“You absolutely need to fully understand where you’re coming from to understand where you’re going,” advises filmmaker Raquel Torres, 19, in her montage documentary “A Latina’s Guide to Life (in Chicago).”
Among Torres’ other guidelines are: “Be original,” “Constantly explore your culture” and, “Find something that is perfect for you.”
Torres’ film was named best documentary this year at the Chicago Instructional Technology Foundation’s Youth Film & Video Festival, and her philosophy parallels the mission of the festival: to recognize, empower and nurture the talents of burgeoning filmmakers under age 20.
“It’s like the Academy Awards for Chicagoland youth,” said Virginia Boyle, festival coordinator. “It is very important for our culture to welcome and embrace teenagers. We must engage with teenagers as a culture, to recognize people who are doing brilliant, important work, to tell them, `You are the best and the brightest.'”
Young artists get a boost
Winners of the seventh annual Teenagers Film Fest (as it’s unofficially, but commonly, called) have already been named to receive screenings at the awards ceremony Tuesday at The Chicago Cultural Center. The free event, from 3 to 7 p.m. and open to the public, will feature 15 shorts by young auteurs.
Torres, who recently finished her freshman year in college, is “exhilarated” and looking forward to the event. She describes her documentary as “looking for little pieces of positive in all this negativity.”
The festival gives young artists a boost, she said, shining light in places the mainstream media overlooks.
“It’s like a big community,” Torres said. “It’s about getting people off the streets and getting them out of the classrooms. There are 8-year-olds out there, I’m sure, who are better at [making] documentaries than me.”
Which is why, in part, the festival is officially known as the CITF Youth Film & Video Festival. As the festival has grown, an increasing number of its participants are pre-teens.
Founded in 1995 by the CITF, the festival rubs elbows with the Chicago International Children’s Film Festivaland Chicago Public Schools Technology Competition as one of the few places aspiring filmmakers can show their work while still honing their craft.
Aside from public schools, the festival also receives submissions from a variety of non-profit organizations, including Community Film Workshop, Cabrini Connections, Gallery 37 and Street-Level Youth Media. Overall, Boyle said, 30-plus educational entities submitted more than 145 works to the festival this year alone.
A positive outlet
“As a community, we need to be looking for ways to involve kids in everything. Here’s an outlet that’s very positive and very encouraging,” said Denise Zaccardi, executive director of the Community TV Network. “It validates the work that young people do, it allows a larger audience to see the work.”
Sam Lee, 14, of Dunbar Vocational Career Academy started contributing to the festival at age 10, winning three awards before he hit high school in the areas of music video, public service announcement and documentary.
He attributes his success, in part, to his supportive parents and teachers. “I have teachers that motivate and show what you can do with determination,” Lee said.
Showcasing talent
Although Lee won’t take home a golden, star-topped statuette this year, his schoolmate Serena Turner will for her work on the documentary “Creosols: Killer or Not.” With classmates Stacei Allen and Jason Straight, Turner spent a month on the seven-minute video, which examines the possible industrial contamination of a Chicago community.
“[The festival] means a lot because it gives young people like me the chance to show my talent and what it is I can do, to get myself out there,” said Turner, 18, a senior who started making films two years ago.
Since then, she has made the seven-minute short “The Life of a DJ” and has produced and directed “WDBV TV News,” a weekly interscholastic news program that is aired in her high school. Her award-winning documentary, she said, is largely responsible for her presidential scholarship at Columbia College Chicago, which she’ll attend next fall.
Another winner, Dante Harding of Hyde Park, discovered the festival through public access television. His film, “The Dance,” a cinematic study of an autopsy, will take home the award for best supershort this year, clocking in at a brisk 3 minutes, 48 seconds.
“It’s very important,” Harding, 19, said. “When you’re young no one ever pays attention to you. . . . You still want to show some stuff while you’re getting good.”
