishes beautiful visions of life and love. At the sports school for the handicapped, she has the opportunity to be trained professionally as an athlete. Sport also builds her character, and she starts to understand that life is more than falling in love. With the help of her coach, she manages to improve her skills and learn more about the truth of life. Ding Lihua finally wins a gold medal as the world champion and finds her own path to the meaning of life.
March of the Penguins
Director: Luc Jaquet Genre: Documentary – In English
After a long summer of feasting, their bodies stately and plump, towards autumn the emperor penguins of Antarctica begin to feel a need to march inland to the breeding grounds “where each and every one of them was born”.
They are all of a mind about this, and walk in single file, thousands of them, in a column miles long. They all know where they are going, even those making the march for the first time, and when they get there, these countless creatures, who all look more or less the same to us, begin to look more or less desirable to one another. Carefully, they choose their mates.
This is not a casual commitment. After the female delivers one large egg, the male gathers it into a fold of his abdomen, plants his feet to protect the egg from the ice below, and then stands there for two months with no food or water, in howling gales, at temperatures far below zero, in total darkness, huddled together with the other fathers for warmth.
The females, meanwhile, march all the way back to the sea, now even more distant, to forage for food, which they will bring when the spring comes, as they know it must. When the females return to the mass of countless males, they find their mate without error and recognise the cries of chicks they have never seen.
March of the Penguins is simply, and astonishingly, the story of this annual cycle. It was filmed under unimaginable conditions by Jacquet and his team, including cinematographers Laurent Chalet and Jerome Maison.
There was not much to choose from when setting up their shots: On the coldest, driest and (in winter) darkest continent on earth, there is snow, and there is ice, and there are penguins. There is also an ethereal beauty.