In college, I took a class in modern fantasy literature taught by a (yes, geeky) female Tolkien scholar, and many of the most rabid Tolkien fans among my fairly nerdy students at the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth are young women, ages 11 to 15. Girls can be geeks too, and estrogen is no barrier to the appreciation of the great artistry of Tolkien's books and Jackson's films.
The jury – which also included a renowned children's film director, a member of the Farabi Cinema Foundation, Ms Keramati and UNICEF staff – presented a special award to Amir Shahab Razavian, for his film "Journey of Time", which uses a blend of fiction and fantasy to teach life skills to children.
But if fantasy fiction has taught us anything it's that the timestream flows both way.
He doesn't want to give in to the fantasy that poems taught to and songs bought by millions of people are also subversive of the established order.
Arguably, it is Tolkien who taught fantasy game designers about the importance of mythological backstory, of establishing aeons of conflict and lore, lending authenticity to entirely imagined worlds.
He lived in a fantasy world and taught me the importance of imagination from an early age.
She said most people are taught a "fantasy history" that ignored or downplayed the widespread slaughter of her people and the theft of their traditional lands, the damming of their rivers, and the deliberate slaughter of bison.
That exhibition made the point many artists do: that in South Florida when they were growing up, the prevalence of fashion shoots, "Miami Vice" television tapings and the tradition of simulation and fantasy embodied by Disney World, taught them to seduce their viewers with deceptively user-friendly works and plenty of "let's pretend".
As psychologist Oliver James put it in his book The Selfish Capitalist, "in the entrepreneurial fantasy society," we are taught "that only the affluent are winners and that access to the top is open to anyone willing to work hard enough, regardless of their familial, ethnic or social background – if you do not succeed, there is only one person to blame".
Fantasy is important, Mitchell taught her, but reality is even more so.
