Building the next generation of filmmakers and audiences

Film engages and inspires like no other medium. For two decades the Mill Valley Film Festival and CFI Education have pioneered creative film programming for Bay Area young people, providing year-round screenings, interactive sessions with film professionals and hands-on activities to introduce students to the power of film as a vibrant tool of communication. <read more>

In addition to our Festival activities, CFI Education presents programs at the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael, the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley and other Bay Area theaters. We also come directly to schools with our interdisciplinary, intercultural film-study programs. Designed to supplement literature, history, science and social studies curricula, they are accompanied by study guides created to conform to state educational standards. The following are some of our current programs:

In-School Filmmaker Program
during the Mill Valley Film Festival
Each year, three interns work with the Education director to bring filmmakers and their films from the Mill Valley Film Festival to Bay Area secondary schools. In mid-August we sign up schools and teachers, and in September we match filmmakers to those schools for an exciting classroom exchange between filmmakers and students. At the college level, San Francisco State university film professor Steven Kovacs teaches an annual weekend course at the university that highlights the films and guests in that year’s Mill Valley Film Festival. The program is curated by Dr. Kovacs and CFI Education director John Morrison. <read more>

Selected Screenings for Schools
Throughout the year we provide schools with free monthly screenings of important films. In addition, every year we select six to eight films from the more than two hundred films at the Festival and screen them for schools for free during Festival time. Most of the screenings occur during the school day at the Smith Rafael Film Center; others are held at theaters in the East Bay and San Francisco. After each screening, question-and-answer sessions with filmmakers challenge students to think critically about the films and consider what goes on both behind and in front of the camera.

Young Crictics Jury
Held every July, Young Critics Jury is a three-day intensive workshop for youths aged 13–18 to learn media literacy skills directly from filmmakers and film historians. Directors, screenwriters, location scouts, actors, animators, critics, documentary filmmakers, cinematographers and others make this event an exceptional educational experience. Six students are chosen from this workshop to spend the following week as jury and curators of the Mill Valley Film Festival Youth Reel. <read more>

A Place in the World
Now in its fourth year, this yearlong program has become an integral part of several Bay Area schools’ humanities studies. The international six- film curriculum focuses on youth experience and point of view, addressing watershed moments and important subjects such as family, religion, sexuality, death, racism and friendship. Participants meet monthly at the Smith Rafael Film Center, where they watch the films together after reviewing CFI Education study guides with their teachers. Afterward they listen to filmmakers or subject experts speak about the film, and then break up into small interschool groups to discuss personal reactions and the ways the film is relevant to their lives. <read more>

My Place
This two-year-old program combines hands-on filmmaking with storytelling. With help from local filmmakers and Berkeley’s internationally known Center for Digital Storytelling, students use filmmaking to look at where they live through different eyes. CFI works with social service agencies to recruit underserved youth for the program. My Place is currently active in Marin’s Canal area and Marin City, and San Francisco’s Mission and Bayview–Hunter’s Point neighborhoods. Films from the program have been accepted into the Mill Valley Film Festival Youth Reel, and one of last year’s films was accepted into the teen contingent of the 30th Mountainfilm Festival in Telluride, Colorado. <read more>

Teaching Media Literacy in the Classroom
Assisted by San Francisco State university Education professor Mark Phillips, this CFI Education–initiated group of Bay Area teachers design and hold interdisciplinary teacher workshops on media literacy and the use of media in the classroom. One annual workshop reviews upcoming Mill Valley Film Festival films available for integration into classroom study via CFI Education’s Selected Screenings program. A subcommittee of this group is developing a media literacy program for elementary school students that will include jurying short films in the Festival’s Children’s FilmFest. <read more>

CALL, EMAIL OR VISIT ONLINE:
phone: 415.383.5256 x113
email: education@cafilm.org
online: cafilm.org