Kids Day at the Woods Hole Film Festival

The 10^th Annual Kids Day isn’t just for kids this year! Whether your interests lean toward Mars or musicals, you’ll be hard-pressed to decide between The Mars Generation by New Hampshire native Michael Barnett, about several aspiring teenage astronauts imagining what it would take to reach the red planet, and Filmmaker-in-Residence Josh Seftel’s 2013 documentary Annie: It’s the Hard-Knock Life, from Script to Stage, which follows the creation of a single production number (the eponymous It’s a Hard-Knock Life) in the Broadway revival of Annie that starred Oscar winner Quvenzhané Wallis (Beasts of the Southern Wild).

Either film guarantees a unique experience that children will remember for years to come. Case in point: NASA Astronaut Sunita Williams (a Needham, MA native) will lead a discussion in Redfield Auditorium after The Mars Generation, in which she makes an appearance, and Filmmaker-in-Residence Josh Seftel will answer questions at Falmouth Academy after a screening of his film.

Both films are recommended for children age 8 and up, although discretion is advised for The Mars Generation, which not only spotlights members of the next generation of aerospace engineers, astrophysicists, and rocket scientists as they explore the curriculum of NASA’s Huntsville, Alabama Space Camp, but also talks about the need for colonization of another planet to prevent extinction of the human race, rocket scientist Werner von Braun’s Nazi background, and the explosions of the Space Shuttles Columbia and Challenger.