Directed by Ignacio Agüero • Documentary • 1988 • 55 minutes

100 CHILDREN WAITING FOR A TRAIN poetically tells the story of a group of Chilean children who discover a larger reality - and a different world - through the cinema.

Each Saturday, Alicia Vega transforms the chapel of Lo Hermida into a film screening room as she conducts a workshop for children under the auspices of the Catholic church. The hundred or so children involved had never seen a movie, and in the workshop they see and learn about the cinema: photograms and moving images, projection, camera angles and movement, film genres, and much more. And they watch movies: Chaplin, Disney, Lamorisse's THE RED BALLOON, the Lumieres' THE ARRIVAL OF THE TRAIN TO THE STATION. Finally, each child designs his own film with drawings.

And then, for the first time in most of their lives, the children got to the movies in downtown Santiago.

"Gracefully photographed and simply produced, the documentary captures the wonder of discovery as these children's imaginations are tickled with celluloid magic and caring attention."—Pat Aufderheide, In These Times