PORTLAND, Ore — This week's first indie film festival for kids in Portland came about after Shawn Bowman, a film lover and mother, came to this realization: "I can't watch any more Teletubbies."
As director of Lil' Longbaugh, the new children's arm of Portland's Longbaugh Film Festival (named after Harry Longbaugh, a.k.a. the Sundance Kid), Bowman spends her days screening movies with her preschool-age children.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Saturday April 02, 2005 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 43 words Type of Material: Correction
Children's film fests -- An article in today's Calendar on independent filmmakers identifies Eva Saks as a New York animator. In fact, Saks writes and directs live-action as well as animated movies. All of Saks' films mentioned in the article are live-action comedies.
Intolerance for commercial pap is compelling parents like Bowman to seek, and in some cases organize screenings of, independent film options for their kids. These labors of love are born of desperation and disappointment: While major movie studios have pulled their weight of late with smart animated features, for every "The Incredibles," with its two Oscars, there's a largely undistinguished "Pooh's Heffalump Movie" and, lest one grow overly optimistic, a truly dismal "SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2."
There are large-scale counteractive measures out there. The New York International Children's Film Festival, which began in 1997, screened 52 films in early March. And this fall, the 2005 Chicago International Children's Film Festival, the largest in North America, will feature more than 200 live-action and animated films from 40 countries and is colloquially referred to as "the Cannes for kids." But how many people can get their kids to Chicago? That figure is minuscule compared with the number of screens showing, say, popcorn fare like "The Pacifier" -- a hard reality that Bowman, a location scout and caterer, discovered when she and her husband moved from New York City to Northern California.
"We lived in Vallejo last year," said Bowman. "There was one multiplex, and the movies were coming late, and it was the biggest feature, and they would blast the sound. We couldn't go because my kids couldn't do this."
She sought succor from the local film society. When it suggested that Bowman could "rent from Netflix," she offered to do the legwork necessary to secure some independents.
"I started looking for films, and I hit this gold mine," she said: Hundreds of filmmakers were willing to let her show their works, and free. "Something comes out at Sundance and it's going to hit 12 other festivals and everybody's going to fight for the same 20 movies," she said. "But with a kids' market, these films are going to maybe two or three film festivals in the U.S.; they're just waiting for an audience."
