Lights, Camera, Activism

Still from "Schooling Baltimore Street" and poster courtesy of Wide Angle Youth Media

Videoactive Film Festival to feature works by TU students and Baltimore City high-school students

by Stuart Zang

Not all student filmmakers aspire to “go viral” on YouTube. The TU students and local high school students who made the short films to be screened at next week’s Videoactive Film Festival seek social change.

The festival—to be held at 7 p.m. on Thursday evening, November 1, at the Center for the Arts Mainstage Theatre—reflects a wide-ranging partnership that includes TU’s Department of Electronic Media and Film (EMF), the Office of Student Affairs, DECO’s Extended Education & Online Learning unit, local high school students and numerous community groups. TU is co-sponsoring the event with The New York Times.

Darcy Accardi, special assistant to the vice president for Student Affairs and coordinator of civic engagement initiatives, says TU’s partnership with the Kids on the Hill after-school program and Digital Harbor High School has allowed high school students to interact with college role models pursing degrees and careers in film.

Students involved with Wide Angle Community Media, a nonprofit that provides youth with media education and training, produced two films: Division Problems, on gang life’s problems and allure for Baltimore’s youth; and Schooling Baltimore Street, which profiles a 2006 student protest at the Maryland State Department of Education headquarters. Kids on the Hill, an arts program serving Baltimore’s Reservoir Hill and Penn North neighborhoods, submitted Kids and Cops, featuring interviews between city kids and police officers. Digital Harbor High School students produced Cassie’s Story, a commentary on the Columbine shootings and a short public service announcement about hunger, Every Day in Africa.

TU’s submissions include senior Jack Roberts' CONversation, a five-minute interview between the filmmaker and his friend Michael, an ex-convict who says workplace discrimination creates a “Catch-22” for the formerly incarcerated seeking gainful employment. Bryce Taylor and Sarah Ruddie made Grease Car, about a diesel car retrofitted to run on waste vegetable oil, for last summer's documentary film class taught by Gordon Glover, the EMF professor who serves as the festival’s curator. Recent graduate Angela Little submitted “In a Future Age,” a music video on consumerism and capitalism, for an experimental cinema class she took with EMF’s Greg Faller.

Glover says the festival’s closing film is a sneak peek of a not-yet-released animated film by a Berkeley, Calif.-based activist who is a world-renowned expert on consumerism.

The Videoactive Film Festival will showcase students using filmmaking to address social issues and motivate others toward civic engagement, says Glover, who is actively involved with Baltimore’s youth media activist community.

“We’re using video for advocacy, activism and as a tool for social change,” he says.

The Videoactive Film Festival is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Darcy Accardi, x43921 or daccardi@towson.edu, or Allie Pyzik, mapyzik@towson.edu.

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