Bainbridge Island The Next Hollywood?

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t h e s pa r ta n s ta n da r d
november
14, 2012
bainbridgearts
The Perks of
Being a Wallflower
photo courtesy of pureimaginationblog.com
Shaun Christean
staff writer
Lynnwood has long been home to BHS’s cinematic experience.
photo by Anna cinamon | Spartan standard
Bainbridge Island
The Next Hollywood?
Bainbridge Island
celebrates its 14th annual
film festival
Graham Potter
Writer
On October 20 and 21, the
Lynwood Theatre hosted the
14th Annual Celluloid Bainbridge Film Festival. Each year,
this event showcases films with
connections to the Bainbridge
Island community. According
to the Bainbridge Island Arts &
Humanities Council, the festival
always follows a “simple guideline that films must have been
filmed on Bainbridge or feature
a past or present Bainbridge Islander in the cast or crew.” This
year, the first day of the festival was dedicated to full-length
documentaries, and the second
day focused on features, animation, and short documentaries.
Seven full-length documentary films were shown on October 20. One was created by Nicole Newnham, who grew up on
Bainbridge Island. Entitled Rare, the film told the story of a
mother who worked with people around the world in hopes
of finding a cure for her daughter’s rare genetic disease. This
was Newnham’s third documentary film to be shown at Celluloid Bainbridge. She currently
works as a filmmaker-in-residence at the Stanford Center for
Biomedical Ethics.
Alan Honick, a current resident, also created a documentary called A Sense of Fairness.
This film explored the biological aspects of moral reasoning, and included research in
behavioral genetics, psychology, and experimental economics. Honick worked with Gordon Orians, a biology professor
at the University of Washington,
to explore these topics.
The last documentary shown
on October 20, The Revolutionary, was made by Don Sellers and Lucy Ostrander, both
of whom live on Bainbridge Island. The film followed Sydney
Rittenberg’s political involvement in the Chinese Communist
Party and his interactions with
Mao Zedong. Rittenberg spent
sixteen years in solitary confinement over the course of China’s
political evolution. Sellers and
Ostrander have had many years
of experience as filmmakers and
have won several awards for
their productions.
While there were some other
short documentaries on October
21, the features were the main attraction. Paying for Change was
a black and white short feature
by Bainbridge Island student
Wiley Jones. Featuring George
Shannon, a local author, the film
told the story of a man who loses
a book from his childhood, along
with some of his most cherished
memories. The entire film was
silent, but it clearly portrayed
the importance of community.
WA State Ferries was an unexpectedly hilarious animated
spoof on the Washington State
Ferry system. What begins as an
ordinary commute quickly turns
into a surreal madhouse as the
passengers on the ferry are unable to handle the intense summer weather. Wesley McLain,
who grew up on Bainbridge Island, created the film as a final
project for his animation class
at the Rhode Island School
of Design.
This feature was followed by
another animated film, Caldera,
which was created by a group
of students at Hampshire College. Liz Ellis, who grew up on
Bainbridge Island, was one of
the members of the production team. Though the story
was mostly symbolic and difficult for the average viewer
to follow, Caldera was a visual spectacle. The three dimensional artistic style was unique,
and Caldera’s evolving perception of the world around her was
brilliantly illustrated.
John Nagle, who grew up on
Bainbridge Island and now lives
as an actor in Burbank, California, co-starred in One to One (A
Superman Story). A reporter,
who is later revealed to be Superman, interviews a pregnant
teenage girl who lost her parents
at a young age. She has given up
on her life and the existence of
heroes. However, in telling her
life story, she realizes that there
is still hope, and decides to stop
smoking and start caring about
her future child.
The most popular feature
shown on October 21 was undoubtedly Surveyor, a realistic portrayal of the “Wild West”
that tells the story of a government surveyor who experiences
the horrors of the Western frontier on his way home from evaluating the landscape. Surveyor was created by Scott Blake,
who graduated from Bainbridge
High School in 2006 and recently earned a degree from the University of Washington. This was
his second feature to appear at
a Celluloid Bainbridge Festival.
