World Peace and Other 4th Grade Achievements, Chris Farina’s documentary about a classroom of school children trying to solve global policy issues while maintaining their friendships with one another, is gripping, funny, and strangely, almost eerily revealing of human nature.

Farina, who lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, was introduced to a charismatic and dedicated teacher, John Hunter, who created The World Peace Game more than 30 years ago to encourage children to think about peace and their own role in the world before, as adults, their perceptions of the world harden. The children are delegated to one of four fictional countries (or the United Nations, for example) and, over the course of eight weeks in Hunter’s classroom, work out issues such as global warming while variously attempting to sabotage or maintain relations with other nations. A number of them eventually adopt the mantle of international relations with a delicate but cutting precision worthy of Henry Kissinger, a process that is both endearing and unnerving to watch.

Farina, who owns a popular parking lot in Charlottesville and, strangely enough, appears in The Parking Lot Movie, a documentary premiering in the Emerging Visions section of this year’s festival, recently answered a few of our questions.

SXSW: Do you have a child participating in The World Peace Game at school, or how did you come across this story?

Farina: Somebody introduced me to John [Hunter], basically, so I came in to see his class. I live in Charlottesville and my kids are both in school and I was blown away more than anything else not by the exercise but the relationship that was so obvious between a good teacher and good students. John is such a master teacher, and he treats them with so much respect and compassion and humor, so for me it started with just wanting to capture the beauty of that and then as I became more familiar with the game, I watched it a couple of times before we filmed, and I became more enamored of it and that became part of the passion.

SXSW: There’s quite a bit of drama in that classroom. Did you have more than one camera operator, or how did you capture it all?

Farina: It was pretty tough. I wasn’t the camera man, but there was one camera man, one sound guy, and one assistant. We did minimal lighting, but there was someone else there helping as needed. The situation is so chaotic – 30 kids going around in circles – that it was a bit of a struggle about how to capture what was going on. We had a minimal budget; we didn’t have a huge number of shooting days.

Our idea was, “How do we narrow in on a few of the kids?” with the idea that the audience would experience the process if they got to know some of the kids. Those were the kids whose homes we went to.

SXSW: Was it difficult to get permission to film the children?

Farina: The teacher was well-loved and we also had a meeting with the parents. There were a couple of them that needed a little massaging for fear of what happens with images in the digital age and we got the releases but we kept them abreast of the film. They’ve almost all seen this film. I expected it to be more of a problem than it was. It was the parents trusting the teacher. They thought, “This is great that this teacher is getting some recognition.”

SXSW: Do you think the film reveals that children act like little adults, or that adult politicians sometimes act like children?

Farina: Not to sound like a non-answer, but it’s a combination of the two. Children are not like little adults because they are more open to thinking outside of the box. They can have a knock-down, drag-out fight and be playing on the playground 15 minutes later. On the other hand, I do think their personalities can get in the way of solving problems – it’s something John says in the film, people not realizing they’re part of the problem. They think the problem’s outside themselves. I think that’s pretty similar to adults.

I’m not going to pretend to be political about this, but it’s pretty obvious, when you look at Congress and these 10-year-olds, to say they’re pretty similar. But John is trying to get to kids before they have a fixed idea of how the world works, and to teach them about being comfortable with the unknown.

SXSW: As you were thinking about how to structure the film, were there other documentaries you looked to?

Farina: I almost feel like I’ve had that same perspective that John has, to not have a structure, to not impose your ideas before you have the film. But on the other hand, having such a limited budget, you had to have some idea of how it would be put together.

The structure was really dictated by the game itself. We thought about going outside the school, archival footage of the Yalta conference, originally there were going to be three NPR news bites and we just decided not to do it. I thought that was going to be telling people too much what to think. It was a little more timeless just staying in that school room. Interviewing John, I just realized what a wonderful interview I have, so the film shifted a bit more towards him and away from the children.

SXSW: What does it feel like to be the subject of one documentary at this year’s festival and the director of another one?

Farina: It’s really weird. I haven’t seen The Parking Lot Movie – it’s even weirder that way. My friends are saying, “You’re crazy – you’ve got to see this thing before you get down there.” I’ve heard good things about it; the fact it’s in the festival gives it a certain validity. I’m going on a certain trust. I think the director has affection for the parking lot. But otherwise, it’s really weird – you’re working for four years on this film and people are asking about The Parking Lot Movie. I don’t mind it, but it is a little odd.

Interview by Claiborne Smith