At a Film Festival, the Works of Grade-School Auteurs

“Basketball vs. Dancing,” as shown at the Movietown Film Festival. Click to watch other selections.

The directors and actors milling around the red carpet at the Movietown Film Festival were as excited as any Hollywood neophytes about to see their work on the big screen for the first time â€" but this crowd of filmmakers sipped their refreshments from juice boxes rather than Champagne flutes.

The films, which screened at Anthology Film Archives on April 9 before an enthusiastic, sometimes rowdy audience of nearly 80 students, parents and educators, were the work of two elementary school classes from the Neighborhood School on the Lower East Side. Both classes, made up of students from the first through fourth grades, had learned the basics of filmmaking during the past school year as part of a Tribeca Film Institute program called Tribeca Teaches.

The work was as adventurous as the young minds who produced it. Short stop-motion animations brought to mind abstract video installations. In “Basketball vs. Dancing,” inspired by Busby Berkeley’s elaborate music and dance numbers from the 1930s, a basketball player is plunged into an identity crisis, his slumber interrupted by dreams of choreographed dance. Upon awakening he declares: “I don’t want to be a basketball player. I want to be a dancer!” Applause erupted.

Other films included a six-part retelling of Albert Lamorisse’s Oscar-winning short film “The Red Balloon”; a dizzying remake of Charlie Chaplin’s slapstick comedy “The Immigrant”; and “Zombie Boxing,” about a pugilistic encounter with construction paper undead.

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times Filmmakers from the Neighborhood School on the Lower East Side watched their own work at a special screening at Anthology Film Archives.

Alexis Neider, who taught the class of first and second graders (many classes at the Neighborhood School combine different ages) with a teaching artist, Sarah Dahnke, said that her class had taken trips to the Museum of the Moving Image and watched genres many students had never seen before, like silent films and stop-motion animation. She said that her students’ tastes had expanded from “cartoons and Pixar” to include Charlie Chaplin and that “they have a much more broad sense of what’s out there in film.”

Ms. Neider and Ms. Dahnke designed their lessons to teach students as much about community as film literacy. Students worked at different jobs on each of their short films, with emphasis placed on each job as a necessary part of their filmmaking community (other Neighborhood School classrooms focused on different professions, like working in a restaurant.)

Ms. Neider said that one of her greatest worries was that students would be upset if they did not appear on-screen, but in the end there were no divas in her classroom.

“They don’t care at all” about being stars, she said. “That always makes me really happy because this is a community and they’re all parts of it, a microcosm.”

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times A young usher handed out programs.

The past school year was the first time Tribeca Teaches worked with elementary school students. The program introduces a teaching artist to classrooms in 19 public schools in New York City and two in Los Angeles. The teaching artist works with the class’s teacher to show students different facets of film work, from camerawork to editing to directing, and helps them make their own movies. Just under 20,000 students have participated since Tribeca Teaches started in 2007. It is complemented by the Tribeca Youth Screening Series, showings intended to foster critical thinking and expose schoolchildren to film genres they might otherwise miss.

Beth Janson, executive director of the Tribeca Film Institute, said she thought Tribeca Teaches was invaluable for a generation constantly bombarded by moving images. “We’re teaching them the skill to engage with what they see,” she said.

The films, which are available online, screened again at the Neighborhood School this week (none of the screenings were open to the general public.)

At Anthology, after the movies ended, the auteurs fielded questions from the audience.

Asked what was hardest about his job, Miles Manica, 7, a cameraman, said, “It was hard to stay still.” Lenexa Perez-Burgos, 7, said her job as a makeup artist was cool because she “got to use real makeup.” Eleven students raised their hands when asked if they would like to be actors or directors one day.

The students also seemed to have learned their lesson about community.

“We were kind of like a team,” said Milo Hoffman, 7. “It’s like you all have a job and you all work together.”

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times The young auteurs held court on the red carpet.