Hit the 5.30 show of CHALK (click for the trailer) along with the (mostly throwaway) short SAFETY FIRST at the Somerville Theater. Damn funny flick, w a touch of despair, but only a touch, and it's more than offset by much sweetness, even hope, AND a spelling "bee!"
Shot and cut in pseudo-documentary style (reminds me more of THE OFFICE than OFFICE SPACE), the film follows three high school teachers and a new assistant principal over the course of a school year at Harrison High School in suburban Texas. You know it's gonna be good when the first day of school is captioned on screen in countdown form - "33 weeks until summer vacation," heh.
Mr. Lowrey, first year history teacher, is a teaching newbie. He's trying this teaching thing out after dropping out of a career in programming. He has no professional experience in education, but aptitude exams pegged him as a promising teacher type... That, or a veterinary surgeon. Let's hear it for standardized testing!
His first day on the job goes considerably less than well. He will spend the rest of his year trying to win his students' respect (or at least the appearance of it).
Heh. Mr. Stroope is a third year history teacher, shooting to win the annual Teacher Of The Year award. How is he going to do this? By becoming best buds with his students. He explains that he's been told that there's a fine line between building a student-teacher friendship versus a student-teacher relationship...
He's been TOLD that, but apparently doesn't actually know where this line is.
P.E. instructor Miss Webb coaches Harrison High's Hornets volleyball team. Her best friend on the teaching staff, Mrs. Reddell, begins her new position as Assistant Principal this year. Coach Webb believes that her friend will be the ideal teacher advocate in administration, but finds the reality of the situation to be a bit different.
As Mrs. Reddell's new post takes over her life in and out of school, she finds herself losing touch with the practice of teaching, and at odds more and more with those whom one year ago, she considered her friends and colleagues.
The film mines these very true-to-life teaching scenarios for some hilarious laughs as well as hopeful moments of human connection.
The writers and director as well as several other creative co-conspriators have years of teaching in the U.S. public school system under their belts. Many of them, including writer/director Mike Akel, were present at this screening for Q&A after the film. They revealed, not surprisingly, that the characters were drawn from their real life colleagues. Of course, they admit, they've never TOLD those colleagues how they contributed to the film.
When asked about the intended impact of the film on current and prospective teachers, one of the writing team compared CHALK to the promotional films used by a Florida (I think) police force, for recruiting. They originally created films that would highlight the "coolness" factor of the job - detective work, firing guns, the respect that comes with the badge, donuts... But the police academy was dealing with record high drop-out rates among its recruits. They decided to shift gears with their promotional angle and dropped the "rah rah - hooray for the police" theme and instead shot straight documentary film with candid interviews of policemen on the job. Not turning away from the hazards of duty and the low pay. Resulting in stuff like, "You put on this badge, you are gonna be hated by a lot of people..." But also the real, lookin straight into the camera, cliched, but meaningful delivery of, "But at the end of the day, it's all worth it, knowing you've made a difference." Academy and job drop-out rates dropped significantly after this shift in POV.
The director, writers and the rest of the assembled team all agreed that this film is meant to be like that new recruiting film, portraying teaching as not simply a job, but also a calling.
That said, someone in the audience next asked Mike if he planned on returning to teaching after this filmmaking experience. Akel: "You just HAD to ask that, didn't you?" He replied - no. He hopes to continue in storytelling and filmmaking, and referred back to the notion of teaching as a calling, sorta sideways explaining that while he certainly enjoyed his teaching experience, teaching is not his calling.
CHALK plays again in the festival on Saturday at 3.30pm at the Somerville theater. Advance tix are sold out, so, unless you've got a festival pass, you'll hafta line up for rush tickets at 15 minutes before showtime. Definitely worth the trouble. And hey, if you don't get rush tickets to CHALK, you can probably score some for the DEADLY ENCOUNTERS short films package, or advance tix to an evening show, and kill the mean time dining and ice creaming in Davis Square. Nothing wrong w that.
If you've ever taught, or been taught, see this movie and laugh =)
Oh, rating the festival films...
At each IFFB screening the audience is given a ballot to rate the films on a scale of 1 to 5. Kinda tough rating the first film I see in a fest, y'know? I want to be able to rate up and down from this film over the next few days, so my instinct was to go with 3 as a benchmark. But CHALK had so many good comedic moments as well as great, solid, realistically frank performances from both teachers and students, well, I had to believe that five days from now I'd count it as one of the better films I'd seen. So, I gave CHALK a 4 out of 5. The short film SAFETY FIRST got itself a 2. It was good for a couple laughs, but overall, barely as satisfying as a mediocre WHOSE LINE IS IT ANYWAY? improv.
Keep on keepin on~
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