The Lucas Film Festival for young audiences impresses with great documentaries.
The cinema is not yet cured. The cinema still has Corona, but it is slowly getting better. At the Lucas Festival, the competition for the best international children’s and youth films, you can go back to the cinema, and the motto is clearly 3G. After all, there are children under twelve in the cinemas in Frankfurt, Wiesbaden and Offenbach. They can’t be vaccinated yet. And it is important that you are there.
You can ask. Carla would like to know what the ghost tree in the rather ghostly Dutch film “Buladó” (recommended for ages ten and up) is from. And: whether Tiara Richards, the leading actress, believes in ghosts. From old car parts, the ghost tree, explains Tiara, who was ten when she was shooting. She has never seen ghosts. “But I think they exist.” The iguana and the dog who die in the film were already dead, she explains to the young questioner Florian. And that you can love someone even if you’ve never met them.
Buladó means something like: flying fish. In Curaçao, where the film is set, there is the story, says Tiara, that if you have faith you can jump off the cliff and fly to Africa.
What a world, the cinema. What a stepping stone for the imagination. There were many sponsorships in advance this time, says festival director Julia Fleißig. School classes or groups familiarize themselves with a film and spin their own worlds of thought.
This year Lucas is particularly dedicated to documentaries. “They always say: great, documentaries, but they don’t come to the cinema after all,” says diligent. It is always worthwhile to dare to documentary. “Last year we had the super cool winner, Ecstasy. I am sure it works. I just hope that people come too. “
Music teachers were a magical attraction for “Soul Kids” (14 and over). The film by French director Hugo Sobelman observes young people in the Stax Music Academy in Memphis, USA, a school that accepts young people regardless of their origin. You can see black girls and boys with overwhelming voices, regardless of whether they are singing or talking about their lives. “The people here have shown me that they see a future in me,” someone says.
It’s not just about music in “Soul Kids”. One lecturer asks what has changed since 1968. Student Rachel says, “Whites stop being disrespectful to blacks. But I see black people who are starting to be disrespectful to whites. ”-“ Where did you see that? ”-“ In my class. We are no better than they were. ”The point of view is not undisputed. “Soul Kids” is a stunning documentary about music and passion, about racism and courage and hope, which runs in the online program without translation and without subtitles, which is good for it if the audience understands English.
Director Hugo Sobelman shot the film with his team in Memphis in 2018. “We were three white guys from France,” he says in the film talk, “and we were welcome in a way that I’ve never been welcomed anywhere before.” Sobelman says: “What are you? They asked, are you Smurfs?” It was supposed to be a film about the close relationship between music and social justice. In the US southern states, he had looked around – and discovered the essence of what he was planning to do in music school.
Also a documentary, no less moving: “The Reason I Jump” (from 14). The scriptwriter named is Naoki Higashida, a Japanese autistic person who published a book that received worldwide acclaim in 2014 – at the age of 13. Director Jerry Rothwell underlines his film with quotes from the book. To understand that it is raining, Naoki has to search his mind for similar events. “It’s as if my whole body belonged to someone else.”
Rothwell also supports other families with autistic children and adolescents. In India he meets Amrit and her mother, who only understood through Higashida’s book what her daughter was going through. She cries. “I wanted to prevent her from being herself.” In England, Rothwell shows rituals between the boy Joss and his family. “Does that sound like a black vacuum cleaner?” Asks Joss. The parents: “No, like a red vacuum cleaner”, again and again.
Fantastic imagery, filmed poetry that makes fear tangible, but also opens a horizon – if only because there is cinema again. Almost all films are also available on the Internet, plus discussions with filmmakers. It’s worth it, even with the 44th Lucas.
Lucas Festival in Frankfurt, Wiesbaden and Offenbach: until October 7th. lucas-filmfestival.de
