The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Jonathon Naylor Editor The R.H. Channing Auditorium looked more like a French cinema over the weekend thanks to the 2013 Boreal Film Festival. Area students from French Immersion and Basic French classes took in a series of professional and student-made movies. Coordinator Sylvie Dufour said the goal was to give students new exposure to French and a good chance to use the language outside of the classroom. Last Friday, Feb. 8 saw students from grades 4 to 6 enjoy a feature French-language film on a screen set up on the stage of the auditorium. Junior high French students also stopped by the auditorium to take in a series of short films, enjoying the comfort of the raised seating. Saturday's events included a filmmaking workshop hosted by Gabriel Fields, a French-speaking video and animation instructor from Freeze Frame, a Winnipeg-based media arts centre for young people. He was on hand to show students and other visitors the basics of filmmaking, including the 'claymation' technique made famous by TV's Gumby. Fields had just spent a week doing workshops at Ruth Betts Community School. Last November, he held workshops at Ecole McIsaac School, which houses Flin Flon's French Immersion program. Saturday evening was reserved for the showing of nearly 40 short films made by French students from Flin Flon and, less commonly, The Pas. Dufour, a vice-principal and French Immersion teacher at McIsaac, noted that all of the school's French Immersion teachers played a role in organizing the festival. Marking its second year in Flin Flon, the festival was sponsored by the French Second Language Revitalization Program.
