Christopher Farina

Concerned citizen, Filmmaker, Parent

Chris Farina was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, near the setting of his first award-winning documentary film, Route 40. This was a portrait of the roadside community along Pulaski Highway, a five mile stretch of urban highway in east Baltimore. His second film, West Main Street, continued this interest in roadside settings, exploring the Main Street community of Charlottesville, Virginia, where Farina moved for his undergraduate education at the University of Virginia, and still resides. Both independently-produced films portray people living and/or working in familiar American settings that receive little media attention. Both take settings that people are usually only familiar with as they look through their car’s windshield as they drive by. Each is guided by the principle of respect for the individuals portrayed, allowing them to tell the story of their lives and their community. Subsequently, he has worked with fellow Charlottesville filmmaker, and Academy Award winner, Paul Wagner on two films, The James River, and Angels. His most recent film, World Peace and other 4th-Grade Achievements had its world premiere at the South by the Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas, in March, 2010. It is a one-hour portrait of public school teacher, and TED2011 Speaker, John Hunter, and his 4th-Grade students’ participation in an educational exercise that he created called the World Peace Game. The film follows these nine- and ten-year old students over an eight-week period as they assume roles as world leaders responding to an ongoing series of military, economic and environmental crises. This interactive experience transforms the students from children of a neighborhood school to citizens of the world. Interweaved throughout the film is Hunter’s own remarkable story. As a child of the rural south he was first taught in the African-American segregated school system where his mother was his own 4th-Grade teacher, he then was part of the first group of seven students to integrate his area’s previously all-white school, before subsequently traveling extensively as a young man to China, Japan and India. This exploration of Eastern religions and cultures led directly to his creation of the World Peace Game. World Peace and other 4th-Grade Achievements has received numerous festival awards, including the Audience Award for Best Film at its international premiere at the Bergen International Film Festival in Bergen, Norway. It was also a finalist for the Japan Prize, an educational media competition of NHK-Television in Tokyo, where the film was shown to the Conference’s international attendees. The film has begun a series of educational screenings. Among others, it has already having been shown at Georgetown University, the Universities of Virginia and Pennsylvania, and will be screened at Harvard University in April. In 2011 it will be distributed to schools throughout Norway and Estonia and has recently arranged for television broadcast in Israel and South Korea. We are presently exploring all broadcast opportunities in the U.S. and abroad, while keeping in mind our greatest mission, to influence, teach and inspire educators worldwide. Farina’s next film is also set in Charlottesville, Virginia. It focuses on the development/preservation project of the Jefferson School. This school was the only school for the African-American community of Charlottesville during legalized segregation. The building, left in disrepair for years, is now about to undergo substantial renovation led by an innovative community public/private partnership to preserve the building, honoring its past importance to the community, while re-designing it to be used as a Community Center, bringing together non-profits such as a Senior Center, a Literacy group, and other educational organizations. A chief component of this work is to work with the Jefferson School Alumni to create a heritage museum and performance space that would both honor its past and keep it relevant for the present-day community. The film will follow the construction work while interweaving the stories and memories of the School’s former students, documenting its past while revealing its future. We hope it the film might influence and inspire future innovative efforts in other communities to consider how to preserve its history while converting historical buildings for 21st century application. An interesting component of this film is that one of the interviews in Farina’s past film West Main Street, was Rebecca McGinnis, who taught at the Jefferson school from 1915-1960. She was a true and unsung community hero, and he will be making this future film as a way of honoring her and her work.

I'm passionate about listening to others. I believe this first began with my father's stories about growing up in Baltimore shared at my Sicilian grandparents' table as we ate wonderful meals.

See above - The World Peace Game, John Hunter's reamarkable educational exercise through which he teaches children the "work of peace". The students experience the positive impact and windows of opportunity that emerge through effective collaboration and refined communication. Meaning is constructed out of chaos, new creative solutions are proposed, and they learn how to live and work comfortably in the unknown. The children learn to think for themselves, and look within themselves for answers to questions which do not have simple right or wrong answers. And I think most importantly, they learn that in order to take care of themselves, they must take care of each other. I first learned this from interviewing a 12 year-old who had played the Game two years earlier, and I can not think of anything more important that we can be teaching our children.

2011 will be my first TED experience. I am extremely excited, and certainly hope that many memories and stories will be created in the near future.