Traditionally, though Celluloid does accept donations, anyone can come and see the films.
The Celluloid Bainbridge Film
Festival is an excellent way for
BHS students to expose themselves to the productions created by the local film community, and to discover if film is
something that they would be
interested in pursuing.
Since its original release in 1999, Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of
Being a Wallflower has been treasured as an honest, relatable book
for many troubled teens. The story is told as by high school freshman, Charlie, writing to an anonymous character known only as
Charlie’s “dear friend”. “I had heard about the movie before, but all
my friends had read the book and said it was great, so I decided to
read it,” said sophomore Gabriella Meninger, “I loved how it was all
written in Charlie’s letters and how we don’t know who or where
he’s writing to.”
Through Charlie’s letters, we uncover not only his own story, but
the brutal histories of his close friends and their bittersweet journey
overcoming the past and pioneering a better future.
Perks was playing at the Historic Lynwood Theater, which is
where Anna Teiche saw it. “I heard that the movie was coming out
a couple months ago,” said Teiche, “and felt like I should read the
book first.” The film adaptation was directed and produced by the
author, Chbosky, and he creates the world of Perks as beautifully
onscreen as he did 13 years ago on paper.
The main cast includes Logan Lerman as Charlie, Emma Watson
as Charlie’s friend and crush Sam, and Ezra Miller as the beloved
Patrick. The film is a milestone in Watson’s career as her first major
role after the Harry Potter franchise, and is also notable as Miller’s
most recent in a season of high achieving films.
Lerman depicts a compassionate, yet almost frustratingly passive
protagonist, and this sweetness that Chbosky has cultivated in his
characters is what sets Perks apart from the countless other suburban teen-angst movies.
While viewers may scoff at
some of the ridiculously pretentious comments made by
the characters, the dialogue remains true to the early ‘90s
counterculture that it’s set in.
The orientation towards “hipsterism” may be more blatant
than some viewers would prefer, but what Chbosky was talking about in Perks was done before it was cool and then became
subsequently laughable.
The film deals with a variety of
Anna Teiche personal issues going on in the
lives of the characters, including physical and sexual abuse,
suicide, substance use, homophobia, violence, and mental health issues. It is rated PG-13 for these reasons.
A big part of Perks’ power is in its ability to handle those kinds of
problems in a very honest and almost heartbreakingly relatable way.
“Perks seems like a timeless sort of book,” said Teiche, “it’s all about
high school and fitting in, and the whole basis of high school and
teenage angst really hasn’t changed in the past 13 years.” Throughout the movie, the audience swung between laughing out loud at
the comic-relief and personal victories of each character and tearing up silently at the devastating losses we watch them bear as
they grow up.
Perks is also noted for its tendency to leave you wondering about
many details surrounding the characters. “I honestly wish the book
were longer,” said Teiche. “I think there are parts of it that the author left a little too vague, and I feel like some of the conflicts were
never resolved as much as I wish they had been.” It does feel like the
viewer (or reader) is being given merely a glimpse into one year of
the life of a random stranger, so certain details are never illuminated. “But the character development is great,” said Teiche. “It really
made me care about Charlie, Patrick, and Sam.”
The message of Perks is the importance of facing your demons,
finding yourself, and creating friendship along the way. “I think one
lesson from Perks is to just be yourself and not try and conform or
hold back your feelings,” said Meninger. “It’s probably been popular despite being published 13 years ago just because most kids
can... relate to him and the story.” Perks calls us to look at what we
want, and reminds us that our future doesn’t have to be dictated
by our past.
“I think, as cheesy as it sounds, Perks is really trying to tell
people to just be themselves,” said Teiche, “and be comfortable with putting yourself first sometimes, because you can’t
be happy if all you try to do is make everyone else happy
by ignoring your own needs.”
