3rd Annual 90-Second Newbery Film Festival: Chicago screening!
February 3, 2014
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The third annual 90-Second Newbery Film Festival premiered on Saturday, February 1! I thought the snowstorm would keep the audience away, but we filled up Adventure Stage Chicago and it was a great time.
I really lucked out with my co-host this year, the dryly witty Keir Graff, author of The Other Felix and an editor at Booklist Online. Here we are in our opening bit, in which Keir and I exchange tall tales about this mythical “John Newbery,” from “he ate every book he ever read” to “he once fashioned a pretty hat out of J.K. Rowling’s skull.” And then we break into song! YES THAT IS MY BEAUTIFUL SINGING VOICE
(The tune is lifted from “What Would Brian Boitano Do?” from South Park. Keir and I rewrote the words to make it about John Newbery.)
The movies we showed this year were a lot of fun, and so many different styles! From an animated Where the Mountain Meets the Moon to a vintage TV superhero version of Charlotte’s Web and Macklemore spoof of The Black Cauldron to a Star Wars-style adaptation of The Whipping Boy to the claymation and puppetry used to hilariously retell An American Plague and The Old Tobacco Shop. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg! I’m looking forward to bringing these films to San Francisco and Oakland (this upcoming Saturday, February 8!) as well as Tacoma (3/1), Portland (3/2), and New York City (3/22).
Young blogger and filmmaker Ada Grey wowed us with her Playmobil version of The Long Winter, and so we called her up onstage for a short interview:
Thanks to Brandon Campbell and the rest of the good folks at Adventure Stage Chicago, my co-host Keir Graff, City Lit Books for selling books, Emily Schwartz for taking pictures, John Fecile for taking video, superlibrarian Eti Berland for helping out with the film festival in a hundred ways, the KidLit Foundation, and of course the young filmmakers who year after year make the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival into a success!
Before I go, here’s the montage of clips from most of the movies we showed on Saturday, which we used to close the show:
See you in at the upcoming screenings in San Francisco (2/8), Oakland (2/8), Tacoma (3/1), Portland (3/2) and New York City (3/22)!