SFF Short Stacks provides G-rated fun

Dinner and a movie? Been there done that.

Breakfast and a movie? Now we’re talking.

The clever staff at the Sarasota Film Festival’s outreach and education department (we mean you, Allison Koehler and George Denison) scored big brownie points with area families last Saturday.

The Short Stacks Family Film Day, which kicked off SFF’s youthFEST festivities, began at 9 a.m. with a hearty pancake breakfast and “Reel Life” studio workshops that taught kids how to build things such as pinhole cameras and ancient zoetropes.

Located on the campus of Sarasota High School and staffed by a dozen SHS drama club students, the event concluded in a screening of seven short children’s films: “Huck on the Gowanus,” “Spoon,” “Ormie,” “The Lost Thing,” “Bait,” “Mobile” and “The Hybrid Union.”

Contact Heidi Kurpiela at [email protected]

WHAT’S A ZOETROPE?
SFF youthFEST participants were taught how to construct a zoetrope at Saturday’s Short Stacks Family Film Day. It sounds cool, but what is it?

Well, cinema geeks: It’s one of the first tools invented to project a motion picture. In Greek it means “wheel of life.”

The earliest zoetrope was created in China around 180 A.D. It was made from paper and fashioned into the shape of a cylinder with vertical slits cut into the sides. Inside the cylinder is a panel of pictures that when viewed from the outside, through the slits, appear to move as the cylinder spins.