Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - August 13, 2024, Winnipeg, Manitoba TUESDAY AUGUST 13, 2024 ● ARTS & LIFE EDITOR: JILL WILSON 204-697-7018 ● ARTS@FREEPRESS.MB.CA ● WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM ARTS ● LIFE SECTION C CONNECT WITH THE BEST ARTS AND LIFE COVERAGE IN MANITOBA ▼ ALLEN J. SCHABEN/LOS ANGELES TIMES Not all children are excited to head back to school, but there are ways to ease their anxieties and get them back into a routine. Tips for talking to kids about their back-to-school jitters PARENTS, do your homework I N just a few weeks, the easygoing vibe of summer break will be replaced with the rigid schedules of a new school year. The transition isn’t always easy, even for kids who are eager to return to the classroom. And if children are nervous about a new teacher, new school, or the prospect of making new friends, things can be even more fraught. With summer break drawing to a close, we spoke with psychologists about how parents can help their children embrace a back-to-school mindset. Here’s their advice: KAREN KAPLAN Jury selects winners from field of over 90 entries at 2024 festival More film fans flock to GIFF thanks to savvy marketing THIS year’s Gimli International Film Festival had a net attendance of rough- ly 9,000 people, the event’s largest audience since before the pandemic. “It was our most successful year since 2019,” says festival executive director Teya Zuzek. “Considering that we’re still coming out of the pandemic, and considering the state of arts and culture throughout Canada and what’s happening at many other institutions, this shows that Manitoba has a strong love for the arts.” Prior to the pandemic, the festival’s audience exceeded 12,000 attendees. In 2023, the organizers experimented with a hybrid format, combining an on-demand digital program with a return to live screenings; about 7,200 people attended. Zuzek, who was hired in November 2023, attributes the uptick in part to the festival’s attempts to broaden its reach ahead of the festival, which ran from July 24 to 28 in the Interlake community. “A lot of it had to do with marketing,” she says. “We appealed to a younger demographic through social media channels like TikTok and Letterboxd.” TikTok, the extremely popular video-sharing app, was used to show behind-the-scenes content, while Letterboxd, a social film-cataloguing app favoured by young cinephiles, was an official festival partner. The app, founded in 2011, has more than 10 mil- lion users and has a British Columbia company as a majority owner. GIFF’s marketing team used the app to create lists of its films for easy digi- tal access and to archive the lineups of festivals dating back to 2006, an hom- age to the festival’s past ahead of the 2025 festival, which will be its 25th. Zuzek, who relocated to Gimli from Toronto in January for the job, says that the next several months will be spent preparing for that landmark event. A few priorities are to increase the amount of French-language films and children’s programming, while also compiling a retrospective of the festival’s first quarter-century. Taking home the hardware From a crop of more than 90 films, the festival’s jury selected 10 award winners. The best Manitoban director award went to Branden Joseph De- Foort for his disability rights docu- mentary These Four Walls. Karsten Wall’s Modern Goose, produced by the National Film Board of Canada, was named the best Manitoban short. The two best performance awards, spon- sored by ACTRA, went to Harkaran Jhinger for his work in Ian Bawa’s My Son Went Quiet, and Courtney Sawyer for hers in Ryan Ward’s Daughter of the Sun. Toronto’s Nedda Sarshar’s film Unibrow was named the best Canadian short, while 27, a film by Hungary’s Flóra Anna Buda, was named the best international short. For Plaansh a Roo — a story about a Métis boy fiddling to afford a new skateboard — Regi- na-born Andrew Konoff was given the Indigenous Spirit Award. Illinois filmmaker Minhal Baig was the recip- ient of the New Voices Award for We Grown Now, a coming-of-age story set in Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing project. The grand jury’s Best of Fest award was given to Chilean director Maite Alberdi’s Alzheimer’s love story The Eternal Memory. In the community of New Iceland, the audience choice award went to the inventive animated documentary The Day Iceland Stood Still. The Alda Award for lifetime achieve- ment was given to Inuk filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk, whose Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner was the first Ca- nadian dramatic feature to use only Inuktitut dialogue. BEN WALDMAN SUPPLIED PHOTO BY IAN MCCAUSLAND Winnipeg filmmaker and editor Karsten Wall won best Manitoban short. ● CONTINUED ON C2 • Don’t wait until the last minute to talk about the new school year. Instead of having one big conversa- tion, make the transition a little at a time in the final week or two of sum- mer break, said Samantha Sweeney, a licensed psychologist in Washington, D.C. You might spend a few hours gath- ering school supplies; another day, you can plot out what to pack for lunches. Activities like these provide opportu- nities for kids to talk about how they’re feeling about the upcoming year. “If you bring it up all at once, you get freaked out all at once,” she said. “Doing it gradually is usually easier for kids.” • If your child is anxious about going back to school, don’t try to talk them out of it. It’s important to acknowledge their feelings and make them feel heard, experts say. “If you say, ‘No no no, school is great and it’s going to be wonderful,’ they’ll say, ‘You don’t get it,’ or ‘You don’t understand,’” said Sweeney, co-author of Working With Worry: A Workbook for Parents on How to Support Anxious Children. Trying to convince a kid to feel a certain way is likely to backfire, said Eileen Kennedy-Moore, a clinical psychologist in Princeton, N.J., who specializes in parenting and child development. “The harder we argue, ‘It’s going to be great!’ the harder they’ll insist, ‘It’s going to be terrible!’” • Don’t give false assurances. It’s risky to tell your child that everything will be just fine, or that school will be the same as it was last year, because that might not turn out to be true, Sweeney said. Instead, boost their confidence by reminding them of past successes, like their track record of making new friends. You can also tell them you’ll be there to support them if they need help. • Try to pinpoint the source of their concern. Are they nervous because they don’t know what to expect from a new teacher? Will they be using a locker for the first time and they’re worried about forgetting the combination for their lock? Once you have a better idea of what you’re dealing with, you and your child can work together to brainstorm a solution, experts said. Get the ideas flowing by reminding them of times they’ve overcome similar problems in the past. “You’re guiding them but you’re not giving them all the answers,” said Mary Alvord, a cognitive behavioural psychologist in Rockville, Md., and co-author of The Action Mindset Workbook for Teens. “My goal with parents is to teach kids how to be more proactive, how to take initiative. It builds resilience.” • Consider a dress rehearsal of the first day of school. This isn’t necessary for everyone, but if a child is worried about how they’ll get to campus or where to find a bathroom, a dry run may allay their concerns. “Knowing what to do can help kids feel more confident that they can cope,” said Kennedy-Moore, creator of the Kids Ask Dr. Friendtastic podcast. The school may even allow your child to meet their teacher while they’re setting up their classroom, said Sweeney, who has worked as a school psychologist. “When they walk in the door on the first day and see a familiar face, that can make a big difference,” she said. • Talk through worrisome scenarios. “It’s impossible to anticipate every possible problem, so an important question to have your child consider is, ‘Who could help you if you need help?’” Kennedy-Moore said. ● CONTINUED ON C2 SUPPLIED Sonya Ballantyne was honoured at GIFF with the Barry Lank Award. ;