Lenfest Kids: Repair
Columbia University School of Arts presents Lenfest Kids, a monthly series of films for the whole family. Each month, we will feature three films, including recent animation and live action, as well as critically acclaimed classic films for families.
We wish we could bring you to the Lenfest Center to join us for our monthly film screening like we did last year with films like Inside Out, Ponyo, March of the Penguins, and Lu Over the Wall. But this year, we’re bringing the films to you.
The 2020-2021 Lenfest Kids program will be accessible on free online streaming platforms, or on widely-held subscription-based platforms.
This year, the School of the Arts public programming season is focused on the concept of Repair, exploring and reimagining frayed relationships between humans, other species, the planet and ourselves. Each month the theme of repair will be palpable in the narratives and lessons of the films chosen, by incorporating a monthly, seasonal approach, such as family reunion and food making for the month of November. Rob King, Professor of Film and Media Studies at Columbia University School of the Arts, will curate and present the series each month, with an informed video introduction.
Get Creative!
In addition to our programming, we encourage Lenfest Kids participants to get inspired by the films we recommend by making their own film projects! You will find details and instructions for the “Get Creative” projects on the monthly programming pages.
About the Programmer
Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies, Film, Rob King is a film historian with interests in American genre cinema, popular culture, and social history. Much of his work has been on comedy. His award-winning The Fun Factory: The Keystone Film Company and the Emergence of Mass Culture (University of California Press, 2009) examined the role Keystone’s filmmakers played in developing new styles of slapstick comedy for moviegoers of the 1910s. His recent follow-up, Hokum! The Early Sound Slapstick Short and Depression-Era Mass Culture (University of California Press, 2017), challenges the received wisdom that sound destroyed the slapstick tradition. He has published articles on early cinema, class, and comedy in a number of anthologies and journals, and is the co-editor of three anthologies: Early Cinema and the “National” (John Libbey & Co., 2008), Slapstick Comedy (Routledge, 2010), and Beyond the Screen: Institutions, Networks, and Publics of Early Cinema (John Libbey & Co., 2012). He is also working as co-editor of the Oxford University Press’s Oxford Handbook of Early Cinema, which was published in 2019.