OAKLAND — Magical seals, a determined tomato and a girl with a special pencil all come together at the seventh Bay Area International Children's Film Festival, held at the Chabot Space and Science Center this weekend.
It's a chance for all ages to see films from around the world, but the festival also hopes to encourage children to create art of their own.
"There's a great opportunity to inspire and educate children," said co-founder Jim Capobianco.
The festival will feature two full days of programming, including the East Bay premiere of "The Song of the Sea," which was just nominated for an Oscar for best animated feature film. The festival also includes workshops where children can create their own short pieces of animation.
Programming the festival is a labor of love for Capobianco, an animator who works at Pixar and is the parent of two daughters, 11 and 6 years old.
"There's a great opportunity to inspire and educate children," he said.
Capobianco, a story supervisor at Pixar who was nominated for an Academy Award for the screenplay of the film "Ratatouille," picks the films carefully out of thousands of submissions, making sure to choose challenging and sophisticated things from all over the world that his audience might not have access to otherwise.
"They generally aren't going to go out looking for them," he said.
For 14-year-old Océane Caporal, that's part of the attraction of the festival.
"They all hold some form of message," she said.
Caporal and her family have gone almost every year since the beginning, since it was a humble school fundraiser.
"This has seeded for us as a family a beautiful experience to share with others," Caporal's mother Claudia Medina said.
The films are divided into blocks of programming arranged by age. One of Capobianco's favorites this year is Kristina Yee's "Miss Todd," a story of a woman during the dawn of aviation who's determined to fly.
"It's just a lovely, inspiring story for girls," Capobianco said.
Another favorite is a short, prizewinning film from Iran called "Digital Native." By Mahboobeh Mohammadzaki, the film takes a weird, funny look at the modern world.
"It's so charmingly done," he said.
There are also workshops on animating with found objects, children's own bodies and even clay figures. For Caporal, that was one of the best parts.
"You got to add the hair, clothing and other details," Caporal said.
Even better, the kid-made films from the workshops will make it to the big screens of the festival itself, with film and media students from Berkeley City College on hand to quickly edit and score the films so they can be shown by the end of the day.
"It's such a highlight of the festival," Capobianco said.
The festival started as a fundraiser for the private Renaissance School, which is how Capobianco and co-founder Shelley Trott first got involved. It was so popular that organizers decided to keep going, although the festival is no longer a fundraiser for the school and is now funded by grant money from the East Bay Community Foundation and others. The festival also partners with BAYCAT, a San Francisco organization that educates undeserved youth and young adults in digital media, and Berkeley City College.
It's also the second year the festival will be at Chabot. Autumn King, public relations director for the center, said the blend of art and science the festival puts forward was particularly appealing.
"It has to make sense with our mission," she said.
And the festival's emphasis on discovery is what made Chabot — which gets a lot of requests for public programming — want to take it on.
"It felt like a natural progression," she said.
Films will be shown in the museum's two theaters over the course of the festival weekend. Tickets to the festival are available online at www.chabotspace.org/baicff.htm as well as at the Chabot Space and Science Center and also include admission to the science museum. Workshop spots, however, are limited. Ticketholders can drop in and out of the festival, but Capobianco hopes that visitors will be happy to spend a day or two immersed in works of creative wonder.
"It would be great if it's raining," he said.