Joliet West Holds Student Film Festival

Students at Joliet West High School got a taste of what it’s like to be a filmmaker at the Freshmen Film Festival presented by the school’s World Affairs classes. A total of 34 students had their films nominated from Freshmen World Affairs classes taught by Meghan Culp, Shannon Hubbart, Jeff Jakob and Danielle Schmidt. 

Students were asked to create a five minute film demonstrating their knowledge of an international issue.  Each presentation included a student-created thesis detailing the global problem, current solution in place, and the overall effectiveness of that solution.  Students were also encouraged to develop an additional solution to solving the problem. 

Students worked for approximately one month researching their chosen topic and making their film. Then they published their films to YouTube, where their peers were able to watch the films and nominate the best ones.  The top films were shown in the auditorium at the Freshmen Film Festival. After viewing these films, students in the audience voted live through Twitter for the best film so that the results appeared instantly.  “We had over 1,000 views of our Twitter page that week,” said World Affairs teacher Meghan Culp, “with hundreds of responses to our tweets the day of the film festival.  It was great to see the students receive authentic support and feedback from their peers.” 

“It was fun,” said student audience member Yasmaine Aourani. “I was sitting by students I didn’t know, and we were able to bond over the movies as we commented on them.” 

The first place film was “AIDS/HIV in Africa” by Alexis Garcia, Areli Hernandez, and Taylor Styrczula. The second place film was “HIV/AIDS in Uganda” by Kristen Ames and Felipe Ortiz, and coming in third place was “Conflict Diamonds” by Brooklyn Johnson and Kaitlin Nordmeyer.  Students whose films placed in the top three won gift cards donated by local businesses that included a Party Package from Town and Country Lanes, free pizzas from Jet’s and Papa John’s, and gift cards to Niko’s Pizzeria and Portillo’s.

“I feel very proud of my film because it was a very long process to make the video, and all of our hard work paid off,’ said second place winner Brooklyn Johnson.

“It was great to have so much participation. The audience was also able to win gift cards for free pizzas by answering trivia questions on Twitter based on the student films they had just viewed,” said World Affairs teacher Shannon Hubbart. “Overall, the first annual Joliet West Film Festival was a huge success.”