The StoryFaces Movie

The StoryFaces Movie — now available for streaming

Watch the Movie

We put this together to replace my scheduled performances for schools and libraries during 2020-21, and now we’ve made it available to stream for anyone.

Here are some of my favorite stories, chosen to delight viewers and inspire the imagination, told in creative ways designed to encourage viewers to imagine their own stories and their own ways to tell them. “The Tiger That Went to the House of the Sun” and “The Amazing Face Story”, two of my uniquely animated original StoryFaces tales, come to life on the faces of audience volunteers in video footage shot prior to the pandemic. Also included is an interactive telling of the Aesop Fable “The Lion and the Mouse” and a newly illustrated version of the inspirational hero tale from ancient China, “Li Chi Slays the Dragon”.

—— The Amazing Face Story At Home Activity ——

The centerpiece of the movie is “The Amazing Face Story Activity” to give kids a new d.i.y. way to create their own tales at home or in class to show and tell. In “chalk-talk” style, I show viewers this activity they can do themselves with pencil and paper. This hands-on activity was developed in school residencies to give students their own experience in the visual storytelling they see me use to tell my tales. The goal is to get kids to create an original story starring themselves, first through a drawing exercise, then as a written story meant to be told. See the The Amazing Face Story Activity webpage for instructions, examples and optional drawing form for this d.i.y. at home/in class activity.

Scroll Down for Teacher’s Guide information, including Story Content, Discussion Topics, Activities and “The Power of a Story” essay.

The StoryFaces Movie is 45 minutes long and suitable for family audiences and students grades K – 6.  Please contact us for information about streaming the video.

email: info@agostinoarts.com or call: 516-771-8086.

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———  TEACHER’S GUIDE  ———

My intention is to move viewers with an experience of the traditional power and value of storytelling. Through creative and surprising tellings, I will expand their understanding of how a tale can be told while engaging their imaginations so as to inspire them to create their own stories.

—— Story Content and Discussion Topics ——

My Amazing Face Story  uses my visual storytelling technique to tell the tale of how I learned to do this art. This “living cartoon” shows kids right from the start that there is more than one way to tell a story — and that it will be fun.  

>  DISCUSS the multiple methods used here to tell the tale: talking and painting, sound effects, pop culture references, acting/gestures, and animation of the facepaint. 

> ASK: Do you know other examples of a story told in more than one way?

The Amazing Story Face Activity Demonstration:  how to create your own Amazing Face Story starting with a drawing, to loosen imaginations and offer an alternative to writing as a way to develop an idea. 

>See the separate Amazing Face Story Activity page and additional teacher’s guide for how I turned my own story into this hands-on activity in which students create their own original story.

Aesop’s Fable The Lion And The Mouse  is as an example of how traditional stories survive through generations, passed down from adult to child, because of lessons they contain. My playful, theatrical style serves as a model and encouragement for young storytellers to use voices, characters and acting to bring a tale to life.

> ASK about fables/folktales kids may know, how they learned them? Books, movies, bed time stories? Are there stories most everybody knows, like The Tortoise and the Hare? 

> TELL a familiar tale collectively in class or over Zoom as a circle story.

> DO: Have students act out story characters, like the lion or mouse, or characters from stories they know or create. Ask them what their characters might sound like, or to show you what kind of faces they would make?

Li Chi Slays The Dragon  is a hero tale from ancient China. Hero tales are some of our oldest stories, and still rule the box office in Marvel and DC movies.

> ASK: What makes someone a hero? Discussion starter: “a hero is someone who will risk themself in order to help others” — which would include Li Chi as well as the mouse and tiger in these tales, along with most modern movie heroes and many people in our everyday lives.

> ASK: Who are your heroes from a story/ from your life?

> DISCUSS: Why do hero tales survive? Fables exist to preserve lessons learned; hero tales function more to inspire individuals to take action and change the world. 

> ASK: What are you inspired to do by your heroes?

The Tiger That Went To The House Of The Sun  is my original story, exploring themes of sacrifice and transformation, as a tiger goes on a quest to save the forest.

> DISCUSS: Transformation through trial: the tiger in my tale is changed by the journey. A common trope in folktales (and video games) is of the hero character being transformed in appearance or gaining special qualities after combat or facing danger.

> DISCUSS: Are superhero and horror movies today’s myths and folklore? Today, special effects in movies take us into worlds where superheroes battle monsters, much as makeup and masks once brought to life the gods and myths in the rituals of our ancestors.

——— Activities ——— 

Some kids may be more comfortable with words than others, some may love to draw and some may start to shine when they are in front performing. I want to give all students the option to find their inspiration where they can, and then to bring that confidence into other areas to complete the full process of creating and presenting a visual story. Here are some suggestions offering multiple avenues into creating a story.

