Adolescent auteurs take center stage at local film fest
CITYWIDE It’s the opportunity of a lifetime for the Steven Spielberg and Cameron Crowe hopefuls in Santa Monica.
Nineteen aspiring producers and directors will let their best stuff roll this weekend during the Second Annual Santa Monica Teen Film Festival (SMTFF), which showcases the best and brightest the city has to offer in the world of cinema.
Sponsored by the Cultural Affairs Division of the city of Santa Monica, the SMTFF was created in 2006 to provide an avenue through which middle to high school students could exhibit short films, encouraging the teenagers to pursue dreams of becoming a filmmaker, making it more than just a hobby.
“The whole concept behind the festival is mentoring kids who want to get into filmmaking,”said Justin Yoffe,the producer of the SMTFF and Cultural Affairs Supervisor for City Hall.
The film festival attracted 75 entries this year from teenagers around the country, ranging in age between 13 to 18 years old. The number of submissions was narrowed to the top 19 films, to be presented at the Miles Playhouse and the Santa Monica Public Library Auditorium today and Sunday.
Films range in length from three to 25 minutes long,covering all genres, including live-action, documentary and animation.
A panelist composed of four industry professionals and five local teenagers will screen each film and grade them based on criteria of originality, professionalism, uniqueness and quality of shots.
For the first time this year, a local teenage participant will be awarded the Santa Monica Budding Filmmaker award, given to the best-produced work by a Santa Monica kid.
The award winner will have the opportunity to spend a day on the set of “Jack and the Beanstalk,” currently being filmed at Ren-Mar Studios in Hollywood.
The overall winner of the weekend film festival — the best of the best — will be given the chance to sit down and talk about their career goals with the president of 2929 Entertainment, a distributor of art house features that has released “Good Night, and Good Luck,” and “Akeelah and the Bee.”
Some of the winning films could be aired on CityTV to fill time in between programming, said Kenneth Hinegardner of CityTV, who with his experience in television and film played a part in selecting the finalists.
In a city filled with professional filmmakers, many of the teenagers in Santa Monica have natural abilities... an eye for film, Hinegardner said. The film festival provides an outlet for the teenagers that one day hope to become directors and producers themselves.
“It really gives them the opportunity to get together and see what other kids are making,” Hinegardner said.“This is a great thing — getting together in a very formal environment at Miles Playhouse and the Main Library, and to be able to show their work in front of a vast audience.”
The film festival was the brainchild of Yoffe, who coordinates the Downbeat 720 performance lab program for high school students at Miles Playhouse. He enlisted the help of certain staff members at Virginia Avenue Park, Santa Monica Public Library and CityTV, all of whom had different contacts with teenagers.
With only three weeks to pull it off, last year’s inaugural festival received just 11 submissions, but the attendance was overwhelming, letting organizers know that they had something popular going.
“It’s all about encouraging the art of filmmaking and showcasing the work of young kids,” Yoffe said.
SMTFF will be held tonight at 7 p.m. at Miles Memorial Playhouse (1130 Lincoln Blvd.), and on Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Santa Monica Public Library Auditorium (601 Santa Monica Blvd.). Admission is free. For more information, call (310) 458-8634.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 16, 2007. Read the original PDF.