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Armando Guareño, founder and executive director of KidCinemaFest, has curated films for over 15 years, but also wanted to create a specific cinematic experience for the children of Washington Heights, Inwood and the Bronx.
Story and photos by Sherry Mazzocchi
Move aside, Big Bird.
It’s time for Bilpo the Blue Iguana – en español.
The third annual KidCinemaFest, a festival devoted to films for children and young people, premiered this past Sun., Oct. 23rd with a colorful animated adventure that kept children and adults alike on the edges of their seats at the Columbia University Medical Center’s Alumni Hall auditorium.
An evil poacher snatches Bilpo, a blue iguana, from the jungle.
Just as Bilpo is being sold to a strange exotic animal collector, there’s a knock at the poacher’s door. Maurico, Frank and Mauritius (a pig, a chicken and a goat) bluff their way into the collector’s mansion to rescue the large lizard. They are, after all, his amigos.
Part high-action thriller and part inter-species bonding comedy, 3 to the Rescue (3 al Rescate) had its U.S. premiere at the festival’s opening night. The free festival runs this year for eight days, through October 30th . With nearly 50 films from more than 30 countries, “it’s like taking a trip without leaving the U.S.,” said Armando Guareño, founder and executive director of the festival.
Guareño created the festival specifically for children in northern Manhattan and Bronx. He has been curating films for more than 15 years, and always thought that local uptown neighborhoods, and their children, needed something special. In response, he created KidCinemaFest, an opportunity for children and their families to experience a wide array of films, and also to meet directly with the directors and filmmakers.
“We’ve gotten a great reaction to the festival, especially from parents,” he said.
Many of the films in the festival, including 3 to the Rescue, are being shown in the U.S. for the first time. Director Jorge Morillo said his animated film was originally produced as a short in the Dominican Republic and shown in a 2005 festival. Now a 75-minute animated film, it features songs by the Dominican bands Bocatabú and Futuro Divorciados.
The film about los amigos is about three farm animals who escape a date with a dinner plate and wind up lost. They are befriended by Bilpo, the iguana, who teaches them to fend for themselves in their new environment. But danger revisits, after Bilpo is kidnapped by the evil poacher. The three compañeros will not let him suffer. Instead, they stow away in a Malta Morena delivery truck bound for the capital city of Santo Domingo and rescue him. Along the way they meet a treacherous cat, a vegetarian crocodile and a parrot who thinks he’s a radio.
All the festival’s foreign films have subtitles- and there are many languages to navigate. The Japanese animated feature, Sama Wozu or Summer Wars, is about a brilliant teenager who solves a puzzle that suddenly unravels the Internet security of Oz, a gigantic virtual world. EEP! is a Dutch film about the long journey heartbroken parents undertake to find their bird-like daughter after she flies south for the winter. The French film, Eleanor’s Secret, is has a magical library where characters in books come to life.
The festival also has two categories of animated shorts specifically for children ages 3 and 5. In Tally Ho Pancake, hungry villagers chase a runaway pancake. Sixten: Bedtime is about a naughty cat wants to play when it’s time to sleep. Pierre and the Spinach Dragon is the epic tale of a battle with the dreaded dinnertime vegetable.
New York City Council Member Ydanis Rodríguez, also on hand on Sunday, applauded the festival. “I’ve supported it for the past two years,” he said. Rodriguez noted that when schools cut budgets, art and music classes are usually the first areas of study that get slashed.
For some in the packed auditorium of over 250 seats, the experience was a far simpler one.
Manny Batista, 11, and his cousin, Steven Rivera, 13, who sat together, said they enjoyed 3 al Rescate.
“It [was] a good comedy,” said Rivera.
The KidCinemaFest festival runs through Oct. 30th.
For more information, please visit kidcinemafest.org or call 212.740.1541 for showtimes.
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