See the separate page for the Amazing Face Story Activity that I demonstrate in the video — with instructions, drawing form and examples.

WRITEa story with a creative reason for why an unusual animal looks or acts the way it does, as my tiger tale explains their colors and stripes — a “Just So” type story.

> ADVANCED STEP: Students could research the real scientific reasons for the animal’s habits and appearance and weave them into the tale.

DRAWa Movie Poster for your story. Take a story (one of your own, one of mine, folktales, etc.) and create a poster for it — synthesizing a narrative into a visual image. Maybe a single image poster that sums up the whole story (like the Jaws poster with the shark rising from the bottom) or a show everything poster (like the Star Wars posters with all the characters and little scenes). 

CREATE a “found image” story. Using photographs you’ve taken, or images from other resources, create an original visual story or illustrations for a story you’ve written. To find images for the Li Chi and Tiger stories I searched through 40 years of my painted faces.

RE-CREATE a familiar tale. Take a story you know and change the characters into animals, or change their temperament, motives, genders, time periods, etc., and see what else changes.

RE-USE and RE-PURPOSE: As a professional artist I am constantly re-using ideas, images characters and resources in new ways and different stories to find deeper meaning in them.

——— Telling ———

It’s important to give kids the chance to share their stories however possible, in school or at home, and especially in repeated tellings if you can. Explore possibilities for sharing presentations online, to have students record themselves, to create videos with images and narration, to create galleries of story pictures and text.

A story grows in the telling and changes as your audience responds. You never really understand the full meaning of a story until you tell it, and young story creators need the experience of presenting and interacting with audience response.

Download the 2 page pdf of this Teachers GuideDownload

I believe that an important part of my role as a visiting artist is to show kids there are other options: “If I can do this (or more practically: if I can make a living doing this), then you can do anything”.  So I am endlessly encouraging of kids to fully engage their imaginations in discussion or as they create their own stories. My general answer to any questions about what a student wants to draw or write is “go ahead” or “try it and see what happens”. I want them to think of themselves as artists, to engage in new ideas and to dream big.

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—— The Power of a Story: why I do storytelling ——

Who won the race, the tortoise or the hare? We all know the answer, and we know it from a story. With that story comes an intrinsic reminder about the value of perseverance: slow and steady wins the race. This is why such stories survive. The traditional function of folktales to pass wisdom and cultural information on to children via entertaining stories they will remember (and repeat to their children) is still effective today. We remember stories. They are the building blocks of memory. Current memory research says that we are always telling ourselves the stories of our own lives, creating memories by repackaging our experiences into stories to retain and recall them, and, importantly, how we re-write those experiences effects the choices we make when presented with similar opportunities in the future — so even our personal stories serve to retain life-lessons in the same way as Aesop’s Fables do.

The power of a story also resides in its ability to inspire the listeners and elevate their understanding of what they can achieve beyond their personal experiences, as in the Native American tale of the mouse who becomes an eagle through his acts of compassion, or the ancient Chinese legend of the brave maiden Li Chi who slays a dragon then chastises the spirits of the maidens sent to sacrifice before her for not taking care of the dragon themselves. Taking control of our life through the story we make of it is the essential lesson of the hero tale. 

Hero tales are the original motivational programs, designed and time-tested to inspire positive behavior and exemplify attributes such as courage, perseverance, intelligence and self-sacrifice. These types of tales are important for older kids and teenagers to hear as they begin to deal with personal responsibility and the emotional turmoils of life, questioning who they are and seeing themselves as either victims or heros in a challenging world. Folktales also allow for ways to discuss real life more abstractly, through parables and imaginary characters, so that a story can approach difficult subjects without being too personal.

Young people need to hear stories, both traditional folktales and original life stories, not only for their ability to pass on received wisdom but also for the insight they give kids into understanding the story of their own life, into taking control of how they write that story. Beginning with the concentration skills that develop from listening to stories, the ability to parse the essence of the story within a folktale, anecdote, life experience, etc., engages higher reasoning and comprehension skills that can be applied directly to writing, reading and all forms of problem solving.

When I am telling a story to an audience, what I am listening to is their silence — when  the audience is silent I know they are experiencing the story for themselves, living it. It is becoming their story too. In that silence I recall that this is something we humans have done from our very beginning. The power of a story is an essential expression of human consciousness: to understand ourselves better by learning about others, to reach forward into the future through what we pass on to our children and to take control of who we are and all that we dream of becoming.

“The Power of a Story” pdf:Download

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