Press About Little Creatures:
"Spirit Ship" by Faith Evans-Sills on her blog Leaves and Feathers. December 27, 2010.
"Playful Spirits" by Katie Garton of New York Family. December 22, 2010.
"Spirit Ship: il film misterioso raccontato dai bambini" by Paolo Beneventi, my colleague in Italy who also makes films with children. December 21, 2010.
"Hard to get the kids outdoors? Some approaches." AP article by Melissa Rayworth, April 20, 2010. Download PDF.
Press Kit: Spirit Ship Press Kit Press Releases: Spirit Ship Trailer Screens at Festivals Around the World What People are Saying: Children: • It’s mysterious. The boy’s voice, in the background, and the girl, singing. I mean, you don’t see who’s talking, but you hear this boy, and you hear this girl, and you see all these pictures, and you don’t really know what’s going to happen. It sort of leaves you intrigued, it doesn’t say, “Oh, this is a film about blah, blah, blah,” it leaves you wondering. It intrigues you. -Mollie, 4th Grade, Brooklyn, NY (re: Spirit Ship trailer) • It’s so like, it’s real. Cause like black and white, it’s really cool. Very mysterious. Looks like they’re going to explore the beach, and what’s in the ocean. It reminds me of my garden, and looking through old things, going into little forts that I made, in between yards. The voices were so mysterious. –Ewan, 4th grade, Brooklyn, NY (re: Spirit Ship trailer) Parents: • As the mother of a 10-year-old boy I am, of course, invested and concerned about the impact of the media that he consumes and the availability of inspiring and enriching choices today. In a time when most of the children's movie and television offerings are geared toward advertising revenue, thus toward adult spending dollars as opposed to engaging the power of childhood imagination, I am delighted and grateful for those gems that do come along such as Little Creatures. I would gladly support more initiatives such as these that speak to the true essence of childhood and would rather put my dollars in movies and projects like these. • The Spirit Ship project empowered the girls in ways that I had never imagined which they will forever remember. Teachers: • Kristin captures the authentic sights and sounds of childhood. She uses her camera as a lens into the deepest inner-workings of a child’s mind . . . As children are empowered to create their own narratives in video form, they recognize the universality of childhood themes and imagery, of problems and possible solutions, in ways probably impossible to achieve by other means. The world grows smaller, but the imagination and compassion of each child and teacher grows larger. • The remarkable videos made by Kristin Eno and Little Creatures are unique in their ability to bring us into the very life of childhood play itself. Whether viewed by children or adults, they allow us to experience first hand the child's natural ability to truly improvise from the simplest of materials and ideas into magical realms of delighted enchantment and imaginings. Wonderful as tools for teaching the importance of play - or as a means to validate for children why their playing is always meaningful, these videos should be made available to anyone who cares for what learning and education need to be about – and could become. • Media is very powerful for children. These videos are authentic because they record the children’s environment. This is not “Kristin’s Project,” this is the kids’ project. We as teachers are artists and are nurturing our students as artists and deeper thinkers. Video presents art and captures the moment, reviewing things you may not have seen. What ultimately comes out of these projects is empathy. . . when kids view the films and see themselves and each other…they want to hear and be heard. Principals: • Oral storytelling is so important as a foundation for our early childhood students as writers. I think [making videos] is fun for children. And kids’ lives aren’t fun enough. The overall way of providing a sanctioned, fun activity as part of curriculum is very important for teachers. These projects help to prod and push teachers to incorporate early childhood children’s natural instincts to make sense of their lives through play and storytelling, into their schedules. I think they have a powerful effect. Professors/Academics: • What I like most about Kristin’s work is that she manages to establish a seamless dialogue between her artistic vision, her teaching, and her scholarly efforts. Although her first videos had originated within an educational arena, they were already full of poetry. All along, she has managed to integrate her art with her educational projects through the exploration of essential human themes—birth, life, nature, play. I believe that, in honoring children’s play, Little Creatures' movies will also help audiences reflect and learn about the overall experience of being human. • I value the video camera as a creative tool to help children reflect and to create. The most exciting segment of Sophie in the Trees to me was the post-production voiceover of the preschool child's walk through the snow. It seems that the children watching her and speaking her story were giving motivation/reason to her action as it happened on the TV monitor. One child mentioned that you have to step carefully become sometimes the snow gives way. Another mentioned that the girl in the video was looking at "something that we cannot see." So one can reasonably conclude that she knew that the camera was not focusing on the object the protagonist was looking at. Professionals in the Media/Art/Education Field: • The work planning, implementing and assessing Little Creatures is experimental, engaging and has been funded several times over the past few years. Little Creatures somehow manages to capture those in between, intimate and precious places that one imagines cannot be documented easily.
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