This weekend I had the opportunity to attend the Providence Children’s Film Festival’s event, Be A Cinema Detective. During this program the audience watched a variety of short film’s including William Joyce’s “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore”. The story, told in both black and white and color and using instruments instead of dialogue, tells the tale of Mr. Lessmore as he survives a hurricane and sees the destruction of his town and the spirit of his neighbors. He finds a library with books and is returned to a state of happiness and shares this with the townspeople who start to show up.
Using the tools that the presenters provided at the cinema detective workshop the audience was able to see the transitions and think about the significance of the colors. The presenters also gave activities to do when doing film discussions in libraries and classrooms and a nice list of related book titles to go with the film.
While watching “Mr. Lessmore” many people had an uplifting experience. I think I was in the minority as I had a very melancholy reaction to the film. I felt that Mr. Lessmore led a very lonely life. He did not have interactions with many humans, his interactions were with the books, the one human he was interested in, died. I felt very sad watching him. I was also saddened by the book he had to repair and read in order to bring back to life. As a librarian, weeding is part of the job, and when a book is no longer read it is discarded. When books are not read, books and stories disappear from the cannon which is also a sad reality.
In the end, this film in particular stirred many different emotions (all the feels!) in only fifteen minutes! I am super excited to run a program to see how kids and teens react to the film, especially since we own a copy of the book in our library. I want to see how each person will relate to the different aspects of the film and see what is familiar to them.