I think one lesson
from Perks is to just
be yourself and not try
and conform or hold
back your feelings.
november
14, 2012
t h e s pa r ta n s ta n da r d
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spartanlife
Global Problem Solving at BHS
Ana Bucy and
Maddie Cole
participate in
the Global Youth
Leadership
Initiative
Madeline Corbin
A&E Editor
photo by october yates | Spartan standard
As high school students, we often feel
helpless as we learn
about the problems of
the world. It seems as
though we are too far
away or too young to
help. However, freshmen Ana Bucy and
Maddie Cole have overcome this state of mind
and are on a mission to
change the world.
While at Woodward,
Bucy and Cole start-
ed the Global Awareness Club,
where they discussed global issues and organized fundraisers. “The club supervisors,
Mrs. Bender and Mrs. Vandeleur, were really inspirational,” said Cole. Through participating in the Global Awareness
Club, Bucy and Cole became
more and more aware of how
they could benefit the world.
Therefore, when three freshmen
came to talk to the club about
the Global Youth Leadership
Initiative, Bucy and Cole were
excited to participate.
The Global Youth Leadership
Initiative is a program based
in Seattle that encourages high
school students to raise awareness of global issues in their
schools. “The point of the initiative was to prepare us to act as
leaders for solving global issues
when we get older,” said Cole.
In late June, Cole and Bucy attended a three-day workshop at
the Centro de la Raza in Seattle. “It was kind of like school,”
said Bucy. “The days were spent
listening to speakers and doing
activities to help us fully understand what was happening (in
the world). We even did a practice UN session.” There was also a career panel which, to Cole,
was especially inspiring.
At the program were about
30 other students from the Seattle area “who all shared the
same passion for global issues,” said Cole. Throughout
the summer, there were opportunities to get back together
with their group for tours or to
meet exchange students. “Ana
and I went on a tour of the Bill
and Melinda Gates Founda-
Heavy Metal
GIVING | Stuff
the Turkey Benefit
Jewelry and metal design class fuses art
with science
Rose Conlon
staff writer
Unbeknownst to many students, Bainbridge High School
offers a jewelry and metal design class. Students who take
this class have the opportunity to work with copper, brass,
nickel, silver, and even gold to
shape custom pieces of art. “It’s
not just jewelry . . . I encourage
my students to carry it in a more
sculptural realm. Not everything
has to be pretty and shiny,” said
teacher Caro Wilding. “It can be
steam hunk, it can be grunge,
and you still have quality craftsman skills.”
Because of the specialized
tools required to create this
type of art, the course demands
time spent in the studio. Students who expect to frequently
be absent are warned of this. On
the other hand, there isn’t much
work to do outside of class.
“If you’re someone who has a
lot of extracurriculars and you
don’t have time for another
course with a lot of homework,
but you’re willing to show up
every day and work hard, you’ll
do really well in this class,” said
Wilding. “I don’t think any of
my students would say Jewelry
and Metal Design is easy, but it’s
very rewarding. Because of the
way I structure class, you have
to work really hard not to pass!”
Two years ago, Wilding was
hired to continue the jewelry
program after art teacher Sissel
Feroy’s retirement. It is her sixth
year with the Bainbridge Island School District, as she also
teaches at Commodore Options
School. She cites Bainbridge Island’s avid art community as a
real motivation for teaching, especially the vibrant array of jewelers working here.
Her unique approach to education is apparent in all the
classes she teaches. At Commodore, she teaches a middle school science class she
calls STEAM - science, technology, engineering, and math,
with art added. She believes basic art skills are applicable to
all academic subjects.
“To be part of the groundbreaking group of scientists
and engineers coming up in the
next generation, you have to be
able to think creatively,” Wilding said. “It’s important to be
able to think outside of the box,
to have good design skills, and
to express yourself effectively.”
The jewelry class she teaches at
BHS directly builds on essential
scientific and creative skills.
“We work with chemical reactions, including changing the
color of copper and oxidizing
metal,” she said. “We’re constantly dealing with design and
problem solving. It’s a chemistry
class wrapped in a pretty package called art!”
Wilding teaches Jewelry and
Metal Design second period,
both this semester and next
spring. The class contains of a
large array of skill levels, from
beginners to advanced artists.
