Lenfest Kids: Big and Small
We all live in a world of big and small things, but never so much as when we’re children – small people getting bigger. And as we grow, the world around us changes, feeling smaller than it once did.
Movies are also a way of making small things big and big things small. Whether it be a scene through the eyes of a tiny insect or a colossal giant, new perspectives transform our view of the world through the art of cinema. This ability to change size and scale is true of basic devices like the close-up, as well as special effects involving animation, CGI, and multiple exposure.
This year, we’ll shrink down to a subatomic level in The Incredible Shrinking Man and grow to enormous size in Honey, I Blew Up the Kid. We’ll explore techniques like rotoscoping in Gulliver’s Travels, as well as stop-motion in James and the Giant Peach, and much, much more.
But thinking about small perspectives isn’t just a way of understanding cinema. It’s a way of understanding the world. As they say, dream big, but it’s the little things that matter.
Lauren Weigel
Director, Lenfest Center for the Arts
Rob King
Programmer and Professor of Film, Columbia University School of the Arts
Above: still from James and the Giant Peach. Courtesy of Alamy