Bob's Take: Up-and-comer brings excellent kids films to Omaha

Dave Jesteadt is only 24, and he's already got a great job in New York City. The 2004 graduate of Westside High School helps program one of the largest children's film festivals in the world.

Friday through March 18, the best of the New York International Children's Film Festival comes to Jesteadt's hometown, thanks to him and Film Streams, Omaha's nonprofit art-house cinema.

And when we say the best, that's saying something. Jesteadt and co-workers screen more than 2,000 films from more than 30 countries each year, choosing about 100 titles to present at the festival.

What's at Film Streams is truly the crème de la crème of new animation, live-action and experimental family movies from all over the world.

Don't let that family label put you off. Jesteadt personally recommends to anyone 9 and older the kickoff movie, “Razzle Dazzle.” The Australian mockumentary skewers the absurdities of competition between kids on the youth dance troupe circuit and their hyper-involved parents who live through them.

A blurb Jesteadt wrote for the festival Web site calls the movie a cross between “Best of Show” and “All That Jazz,” complete with outrageous costumes and show-stopping dance numbers.

“It's extremely funny, a good indicator of what we try to do,” he said by cell phone last week from Manhattan as horns, brakes and sirens screamed in the background. “Adults can watch it without kids and enjoy it.”

Like Jesteadt, the NYICFF is not that old. Eric Beckman and Emily Shapiro, a married couple, founded the festival in 1997 after being frustrated that they couldn't find a movie in all of New York to take their kids to.

“There's room in the adult market for big, loud films like ‘Sherlock Holmes' and also small indie movies,” Jesteadt said. “But when it comes to kids, that variety doesn't necessarily exist.

“We're not trying to be the next Disney. We're just trying to provide that variety. When audiences see these films, they're amazed such things exist.”

The festival sells out 20,000 seats every year and also does monthly screenings.

Jesteadt was hired because of his experience with Web sites. Beckman and Shapiro wanted to extend the reach of the festival to other cities, and Jesteadt was the man to help them do it.

Jesteadt was entertainment editor for his high school paper and ran a Web site for video game reviews. Later it became a film review site, too. He began writing about video games, then Hong Kong martial-arts movies, then the works of the great Japanese director-screenwriter Akira Kurosawa.

“It was a self-discovery,” he said. “I always had a large video collection. I just evolved from pulp action to a more sophisticated appreciation of film as an art form. It was a gradual process.”

His parents are Donna Neff and Walt Jesteadt, both audiologists at Boys Town National Research Hospital.

While earning a film degree at New York University, Jesteadt worked at Kim's Video in the West Village, a 50,000-title store that catered to an elite clientele. Jesteadt found himself renting movies to Willem Dafoe, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Anne Hathaway.

At GKIDS, which produces the children's film festival, Jesteadt has met cutting-edge directors from all over the world, continuing his education and his enthusiasm for the art form. The festival's film jury this year includes Uma Thurman, Susan Sarandon, Frances McDormand and Gus Van Sant.

Jury picks and audience favorites are what Jesteadt distributes to cities like Omaha.

“‘Azur & Asmar' (opening here Feb. 6) is one of the films I've moved,” he said. The French director, Michel Ocelot, has a high European profile. But, like many excellent films, this one was just lying there waiting for a U.S. distributor.

It's an animated tale of Middle Eastern boyhood friends separated by class difference who reunite in their teens. On a quest through faraway lands, they seek to find and free the Fairy of the Djinns, who is held captive in a crystal palace.

The soundtrack is in English, and the movie is recommended for ages 6 to adult.

Film Streams director Rachel Jacobson said she's especially excited about the short-film programs that are part of the festival series. Shorts for kids ages 3 to 8 will run Feb. 20-March 4. A set for older audiences, ages 9 and up, runs March 6-18.

“Lots of families brought their kids to see the Academy Award-nominated shorts last year, and they loved them,” Jacobson said. “The short films reach out to different age groups, and they'll appreciate the diversity of them.”

Jesteadt and Jacobson are trying to do the same thing: find the most interesting and artistically innovative films out there, and build an audience that appreciates them.

Details of the coming films are on the Web at www.filmstreams.org and previews can be seen at www.gkids.tv/tour.

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