Wednesday, February 17, 2016

The festival always starts out with films aimed to various levels of school-aged children and the appropriate grades of all the schools are in attendance. They can be noisy affairs, but overall the kids are all well-behaved.

The Prophet

We started out with Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet. I noticed in the listing that Salma Hayek and Liam Neeson were the stars; had I read further I would have seen that this was an animated film. Each of eight poetic essays of Khalil Gibran’s were animated by a different artist and it was interesting to see the differences in their work. The music for the animations was also delightful.

Second Mother

Although this first feature film of the festival was good, it didn’t seem to be a strong opener. It is the story of a woman, Val, who has left her own daughter, Jessica, to go to work as a maid/nanny for a wealthy couple. When Val’s daughter comes to live with her mother while she studies for and writes her university entrance exams, the differences in their points of view cause friction for everyone.