Hollywood is Los Angeles’ biggest and most profitable industry, but the vast majority of young Angelenos grow up without any idea how to access the magical world of moviemaking.
Los Angeles City Council District 12 Councilmember John Lee doesn’t think that is right, and through a partnership with the Los Angeles Unified School District runs a film festival specifically for students in the San Fernando Valley.
“We are in the backyard of Hollywood, we never know if the next Scorsese is going to come out from one of our schools, so we wanted to expose our kids to all the different parts of what it takes to put a movie together,” Lee explains.
The Making Movies that Matter Student Short Film Festival is the largest student film festival in the state and has generated more than 500 movies created by students at 100 schools over four years. The festival was held in 2016, 2017 and 2018 — and this year Lee brought it back bigger than before with a spectacular May 18 event that drew more than 1,600 attendees from 32 LAUSD schools.
Part of what is special about the program is that students don’t just study filmmaking in theory, they get an opportunity to spend ten weeks working closely with industry professions to learn what it takes to bring a movie to the big screen.
“We are bringing in people with real-world experience in a myriad of different moviemaking positions into our classroom, so these kids are not learning from a book, but they are getting real hands-on experience learning from people who are doing that job today,” said Lee.
And beyond that, students get the chance to walk the red carpet and vie for cinematic glory at a culminating showcase where a panel of judges assembled by Lee gives out awards in four categories: documentary, fictional short, public service announcement and animated short.
The 2023 festival took place at Cal State University Northridge’s stunning Soraya Theater, one of the San Fernando Valley’s premiere performing…
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