She said, “I hope to eventually grow the program enough to
have separate beginning and
advanced classes.” Many of her
current students are planning
on continuing their metal smithing studies in the spring. The
low turnout rates can be party
attributed to the fact that there
has been a misrepresentation of
Jewelry and Metal Design in the
course catalogue. The option for
freshmen to take the class does
not appear, but Wilding assured
that this is not the case.
She wants students to know
that her class is open to all grade
levels, and freshmen are welcome to sign up for the spring
semester. Both BHS and EHHS
students are welcome, as well. “I
have students from both schools,
and I love seeing the community come together. It’s great that
the schools are able to share a
program like this,” said Wilding.
Those students who get past the
confusion are treated to an enriching experience. Wilding explained, “Students come in and
say, ‘I thought this would just be
stringing beads, but this is what
real artists are doing.’ We’re using all the equipment that a professional jeweler uses in their
studio.”
Wilding described with excitement the ingenuity she sees in
her students when they are able
to take time out of their academic day for artistic expression. After a few weeks of building basic
skills, she described the atmosphere as, “full of activity … everyone is going in a million different directions with their
ideas.” She encourages all students who might be interested to
explore it.
tion Visitor Center later in the
summer,” said Cole.
The program also prepared
the students to complete a Global Awareness Project in their
communities. Cole and Bucy
have not officially decided what
their project will be, but they
are considering a fundraiser for
the Heifer Project, which works
with communities around the
world to end hunger and poverty. They are also considering
doing a book drive for a library
in Rwanda. “We are still in the
planning stages,” said Bucy. “My
BHS swimming season is wrapping up, so hopefully when I go
back to my regular swim schedule we can start to plan seriously.” Cole assures us that “whatever the project is, we want to
promote them at both Woodward and BHS.”
continued from page
photos by october yates | Spartan standard
Jewelry class combines art and science.
1
Responding to Helpline’s call for assistance with its Three Days of Thanksgiving
food drive, Lewis said, “[I was] talking with
the math department during one of our staff
meetings, [and] they thought it was a great
idea and helped formulate the details.” As
Key Club members leave donation boxes in
each classroom, every high school student
is encouraged to donate as many canned or
packaged goods as possible to help out their
neighbors.
Students are also welcome to help with
unloading and organizing vans of food
at Helpline House at the culmination
of the food drive.
“My sister’s friend did Key Club and said
it was really fun, so I decided to give it a go,”
said sophomore Madeline Pedersen. “It’s important to give back to the community and
show that we care about people who are having a rough time.” Along with helping out at
Helpline House, students in Key Club take
shifts heading over to Seattle to volunteer at
a soup kitchen every Friday after school. “Through service you see that there are a
lot of other people in the world suffering in
degrees greater than you imagined,” said
Lewis. “It makes you reflect on your own
struggles and makes you realize all of the
blessings that surround you.”
While many high school students may only be interested in community service to fulfill graduation requirements or while filling out college applications, it can also be
an enjoyable and often enlightening experience. “Key Club allows students opportunities for leadership positions,” said Lewis.
“In these positions they can learn valuable
skills motivating peers, organizing projects,
and executing ideas they have developed focused on helping those in need of assistance.”
Gremse even found that her high school volunteers often enjoyed the work they did in
the food bank. “The upcoming food drive is
great!” said Pedersen. “It really is a great way
to get donations to Helpline House, which
they really need.”
“Our theme this year is ‘Three Days of
Community Giving’, and the high school’s
going to be smack in the middle of that,” said
Gremse. “The following week we have ‘Three
Days of Sharing’ where we’re able to then
take those things and get them to our food
bank and have people come get their Thanksgiving groceries.”
Helpline has short and long term community service opportunities for high school
students working in the food bank, and
anyone interested need only fill out the
application form. Whether by bringing cans and boxes, or by
applying to become more involved in community service avenues like Helpline House,
helping the community is a valuable experience. “Participating in community service has always been something I have done
throughout my life,” said Lewis. “It requires
that you get out of your own head and forces you to think of others... It’s just the right
thing to do.”