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Dec. 9, 2011
TAG to tap top teen talents
Jonathan Friedrichs offers kids a way to explore film.
MICHELLE DODEK AND BASYA LAYE
Starting next month, local Jewish teens will have a unique opportunity to learn filmmaking from Jonathan Friedrichs, head of the growing Killarney Secondary School film program in which teens explore their creativity through writing, producing, starring in and directing short films.
Presented by TAG (Torah, Avodah and Gemillut Chasadim), Vancouver’s supplementary Jewish high school, the 12-week after-school program Using Our Jewish Lens “will look at issues that are important to Jewish teens,” explained Friedrichs. “I have no idea what direction our film will take yet – whether the students will lean towards comedy, drama or documentary – but the goal of the film will be to tell a compelling story using a Jewish lens. [Another] goal is for students to submit their film to the first-ever [Vancouver] Jewish Film Festival youth short film contest” at next fall’s festival, “but the primary goal is really for the students to learn filmmaking skills and then create a film they can be proud of.”
TAG students will work in small groups to get a taste of filmmaking, running through the processes of script and story development, settings and camera angles, as well as some editing techniques. Each completed film will be five to 10 minutes in length.
Friedrichs has had a great deal of experience on the festival circuit, and his Killarney students also have had some success with their projects. This past spring, they won a top prize at the Vancouver Sun’s Teens Against Gangs – also TAG – film contest.
“Teenagers are a goldmine of talent,” Friedrichs told the Independent about the best part of working with youth. “Watching them create storylines and film concepts constantly reinforces that. Some of their ideas are extremely sophisticated, some are powerful, some are insightful and moving, but I also have a real appreciation for absurdism – and there’s no shortage of that either!”
The Killarney film program has been around for several years, “before the YouTube era,” said Friedrichs, but their audience was limited. “It began with one class and two computers. I took over the film program three years ago, which now has three blocks (85 students) and an editing suite with seven Macs. We also have a very active YouTube channel, so the student films get some great exposure, which is what all filmmakers strive for. I’m the only film teacher but I work very closely with the two drama teachers. There is a lot of overlap between film and theatre, so the three of us support each other quite a bit. Film is a senior course, but I also teach senior digital photography and junior drama.”
Friedrichs grew up in a home that was supportive of both academic inquiry and creative pursuits. “My parents are academics, but they both have some natural creative talents and a true appreciation for the arts,” the filmmaker and educator said. “They’ve always been extremely supportive of my creative hobbies, whether it was cartooning or photography, but I didn’t have access to filmmaking until fairly recently. I fell into that more or less by accident after I got my first Mac and created my first stop-motion video using the computer’s built-in camera. It was a very rudimentary film but it was a big hit among my circle of friends and I saw huge potential in this style of art, so I began working on more ambitious stop-motion projects after that.”
Completing a master’s of education two years ago, Friedrichs focused on arts and media in education. “I actually submitted a film as my final project for four of my eight graduate courses (and the films, by the way, probably took longer to complete than a research paper would have). My final thesis was based around Holocaust education and student anti-racism films,” he said.
Recently, Friedrichs took on a producing partner, Andy Thompson, who is well known in the Vancouver theatre and film community and designed the theatre at Killarney, where the two met. One of their projects, a “superhero spoof” called Repair Man, placed third out of 74 films in an international 100-hour “film race.” Three other joint projects are due for completion by the end of June.
“The first two films we made together were on our own dime,” said Friedrichs about finding funding, “but Repair Man was financed by the Virtual Stage,” a company that integrates technology and theatre, which Thompson founded and for which Friedrichs serves as treasurer. “The Virtual Stage will also be financing some of our upcoming film projects,” said Friedrichs.
Although short films are rarely seen by the average theatre-goer, the real target market is the festival circuit. “Cannes is the big goal,” Friedrichs said, regarding where he hopes his films will end up. “Cannes is probably the ultimate goal for indy films, but a lot of filmmakers choose to post their shorts online and get their work out right away, instead of waiting months and sometimes years to go through the festival process.
“My students are usually perfectly happy just to put their films on YouTube, but some of their films have been televised, i.e. when they won the “Racism. Stop It!” film contest in 2010 and when they won the Teens Against Gangs film contest in 2011. They were really excited to see their films get specially recognized in this way – I know there’s definitely the same excitement for adults.”
Using Our Jewish Lens is open to students in grades 10-12 and runs Monday nights at King David High School starting Jan. 9. To register, contact TAG director Noam Dolgin at [email protected] or call 778-886-8241.
Michelle Dodek is a Vancouver freelance writer who was one of the first directors of TAG back in the day.
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