On The Bus by Aaron Chan

Okay!
Today I went to the Sprockets Toronto International Film Festival for Children with the CyberARTS classes of Year one to four. We were shown many movies in the time span of an hour and a half, and then had a sit-down with some of the script writers and directors of the movies.

These movies were animated, acted, or a documentary of creepy, very creepy bugs. But what really interested me was a movie called, "On The Bus".

"On The Bus" is a short film directed by Tracy D Smith, written by Aaron Chan, starring Jeffrey Bowyer Chapman and Giles Panton. However, before you read the rest of the post I would like you to please watch this video first.



Well, I hope you watched the video, because this post will make more sense if you did.

In the movie, you can see that the boy Jeremy is talking to Sean, the boy sitting in front of him. Sean keeps talking to Jeremy, telling him to "just talk to me!".
When he says this, you know something is wrong.
Is this a daydream, like Sarah suggests in the beginning, or is it really happening? But then again, Sean did just show up out of nowhere.

SO many questions!!

At the end of the movie, Sean suddenly disappears and then you see him walk right back onto the bus. He looks around and, despite all of the empty seats, sits right next to Jeremy! AT the very, very end the two boys turn to look at each other and I'd love to hear in the comment section what your reaction to what happened after was.

Mine? Well, when the screen turned black and the movie stopped I slunk into my seat in embarrassment after I howled, "what?!!" But I really did like the movie.



After, during the talk with the directors/ script writers I was able to talk to Aaron Chan and ask him a quick question.

"So how did you come up with the idea for 'On The Bus?'."

Aaron told me that he had expected that question sometime, and that it was based on something that he would always do as a teen on the bus. He told me- or really, the crowd- that if there was an empty seat in front of him on the bus we would pretend the guy he liked was sitting in front of him and they were talking.

He continued on, however my memory fails me as the conversation was over six and a half hours ago. And I feel bad about not remembering, which I do apologize for, really.

"On The Bus" has been featured at many festivals and award ceremonies such as the Long Island Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, Washougal International Film Festival, Vues d'en Face, Mezipatra Queer Film Festival, Paris Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, and in London, alllll over the United States and finally here in Canada.

Over all I really quite enjoyed the video, and it was good to see that something was brought into the festival about homophobia. Being part of the LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer) community, I was glad to see that something was shown. Although I didn't expect the reaction from the audience when they kissed- most people went 'awww'- I was glad to see it was accepted.