Seven students from Manhattan’s Youth’s film program have received the 2015 Peacemaker Champion Award from the PLURAL+ youth video festival, which is operated by the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC). PLURAL+ selected 25 videos, out of more than 240 submissions from 59 countries worldwide, to receive the Peacemaker Champion Award. The Manhattan Youth entry marks the first time a film produced in the United States has won.
Theseus Roche, Manhattan Youth’s director of after-school programs describes to Community Board 1’s Youth and Education Committee the free filmmaking courses offered to middle during school students during school breaks and over the summer.
During spring break, last April, students from six middle schools where Manhattan Youth operates free after-school programs (I.S. 289, the Clinton School for Writers and Artists, Quest to Learn, East Side Middle School, the Computer School and the Salk School of Science) came together for a week of writing, directing, shooting, and editing. Manhattan Youth’s student film course is produced under the auspices of School’s Out New York City (SONYC), a free after-school program for sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders, funded by the city’s Department of Youth and Community Development.
Together, the students created “Secret Self,” a short film about middle school kids seeking acceptance, with the theme of finding common ground across the gaps that divide people from multiple cultures and backgrounds.
Director of After-School Programs Theseus Roche knows that it is a tough topic for these young kids. “They made a film that was about being yourself in middle school,” Mr. Roche said. “We know hard how that is, when everyone is trying to fit in and everyone is trying to be noticed too much, because it’s scary at that age.”
Adam Lokhandwalla served as director and camera operator on “Secret Self” a short film produced by a team of six middle school students, as part of Manhattan Youth’s week-long filmmaking intensive program during last year’s April break
Adam Lokhandwalla, who now attends the Dewitt Clinton High School, directed the video and was the cameraman; he also helped in coming up with the name “Secret Self.” Adam described the recognition is a welcome surprise. “I would say the project was fun. We never expected that we would win an award.” He added that working on the project and seeing the finished project were among of the most satisfying parts of the experience, and said that he would recommend this program to anyone thinking about signing up.
Mr. Roche observed that the program gives the kids the tools to continue to grow, and that this project helped the students realize that they can stand up for what they believe in. “We gave them an entrée into what is possible globally and socially with the tools they now possess,” Mr. Roche said. “They now have the skills to make movies, they have the confidence to say something that’s important to them, but they also know the world just got a lot smaller from this experience.”
PLURAL+ is an international youth video festival that focuses primarily on migration, diversity and social acceptance. This organization hosts multiple different workshops with partners such as UNICEF and hitRECord TV.
Manhattan Youth’s Filmmaking Intensive program has undergone dramatic growth in the two years since the weeklong workshop was launched. In 2014, there were a total of 12 students and only three teachers in the program.
By February, 2015, the intensives had grown to having 120 students signed up from 20 New York City middle schools, with eight professional filmmaking instructors from various backgrounds.