More than 700 students from Bermuda's primary, middle and secondary school systems will attend a film screening today at Liberty Theatre as the BIFF Kids Film Festival unveils its first School Screening Programme.

Primary school students will attend screenings at 10 a.m. and 11.15 a.m., while middle and secondary school students will attend a screening at 1 p.m. Thirteen schools from across Bermuda will have classes at the screenings.

Primary students will hear three books read aloud, with images from the books projected on screen, and then will view films adapted from those books. The featured books/films are "I Lost My Bear", "Where the Wild Things Are", and "The Dot", all of which are produced by Scholastic, the largest publisher and distributor of children's books in the United States.

Christian Zabriskie, assistant youth librarian at the Bermuda National Library, Youth Division, will lead a discussion with the students comparing the stories in book and film form. Mr. Zabriskie also sits on the management committee of BIFF Kids.

Middle and secondary school students will view two films having a theme of peace studies.

"Old Enough to Know Better" is an award-winning short film that documents the mass school walkouts by thousands of students in the United Kingdom in protest against the Iraq war.

The feature film, "Teaching Peace in a Time of War", a co-production of Canada's National Film Board and Triad Teaching Peace Productions Ltd, will also screen. The film introduces us to Hetty Van Gurp, a Canadian mother whose son died as the result of bullying and who now seeks to teach young people how to resolve conflicts in a more peaceful manner.

In the film, she travels to Vasa Pelagic School in Belgrade, Serbia, where she meets a group of students and teachers who have known only war and whose language reflects that reality. Educators, and students, are won over by Hetty's brand of conflict prevention and resolution, where the ultimate goal is to empower children to shape their destinies more positively.

"The positive response to our first school screening programme has been very gratifying," Mr. Zabriskie says. "We are pleased to have such great support from teachers in the community, and we are delighted to communicate such positive messages to students in Bermuda."