One hundred children waiting for a train

Duration: 57

Year Published: 1987

Creator: First Run/Icarus

Format: 16mm

Color: Color

Sound: sound

Description: On Saturday mornings, Professor Alicia Vega conducts a film workshop for youngsters living in a slum in Santiago, Chile. The children learn through discourse and hands-on activities the history of film, the technology of filmmaking and the cultural significance of an artform that can record and comment on society. They watch Charlie Chaplin films, Walt Disney shorts, Lamorisse's The Red balloon, and the Lumiére brothers' The Arrival of the train in the station. In concluding scenes, the youngsters design a film with drawings based on the realities of their own lives. Later, they are treated to a field trip to a modern movie house. In the words of the director, [The film is about] one hundred children who have waited one hundred years to go the cinema. The train of the Lumiére brothers has taken one hundred years to arrrive in Lo Hermida ... The film also tries to say that these children are this country which is also waiting for the train to leave the station.