Not Your Average Child's Play

"Hurt"

Jake Rasmussen may very well be the coolest kid on the planet. He makes movies. He's already got a couple of short films under his belt, including a weird and wacky piece called "Pretzel Boy: The Movie," in which the writer/ director/editor/star/coolest-kid-on-the-planet twists his body into the shape of, well, a pretzel. In addition to his contortionist manifesto, Jake also has a 20-minute narrative called "T and Me" that's available for checkout at his public library in Philadelphia. The kicker? Jake's eight years old.

Jake has been shooting on video since he was four. His mom, LeAnn Erickson, teaches film and video production at Temple University in Philadelphia, so Jake's interest in film comes naturally. He started on the computer at age two, moved to Photoshop at four, and tackled AfterEffects (a 2-D animation program) at six. Not bad for an age at which most kids are still getting the hang of tying their shoes. In between writing books and perfecting his drummer/rock star stylings, Jake hopes to make G-rated movies as an adult -- "because there aren't enough good films for kids to see."

He may be one of the youngest fledgling filmmakers out there, but he's certainly not the only one. Kids have a knack for outlandish ideas, and movies are the perfect forum. When I was a kid, make-believe meant raiding Gramma's attic for old, moth-eaten clothes or re-enacting the Battle of the Bulge with my brother's Star Wars action figures. But these days, technology is matching kids' imaginations shot for shot. Kids aren't just playing make-believe anymore -- they're making movies of their make-believe. And CinemaTexas, one of the country's premier short film festivals, is celebrating that fact.

This year, CinemaTexas unveils CinemaKids, a three-part program featuring shorts made by kids and for kids. The event kicks off this Saturday at 11am with "By Adults, For Kids" (the UT/International Competition Saturday matinee), a competitive program of nine shorts created for young adult audiences (rated PG-13). It is followed by the noncompetitive "By Kids" portion, an impressive, two-part collection of video, film, and animation shorts created by kids under 18. Some of the shorts are wonderfully fun -- like Jake's contribution, "Pumpkins and Other Stories," playing as part of the PG-rated CinemaKids I program this Saturday at 12:30pm -- while others tackle more mature issues, like the messy guts-stuff of being a girl in a boy's world, a kid in a grownup's world. Some of the shorts work, and some of them don't. But these kids have nothing but time to perfect their art.

For many first-time filmmakers, computers are what make it happen. Rene Alejandro Hernandez Miranda, a high school student in El Salvador, has produced more than 40 computer animation shorts, which can be found on the Web at www.16color.com. He's also done work for a Nickelodeon site called Noggin. Rene's beginnings weren't quite as illustrious; like most animators, he started out with the time-honored flipbook, in which, Rene says, "a book and my hand were the theatre and the projector." Rene dabbled in clay and chalk animation (usually while he was supposed to be paying attention in algebra class) before moving on to computers this year. Using a medium more commonly associated with fluffy Disney fare, Rene tells seconds-long stories of mayhem and murder: clowns from hell, a moon on a rampage, a "skyboxing" match gone horribly wrong (the loser gets impaled on a stake). Rene says he's had his fling with the violent thing -- "seeing a man's head exploding isn't funny anymore" -- and he's moving on to less grisly material, some of which will be showcased in "K@boom's Animations," part of CinemaKids I. In the meantime, Rene is planning on getting out of El Salvador (and high school) and into 3-D, stop-and-go animation.

Although Jake and Rene are essentially one-man shows, taking the term "hyphenate" to new extremes, other CinemaKids' entries emphasize the collaborative effort. "Short Ends," an impressionistic eight-minute short about suicide, was created by students at Austin's Griffin School. "Girls Making Headlines," a half-hour newsmagazine program, is the product of a summer TV production class taught by UT grad students Sharon Ross and Diane Zander in which girls nine to 12 learn how to write, direct, and produce their own program. To do so, they hit the street and interviewed college-age women in an effort to define what it means to be a girl in the year 2000. Some of their questions are a bit disheartening ("Can a girl like sports and boys?"), but the pride the girls can take in having made their own show is probably a far better lesson in girl-power than anything a sorority sister can tell them.

Perhaps most impressive is an Australian effort, "Hurt," showing Sunday as part of the PG-rated CinemaKids II "By Kids" program. "Hurt" sprung from the sponsorship of BIG hART, an Aussie nonprofit that commissioned Phillip Crawford (a former CinemaTexas award-winner) and co-director Matthew Priestly to engage some 250 underprivileged Australian youth in the creation of a film for and about them. Priestly and Crawford visited five towns (some of which boast strong aboriginal communities) where they conducted workshops with local disadvantaged youth. Many of the kids had been abused or been to jail. They shared their stories with the filmmakers and then took part in filming re-creations of these stories. Much of the footage was filmed by the teens on 16mm, Super-8, and video, and, although their untrained hands resulted in a less slick product, Crawford feels the rawness added to the piece. "The chaos of their scenes worked to great effect," he explains. That's putting it mildly. Every jerk of the camera is matched by a tug at the heart or a blow to the belly. Because "Hurt" is freeform, it's sometimes difficult to understand what's happening onscreen. An aboriginal kid is thrown into a trunk of a car, driven out into the middle of nowhere, and left in the woods. It's confusing, and we feel the displacement of the abandoned boy. Only later do we realize this is a sort of a coming-of-age rite for the child.

Shaky cam and confusing narrative aside, the film is gorgeously shot, alternating between black-and-white and color stock. Scenes of a young boy running across the barren Australian outback or of a young aborigine painting ceremonial black lines across his face are remarkable. But the breathtaking beauty of "Hurt" contrasts with the bleakness of its subject matter. Each story is a heartbreak in itself, recollections of childhoods dominated by abuse and neglect. Crawford insists, however, that the opening of old wounds was cathartic for the teens. Since the completion of "Hurt" many of the participants have decided to go back to school, and a few are even following their own filmmaking ambitions, helping Crawford out on his next project. "It's a pretty powerful thing when you participate and use your creative energy and then have it recognized in your community," Crawford explains.

Mary Celeste Kearney, CinemaKids co-curator (along with Marian Clarke and Kathryn Black), is confident there's enough talent out there to support the festival for years to come, judging by the quality of the films this year and by the number of kids who have since contacted her. And for those kids who have the ambition but not the experience, CinemaTexas is offering a free filmmaking workshop for kids eight to 12 this Saturday at the Austin Children's Museum. Another generation of auteurs about to be unleashed on the world? Watch your back, Jake. There might be some competition for coolest-kid-on-the-planet bragging rights.