Seattle with kids

How we liked it

Well, Charming and I took our two oldest to the Children’s Film Festival Seattle on Saturday. We chose a program called “From the Heart of Sweden: Animation with a global reach.” This is our report.

Due to some incredible planning, we managed to arrive about an hour early and much to our disappointment, people that arrive early don’t have many options. According to the less-than-helpful teenagers working the popcorn stand, we a.) could go to a “theoretical” cafe down the street ( I think there’s one down that way) or b.) were welcome to sit on the second hand couch in the divey theater lobby. It was really cold outside, and I wanted to stay put, but it was going to be a pretty lame way to spend an hour, so we ventured out again in search of a KFC I had spotted earlier.

Well once our tummies were full of parfait, chicken and biscuits (in that order) we returned to the theater. It’s a good thing we ate before coming because even though popcorn was available, it was cooked with peanut oil (who does that?) and had to opt out because of Sugar’s allergy.

Lame.

And then it was showtime. Swedish films with English subtitles. I immensely enjoyed the parts of the movies where there was no dialogue, because that was the only time that the theater wasn’t abuzz with parents reading the subtitles aloud. It wasn’t the reading that bugged me, because it was expected, but it was the lack of synchronization, and sometimes the mispronunciations. And yes, I know I am being picky.

One thing that made me chuckle though, was the two or three times that curse words appeared in the subtitles. There were two occasions of “crap” and one “damn.” One line read something like, “I wish she didn’t do that. Crap.” But what was heard by all was “I wish she didn’t do that. (Silence).” Not a single person uttered the word crap. It made me smile.

The films?  Overall, good.  I really loved the first short we saw called “Aston’s Stones” where a little boy character (who happens to be canine) begins collecting stones and making little beds for them until his parents cannot even step in his room without stepping on one of his “babies.”  In the end the parents, deceptively and lovingly convince him to take his stones on a holiday at the beach, and eventually leave them there.  It was just really cute and the animation was kind of unique.

The only short that I did not particularly care for was, “Poison Arrow Frogs,” about a little boy who goes to the museum with his dad.  The film redeemed itself in the end with a positive message about what we take into ourselves, like nice words, or bad feelings is what we put out to the world.  But the terrible animation and weak storytelling almost didn’t make it worth it.  It was like the people who put on the festival were like, “We need another cartoon from Sweden, go check out YouTube,” and they found some crummy flash animation and called it good enough.  Could have done without it, because even the “morale”didn’t come across super clearly.

Overall, we enjoyed ourselves at the film festival, if for no other reason than we got to spend some casual time out of the house with our oldest two children.  I loved the “independent and global” film-ish-ness of about the experience, and it really took me back.  I just felt that some of the experience was lost in the little details.

But please, check it out for yourself.  Films will be shown until the end of this week.  For showtimes and information visit:

www.childrensfilmfestivalseattle.org

Stephanie is a work at home momma trying to make the world more beautiful while also trying to keep her sanity with three energetic children under the age of six.

You can read more about her fabulously crazy life over at The Mommiverse.