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The Windy Hill Kids Film Festival was organized by an
intrepid seventh-grader by self-described "movie fanatic" Shelby Rachleff.
Shelby noticed a distinct lack of interest in kids video
production at a time when digital technology has made
filmmaking feasible. After making a business presentation to
her businessman dad, Shelby received a grant to put on a film festival
only for kids (4th grade to high school).
The first Windy Hill Kids Film Festival was held on April 9, 2005.
Over 55 films by 65 kids were entered into the competition, ranging from
music videos to comedies, dramas, documentaries, and animation.
Films were shown back-to-back for six hours, Rebecca noted, and
"I saw every one of them".
The film festival opened with a speech and film examples
by Gardner Loulan, a professional filmmaker with MTV-U. He
showed a number of examples of his work, including some
of the clips that got him noticed by MTV and "got me my job".
Rebecca found him "inspirational" and immediately began to
apply his professional tips in her own work. "I could see
his work and understand exactly what he was talking about".
While most of the films were done by high school students, Rebecca
was pleased just to show her work and see what older students
accomplished. "I learned a lot from watching all these films. Some
of these kids were so good."
By the way, what were Rebecca's favs from the film fest - "I liked
the Macarena music vid, because it was just a lot of fun
the way they got everybody at school dancing. And I thought Remember
about the tsunami victims was very sad."
But what about comedy? "Oh, definitely Zen, Dammit. I just
loved that movie, but I'm a Star Trek fan. Most girls
say they don't like science, but I love science and astronomy,
and that means Star Trek too."
Rebecca's next scheduled project will be a co-production with her older
brother Ben Jolitz, tentatively titled Bots.
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