Edgewood Student Films Selected for Screening

Five 90-second films produced by students at Edgewood Middle School were selected to be shown at a gala screening at Adventure Stage in Chicago this Sunday, January 25 as part of the Newberry Film Festival.

When Edgewood 6th grade English Language Arts teacher Suzanne Ott learned about the 90-second Newbery Film Festival through a colleague at the Highland Park Public Library, she thought it would be a great way to encourage her students to read great books and share them with others.

The film festival asks student filmmakers to tell the entire story of a Newbery-award winning book in 90 seconds or less.

“It’s different than making a trailer for a book, because they have to tell the complete story,” Ott said. She thought it was such a creative idea that she encouraged and got all 70 of her students to participate and enter their work into the festival.

The best videos are selected to be shown at gala in screenings New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Oakland, Minneapolis, Portland and Tacoma. Ott and her students received exciting news over the weekend that out of hundreds of entries received, five student videos were chosen to be shown at the Chicago screening this weekend.

Congratulations go to:

• Sydney Schenk: Rules
• Jordana Hozman: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
• Evan Diethrich: The Egypt Game
• Kevin Beck and Mason Goldbaum: Bomb (pictured in photo at top right)
• Leah Rosenberg, Lindsay Schwartz and Emily Libman: Holes

You can come out and see their debut this Sunday January 25 at Adventure Stage Chicago, 1012 N Noble St., Chicago.