Rebecca Jolitz, a student at Loma Prieta School, is the producer, director, and star of Mystery Festival (see "Jolitz Family Video - The Mystery Festival"). Mystery Festival made its debut in the "drama - 5th grade" catagory on April 9, 2005 at the first annual Windy Hill Kids Film Festival in Atherton, California.

Mystery Festival is an upbeat short detective film where Rebecca and her friends at school solve a mystery.

Unlike other movies, Rebecca filmed most of her movie on-site at her school using her own hand-held Canon A60 digital camera. As she and her class solved the whodunit, using DNA analysis, chromotography, and other forensic techniques, Rebecca filmed on-the-spot, providing an in-the-moment feel for the genuine excitement and exploration of young people using science to "catch the thief".

Clad in a brown fedora and raincoat and tapping to the upbeat music of "The Avengers", Rebecca shot "clues" - providing the missing mass to help the viewer "solve the mystery". But in case you weren't paying attention, Rebecca, like every good movie detective, explains how the crime was committed and why. And if you're wondering who her major influence was, a quick peek at the end of the flick will amuse and inform lovers of "the world's greatest detective".

Rebecca has been working with advanced video production and editing for several years, and actually works on an experimental video server project examining educational uses of video using student-run projects. This project has been the subject of several academic papers on "media-less" massive video projects for schools. Network and server resources for this project, still ongoing, are provided by TeleMuse Networks TeleMuse Networks. Production services have been provided by ExecProducer.

But her major interest right now is in capturing the world with a camera. With the incredible advances in digital camera clip capability, Rebecca says she can shoot, edit, and assemble for production an entire on-site movie in minutes at any time. "I like being a film-maker, because everything is film" said Rebecca. "When I take a clip of something that's happening right in front of me, it's not phony - it's real!"

What did Rebecca get out of participating in this film festival besides the fame and fortune? ("What fame and fortune?" Rebecca asked wryly...)"Well, I've got a lot of interesting shots from the Windy Hills Kids Film Festival. Maybe there's something there...".

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.