Luke: This Saturday, a film festival in the Liberties is showcasing comedies by and for kids

Kidz Filmz, part of the Dublin International Comedy Film Festival, features a series of comedy shorts by and for children.  

A mix of DIY and professional work, this event showcases the creativity and craft in their approach to comedy filmmaking.

The screening includes two genre spoofs – The Substitute Teacher… From Hell and Dial S for Sandwich – made by the fourth-class students of Scoil Mocheallóg, Kilmallock National School, with guidance by Young Limerick Filmmakers and director Shane Vaughan.  

The films are well-observed takes on horror and film noir, respectively. 

Full of sight gags and wordplay, there’s something inherently amusing about hearing 10-year-olds speak in film genre jargon. 

Be it the one-liners of a hard-boiled noir PI: “I was feeling like a tall glass at midnight. Empty.” 

Or the quips of a self-aware horror film character: “I knew all those Latin classes were good for something.” 

That line follows the discovery of a Necronomicon-style evil tome after a camera pan through the school library reveals a shelf of books on Demonology (casual as you like) next to History, Geography and Art.   

The style is there too, in the foggy corridors and moody low lighting of The Substitute Teacher, and in the venetian-blind shadows of Dial S for Sandwich. 

The young actors do an admirable job with the dialogue and pacing too. There are laughs throughout both shorts, helped largely by a commitment to play a lot of the material fairly straight. 

Dial S for Sandwich has got the funny peculiarity of Alan Parker’s Bugsy Malone with children in period costume. In both films, the snappy directing and casual-cool line delivery pushes the material beyond mere cuteness. 

Another film, Inch by Inch asks big philosophical questions as a garden snail searches for meaning in her slow life. The snail, voiced by Niamh Cusack, ponders life beyond the confines of the garden, and her shell. 

Visual puns and effective jump cuts make for some good jokes in this short. The closing moments contain some very queasy special effects which may elicit more of a frightened “ahhh” than a tickled “haha” from audiences. 

Many of the shorts deal with things that have near-universal appeal to children. From snails and other creepy-crawlies to all sorts of contraptions and gizmos. 

The trick photography-laden Mr Windibank Finds a Thing, is the latest in a series of short films by Tom Shiner in which Mr Windibank (James Harrison) discovers a gun that duplicates objects. 

Harrison plays the character with toon-like expressiveness and intensity. He is self-serious but deeply silly and the camera loves to fill the frame with Harrison’s mugging reaction shots as rubber ducks, gold rings and even Windibank himself are multiplied by the strange invention. 

The science-fiction shenanigans continue with Glitch, directed by Bonnie Dempsey and written by frequent collaborator Rodney Lee. 

Naomi (Amy Rose Ó Hanlon) is staying with her grandmother for the summer, spending most of her time indoors chasing high scores in video games. 

A time-lapse montage at the start of the film shows Naomi engrossed in the game while her grandmother struggles with all manner of tasks behind her. Helen Norton puts in a great physical performance as Naomi’s grandmother. 

A dead console and some encouragement from Gran sends Naomi outside to explore the local area with Sam (Matilda Gavin), a girl from the next house over.

Naomi approaches Sam just as her body is possessed by an intergalactic being named Glitch. Some special effects and a change of hair colour indicate that Sam’s body is now in Glitch’s control. 

Glitch is a gamer like Naomi, only her avatar is made of flesh and bone instead of pixels. 

Glitch is pursued by other white-haired aliens who snatch the bodies of local bystanders: the postman, the baker, a nun and so on. They’re after Glitch for going over her screen-time allowance. 

What follows is a fairly high-intensity chase caper. Many of the gags are slapstick in nature and there’s a very high energy to the action. The two leads are also very charming in their roles, both discovering what the world around them has to offer in a similar way. Cozy and cheery stuff.

A couple of cartoons are also featured. Cinemaniacs, animated by youngster Mikey Mahon, has an enthusiastic moviegoer face an ever-worsening parade of bad cinema etiquette. His theatre-mates talk on the phone, eat loudly, kick chairs and so on. 

The expressiveness of the animation has that memetic look that definitely places it in the here and now of things. Its style is recognisable as a variation on the Newgrounds detailed stick figures. But Mahon gets plenty of laughs with exaggerated voice over and sound effects.

No Worries!, another Irish animation, by Chris Dicker, sees 10-year-old PJ’s anxiety over the new school year manifest itself as a gorilla. This short was made in association with D11 Stories and has that Creature Comforts quality of characters speaking in their own words. 

I especially liked the bold character designs, which were somewhere between something you’d see on a packet of cereal and between the pages of a schooltime Christmas annual. 

These films, short as they are, show a lot of imagination and talent. With stories and visuals reach beyond the borders of the frame and beyond the running time.  

Children made many of these films, or helped make others. It’s exciting to think of how these stories will spark creativity among their peers and elders, as well as entertain and amuse. 

Kidz Filmz screens as part of the Dublin International Comedy Film Festival in Tailors’ Hall from 11am this Saturday, 29 November.