Festival provides outlet for young directors
GERMANTOWN >> The Philadelphia Youth Film Festival is at once an opportunity for high school students to display their creative talents and artistic vision and also an introduction to the real-world aspects of filmmaking.
The event, which was held for the second time this year, is organized and administered by students at Germantown Friends School but is open to students not just in the Philadelphia area but across the country and internationally as well.
Unlike many other film festivals, the PHYFF requires no entry fee.
The festival featured an allday workshop on the Germantown Friends campus Feb. 23 that concluded with screenings and the announcement of award winners in four different categories: Narrative Short, Documentary Short, Screenplay and Experimental/Other.
Noah Weinstein, a senior at Germantown Friends, was a codirector of the event; he also helped organize the inaugural film festival last year.
He noted it took a full year to prepare for this year’s event.
“There’s a lot of work to be done,” he said. “Between the logistics of finding judges and
people to run workshops [all of whom have connections to the film industry], publicity, trying to get people to the event, there is a very significant amount of work to be done to put on this festival.”
Sarah Detweiler teaches courses in digital media and computer science at Germantown Friends and serves as an adviser to the student committee that actually organizes the festival. She said the experience teaches the students about multitasking.
“I think the theme of this is having a lot of balls in the air at once,” she said. “It makes it really fun, and the kids doing it are really hardworking, but it also is a little bit crazy.
Raisa Stern also served as a co-director this year’s festival. Like Weinstein, she is a senior at Germantown Friends.
Stern noted the festival began as a way for students who make films on their own time, more or less as a hobby, to receive recognition for their effort. She explained it’s important to make the event accessible to any student who wants to participate.
“We want to support students throughout the city who may not have access to extensive film programs or professional equipment,” she said, “but who have a vision for a film they feel needs to be seen.”
Stephen Pu is a case in point. A native of Beijing, China, he came to the United States two years ago as a 16-year-old; he is now a junior at Germantown Friends.
Pu’s documentary, titled “Descendants of Tosni,”
“It’s incredibly important to have an event like this to empower students to keep making films and to give them skills that they might not already have and need in the future.” — Noah Weinstein, festival co-director
was deemed an Official Selection, meaning it was judged to be one of the 10 best in its category.
“It is about the experience of Asian Americans of different backgrounds,” Pu said. “What their stories are, how life was for them growing up in this country, whether as first-generation or second-generation immigrants, growing up in a predominantly white community.”
It took Pu a year to plan and execute his vision. He interviewed five subjects: two American students who were studying in China, a student at New York University, a teacher and a student at Penn Charter who is of both African and Asian descent.
“This subject is really interesting to me,” Pu said, “because I have an international background; I am an international student. I have a different perspective in terms of the cultural differences than other Asians people in this country. They have trouble perceiving themselves or realizing their identity. Growing up in another country where I was the majority, the exposure to another culture is really different.”
Weinstein said, in part because of the festival, Germantown Friends has introduced a series of filmmaking courses.
“The film program at GFS started last year with an intro to film class,” Stern said. “There were, I think, under 10 kids in the class, and I was one of them. Now it has expanded into this full film program. This yea, r we have two intro classes, and I’m in the advanced class, and next year, the program [is] expanding even more.”
Weinstein said the festival and events like it help ensure that students and aspiring filmmakers like Pu have a voice to address issues that concern them, regardless of their socioeconomic status and whether or not they are planning on the film industry as a career.
“We reached out to both private schools and public schools,” he said, “to try and promote this festival to people who might not usually have access to film professionals and have access to incredibly complicated film equipment.
“It’s incredibly important to have an event like this to empower students to keep making films and to give them skills that they might not already have and need in the future.”