The School as Microcosm of Society
friday june 8 | 10.00 hrs

Een Klasse Apart
Someone’s intellectual disability is often not visible from the outside. Many intellectual disabled youths develop behaviour disturbances because of incapacity and incomprehension, which makes their lives even harder. The other way around, many behavioral disturbed youths actually appear to be intellectually disabled, although unnoticed. The Kingmaschool offers secondary education to children with serious learning disabilities, and provides these youths with tangible grips and access to grab their last chance at a future. With open sight the students of this school are being followed. ‘A Touch of Class’ offers the viewer in three documents a chance to form an honest opinion about this hardly elucidated side of society. The makers have filmed in the school every day for a year. The result is an important document in the style of the cinéma vérité, without interviews and voice-over.

Mascha and Manfred Poppenk (The Netherlands) | The Netherlands | 2006 | 170 min | English subtitles

camera: Deen van der Zaken
sound: Manfred Poppenk
editor: Manfred Poppenk
producer: Mascha Poppenk

contact: Mascha and Manfred Poppenk (Filmmij.)
t: +31 255525567
w: www.filmmij.nl

Mascha Poppenk-Bouwens is a director and producer, having studied amongst others at Portsmouth University and Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht. Manfred Poppenk specialized in film and video editing and production at the Nederlandse Film en Televisie Academie. Mascha and Manfred met in Africa, while recording the nature film ‘Serengeti Symphony’, together with multiple Emmy-award winner Baron Hugo van Lawick. From that moment on the couple joined their qualities in filmmij. Together they produce documentaries that reflect on reality as closely as possible. Documentaries ‘pur sang’, without any staging or directing. ‘A Touch of Class’ is their most daring project.