Day Twenty-One: School Play

I kicked off my own personal experience of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival with this hilarious and heart-tugging documentary about kids at a New York elementary school putting on a production of The Wizard of Oz. The film followed five kids, all with different backgrounds and different approaches to the play. For overachiever Isabel, for example, playing Dorothy is only the least she expects of herself; for little Italian Joey, the play's an outlet for his goofy, hyper class-clowning. The "anchor" of the film, as the director acknowledged in a Q&A after the screening, is tubby, pragmatic Jeffrey, who begins the film as a gloomy target for bullies and ends up with new friends and a sense of accomplishment. With almost every word out of Jeffrey's mouth or scowl on his face, I just wanted to scoop him up in my arms, and I was so proud of him cheerfully getting out his big line in the play. The film tries to emphasize how important something like a school play can be for kids that age, and calling up my vivid memories of involvement in a summer drama program's production of "East of the Sun, West of the Moon" when I was 10 or 11, I have to agree.

The great thing about seeing movies at the film fest is the frequent appearance of directors at the screenings. Last year, at a screening of a documentary about Public Enemy, I actually got to meet Chuck D (it remains a favorite memory and point of pride). Almost as interesting as the movie itself was listening to the director and the husband and wife team who puts on the school play each year talk about the kids familiarly, describing their reactions since the film has been made, hearing about the long and complicated filmmaking process. Documentaries like these, that focus on a particular local phenomenon or that follow a group of people for an extended period of time, are some of my favorites; in fact, it's been an off-and-on dream of mine for a few years now to make such films. It's obviously a complex undertaking to invade people's lives, get close to them, follow their every move and try to capture both artistically and honestly the moments that make up their lives. A very similar movie, one I also enjoyed quite a lot, was American Teen, which came out last year. I don't know if I'm cut out for that kind of extensive interpersonal interaction and commitment, but the idea certainly excites me.