Third Annual Parkway Digital Film Festival Showcases Student Talent

The third annual Parkway Digital Film Festival  had all the trappings of Hollywood, a red carpet and plenty of fanfare. The only difference between this festival and Sundace or Telluride was that all the fimmakers were students in either elementary school or high school in the Parkway School District.

The festival was held Wednesday night at the on the campus of Logan College. More than 150 films were entered into the festival, with the majority of them coming from the elementary schoolers.

student Antonio Liggieri's film  “A Day in the Life” was showcased. An exchange student from Italy, Liggieri’s film depicts a humorous version of his first day of school at Parkway South. “I just wanted to get the fun out of the experience,” Liggieri said. “[After making the film] I saw the day different than I had before.”

The festival is the brainchild of Bill Bass, a technology integration specialist with the .

"Our department had been trying to figure out how to get teachers to use more technology," Bass said. "Every film has to be tied to curriculum and sponsored by a teacher."

The change in Parkway's curriculum to reflect the growing importance of multimedia seems to have been embraced by the younger kids more so than it has been by the older students.

"High schoolers like video equally to writing, but the middle schoolers prefer video,"  said Amy Johnson, a technology integration specialist with the Parkway School District.

Johnson said there were about around 120 films submitted from elementary classes as opposed to about 75 films from grades 6-12. Around 800 students overall contributed to making the films.

 seventh grader Sydney Scagilone said she liked the filming process “because you can use more of your personality.” She also said that she plans on making another film and entering it in the festival next year. Scagilone’s film, Greek Games Propaganda, was a commercial for the sporting events of Ancient Greece.

Parkway South ninth grader Alyssa Shank played a part in two of the festival's films, "Two Sides of a Door" and "Talking to Myself."

"I really liked doing this," Shank said. "My brother entered a film in last year and I had helped him on it." Shank said it was nice to be the one getting the credit this time around.

Alyssa's sister Emily, a freshman at , also had a film featured in the festival. Her film "Bob's Boat" teaches a lesson about buoyancy and was created as part of a Physics class. "It was really fun to make and edit and to create a story to go along with what we were learning," Emily said.

Cynthia Pappas, a communications specialist with the Parkway School District, said that it is important to expose students to multimedia to help prepare them for the ever-changing, modern world.

"Multimedia doesn't replace writing, it just embelishes it," she said. She said that festival event like this one is necessary "because if you make a film and no one sees your film, you're not ever going to do it again."

Activities surrounding the festival extended beyond just shooting videos. Several students also created posters to advertise the event. senior Kenny Yn said he created one of the posters as part of his digital design class.

The only difference between the Parkway Digital Film Festival and slightly more well known festivals such as Cannes, was that every filmmaker walked away from the Purser Center a winner.

"This is not a competition," Johnson said, "but a celebration of the students' work."

The films from the festival can be seen here.