- A group of elementary students were identified as gifted, Harry Killas and Ric Beairsto documented their search for the right high school in their documentary Superkids. Ten years later, Harry and Ric check up on their progress
- In 2004, a small group of elementary students were identified as gifted, and filmmakers Harry Killas and Ric Beairsto (This Is A Picture) documented their search for the right high school in their documentary Superkids. Ten years later, Harry and Ric check up on their progress and ask how well their educational choices served them... In the vein of Michael Apted's famous 7-Up series, the Vancouver-made documentary Superkids 2 shows how difficult it is for children, parents and educationalists to cope with kids whose IQ outstrips their peers. As teenagers, the five students featured here went on different paths, to mini-schools, to fast-track programmes at UBC and elsewhere, but their choices all involved sacrifices of one kind or another, and while a few have flourished, others have struggled to find their place in the adult world - or have redefined what "success" means to them. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cesarini Bros. Entertainment in association with Laughing Mountain Communications Inc., is pleased to announce the completion of SUPERKIDS 2, a feature-length documentary, completed over a period of more than 10 years, which explores the lives of five young people identified as 'gifted' when they were still children.
The documentary first finds them in 2004, as elementary school students who have been inducted into a segregated class for gifted learners within the Vancouver school system. Each of the children is engaged in the surprisingly competitive and challenging task of trying to find the correct fit for themselves at a local high school. Several of them are attempting to gain admission to a radically accelerated program for gifted children at The University of British Columbia which will see them enter university proper at an age as young as 14.
The documentary then finds them as young twenty-somethings in Vancouver, San Francisco, Nashville, and New York as they complete their formal education, and set out upon careers. From this later perspective, they are able to actively reflect on their experiences at school, both public and private, and they express a variety of opinions on the benefits and disadvantages of the unusual educational pathways they followed.
Throughout the documentary, the stories of the 'superkids' are told against a backdrop of international experts who offer a sharp critique of the complex issues of identification, labeling, segregation, and acceleration that each of these young adults has been forced to contend with.
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Production of SUPERKIDS 2 was part of a larger research project supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada through the auspices of Emily Carr University of Art + Design and the University of British Columbia. Marion Porath, an educator, and scholar interviewed by the filmmakers for the first documentary was the Director of Research for SUPERKIDS 2.
As part of the production of SUPERKIDS 2, more than 20 international experts in the field of gifted education were interviewed by Killas and Beairsto in Boston, New York, Washington, London, Amsterdam, and Vancouver. With the benefit of time, a new perspective on the challenges of educating our most able students emerged in these interviews, and it is the hope of the filmmakers that this new critique will resonate with children and parents everywhere, regardless of the educational opportunities being offered them. Essentially, what the documentary subjects in SUPERKIDS 2-children parents, and experts-are advocating for is an educational model designed to appropriately challenge students everywhere, whatever their situation, talent, or intellectual ability.
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