Providence Children’s Film Festival | February 14th – February 23rd, various times and locations.
Spoken Story Saturdays | February 15th. 2:00 PM – all ages show; 3:00 PM 14 and up show; The Parlour Pub, 1119 N. Main Street, Providence.
August Wilson’s Radio Golf | Now playing through March 1st; Trinity Repertory Theatre, 201 Washington St., Providence.
Romeo & Juliet Amica Rush Hour Concert – RI Philharmonic Orchestra | February 14th, 6:30 PM, The Vets, 1 Avenue of the Arts, Providence, RI.
Romeo & Juliet TACO Classical Concert – RI Philharmonic Orchestra | February 15th, 8:00 PM, The Vets, 1 Avenue of the Arts, Providence, RI.
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Transcript:
Chuck Hinman: This is The Public’s Radio 89.3 fm. It’s Thursday morning and Artscape Producer James Baumgartner is in the studio with me.
James Baumgartner: Good morning, Chuck. We recently talked with Eric Bilodeau about the Providence children’s film festival.
Chuck Hinman: Eric Bilodeau, artistic director of the Providence children’s film festival. Welcome to the public’s radio. Thanks for stopping by.
Eric Bilodeau: Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Chuck Hinman: What would you say is the difference between a film festival and a children’s film festival?
Eric Bilodeau: Often film festivals will focus on filmmakers. And sure enough, they should be honored and they should be, you know really highlighted at a film festival because it’s their craft and it’s their work that they are presenting in the festival. And adults get into that way more than children do. Sometimes. More often than not a child sees a filmmaker and doesn’t have one question at all. Because they’re just not… it was a nice film, they’re still thinking about the film. So what we do instead of emphasize filmmakers is that we do what we call reel connections. And a reel connection spelled R-E-E-L is basically one that we try to connect our community to the theme of the film or to some element of the film that makes it relevant to our own community and ties us together. So what you just watched, can be understood, and a lot more local way in a way that you can really maybe, you know, relate to.
Chuck Hinman: Can you give us an example of a specific film that you’re doing that with this time?
Eric Bilodeau: We have a film that’s called “Mr. Toilet the world’s number two man.” And that’s, it sounds a little crass. But it’s actually not, it’s a great documentary. The man in the film can at times be a little crass, but he is a man that takes on basically a huge problem affecting over 2 billion people in the world, which is just proper sanitation, and trying to provide a proper place to use the bathroom and especially with India that really has a problem with it. He takes on this whole role of trying to provide toilets to I think it’s over 2 million people or something. It’s… amazing number. And this story follows him and about how he’s trying to solve this problem and all the barriers that affect his success or not. So we’re trying to tie that to our own community and trying to… we’re talking to some people about basically, I mean, I’d love to have somebody understand the tunnel that’s underneath our city. That’s, you know, for the combined sewer overflow. You know, I’d love to illuminate the… what we do in our own community when it comes to our own sanitation so we can understand that it isn’t just a flush of the toilet and it goes bye bye. But it actually goes places and it does things and so you got to be careful, something like that. We try to connect it to our own community, and therefore resonate with our audiences more than just having watched a film and be entertained, so to say,
Chuck Hinman: How many films do you plan to show for this festival?
Eric Bilodeau: Um, this year just turns out that we have a round number we have 12 feature length films, and we have 12 shorts reels, programs. The feature length films are some documentaries. We also every year we try to include a classic film. This year, we couldn’t help ourselves. But include two classic films. It’s the 85th anniversary of “Night at the Opera” with the Marx Brothers. So we’re going to be showing a Night at the Opera. And then we’re also showing the Australian film “Babe”, which turns 25 and that is really a great film to challenge a child to think a little bit more uncomfortably about – even though it involves the talking pig and talking dogs and sheep – it’s actually a really good story and a lot of people haven’t seen it. So we’re those are our two classics that we’re bringing back this year. And then our shorts programs we try to thematically bind them together. This year. We got a lot of films that came in about families, dealing, refugee families dealing with their situations of fleeing or resettling or just trying to trying to live just trying to get through the day. So we put together a reel called families in flight and so that’s a reel – you know different stories from different… some are Syrian and some are Mexican and some – so you get all these different stories, but they share one common theme is that people are being forced from their homes for political or war or financial reasons and you know, are being unsettled and forced to resettle.
James Baumgartner: A film about refugees sounds like kind of a heavy topic for a children’s film. Do you have a certain age recommendation for that? Or how do you keep it from being too much for children?
Eric Bilodeau: We always fall back on one one thing the parents know their children better than we do. So exercise your own judgment on this. And we certainly provide caveats to the programs that we are showing we do that we give a suggested age range. And but we also put in particular caveats about what you you might see in the film – Is there a perilous situation presented, is there cussing, is there violent, very, very violent situation expressed, and so then you can make the call on that. But when it comes to talking about serious situation and children, this is the one thing I can’t can’t stress enough is that children need to be challenged, they want to be challenged. They don’t want to be spoon fed a narrative that just gets them afterwards to go buy a plush toy or get that … you know, that download for the music, that’s great. But if they’re talking about the movie the next morning, and if they’re talking about it at the dinner table the next night, then you know, you’ve got a film that really stayed with them. And I’ve had so many parents contact me and say, I can’t believe that film really, really stayed with my kid, you know, fill in whatever it was about, but it was really that’s what really matters to us. I get filmmakers sometimes that we invite them to the film festival and they said, I’m sorry, children’s film festival you want you want this in a children’s film festival? And I’m like, Yes, absolutely. There’s just so much wisdom here your passion for what you do and then how you get there is so inspiring and and, regardless of the topic of what it is, they they’re, they’re like, they’re happy to do it. But even though a lot of filmmakers get surprised that we invite them. Yes, it’s it’s a great thing to try to branch out the programming and not think of it as films made for children, but films that we think and children are also watching these films and deciding on it to invite to the Film Festival and it makes for a complimentary match.
James Baumgartner: Thanks for joining us today.
Eric Bilodeau: Well, thank you for having me.
Chuck Hinman: There are many screenings over the next 10 days or so you can see the full schedule at providencechildrensfilmfestival.org. So what else is going on this weekend James?
James Baumgartner: Spoken Story Saturday’s is at the parlour pub on North Main in Providence featuring storytelling from Mark Binder, Ruffini and Marlon Carey. There’s a family friendly performance at 2pm and the 14 and up show starts at 3pm on Saturday. And Chuck, I understand you’ve seen the Trinity rep production of Radio Golf by playwright August Wilson,
Chuck Hinman: I have and I enthusiastically recommend it to anyone who wants to be entertained and also have a real intellectual and emotional experience at the theater.
James Baumgartner: I’m not familiar with the play, is it about golf or radio?
Chuck Hinman: Actually, there is a show radio golf that does figure in the story, but the play is the final installment of August Wilson’s 10 play cycle, about African American life – all but one of these plays set in a Pittsburgh neighborhood. Wilson wrote a play for each decade of the 20th century and this one is the last. It takes place in the 90s. But it has real resonance for all of us now in 2020, and the actors are just uniformly great. If I could, I’ll mention especially Ricardo Pitts Wily back on the Trinity stage where he started his career 46 years ago – a tremendous performance. Radio Golf is now playing through March 1 at Trinity Rep in Providence.
James Baumgartner: There are a couple of Valentine’s Day themed concerts from the Rhode Island Philharmonic Friday and Saturday at The Vets they’ll feature Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet and the very romantic Saint-Seans first Cello Concerto.
