By Daniel Vela
This year’s Flint Youth Film Festival, an event highlighting youth filmmakers between 13 to 25 years of age, took place from July 17 – July 20 at the Flint Institute of Arts.
Opening night featured young filmmakers from across Michigan and welcomed more than 60 attendees to enjoy food and drinks before heading into the FIA theater to hear from guest speakers and watch two assemblages of short films entered in this year’s festival.
The free, four-day festival also featured a makeup workshop hosted by Emmy-winning makeup artist Myke Michaels from the show “Stranger Things” on Friday and another showing of films at Cinema West on Saturday with a Q&A with the filmmakers afterward.
The festival ended with an awards ceremony on Sunday at the Ferris Wheel in downtown Flint. Awards were given in both fiction and non-fiction categories, broken into 16-18, 19-21, and 22-25 age groups, as well as awards for experimental and animation films.
Top honors included the Industry Award, won by Kimberly Jiali Peh & Katherine Marie Hogan for “Don’t Feed the Unicorn;” the Heart Award, which was given to Lucas Stall for the film “Sundowning;” and the Audience Choice Award, which was open to online voting, was won by Paul Jason McHugh & Benjamin Thomas Brancaleone for their film “IGNORE.”
Maggie MacDonell, 24, from Beverly Hills, Michigan saw her film “Drowned” take runner up in the 22-25 Fiction category at this year’s festival.
MacDonell wrote, directed, and acted in her film, which also happened to be the first she had entered to the Flint Youth Film Festival.
“I have been into the idea of making movies for pretty much my whole life,” MacDonnell told East Village Magazine. “I loved making up stories when I was a kid and acting them out with friends on my parent’s cameras and my iPad.”
The young filmmaker attended Grand Valley State University where she said she decided to study film and started “taking it seriously.”
MacDonell ultimately majored in film and video production and minored in theatre. She said this was the fourth time she’d gotten to see her short film on the big screen, but that every time it has been very rewarding.
“It is a cool experience to see your work in a theater full of other people, especially fellow filmmakers,” she said, adding that “it is an honor” to be awarded for her film. “I am so happy that my work can be shared and possibly also inspire others.”
Festival director Justin Brown, an Emmy Award winner himself, said that it felt “surreal” to be celebrating the tenth year of the Flint Youth Film Festival. “I’m sure none of us thought we’d be looking back after the first year and still doing it,” he told EVM over email after the festival’s conclusion.
He noted that with over 500 entries this year (close to 100 of which came from Michigan filmmakers) the festival has certainly grown from its first year of less than 30 entries.
Brown said organizers are now taking a bit of downtime to reflect on the festival’s tenth year, but that doesn’t mean the community can’t support youth filmmaking in the meantime.
“We have films from a lot of great young artists who are making great things, and they deserve as many eyes on their work as they can get,” he said. Those interested can view all of this years’ festival selections here.
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