Exploring the culture

By: Annika Kirtley, Contributing Writer ​

At the Foreign Film Festival Centralia High School Spanish III students won 2nd place for Best Drama at an Intermediate Level and 3rd place for Best Social Justice film which included all levels.

What is the Foreign Film Festival you might ask? Well, The Foreign Film Festival is held in April of each year at the University of Central Missouri. The film festival has various genres in which you can enter and compete in. The festival shows all the films and offers filmmaking workshops to the students and also hosts an awards ceremony. This year they added fun activities like a wordle, escape room, and trivia competition. 

Mrs. Exendine started participating in the Foreign Film Festival when she taught in Mexico, MO. “This is a great opportunity for my students to put the language they have learned to use and write an original script.  It is also great speaking practice as well when they actually perform and film it.”  Exendine is energetic for the Foreign Film Festival to be back after two years of it being canceled to COVID-19. 

Mrs. Exendine’s Spanish III class decided to enter a film into the Social Justice category. Their film was titled Una Persona También (A Person Too) and deals with the topic of bullying. Spanish III students wrote the script. However, since it is a small class they had to pull in a few extra students to act within the film.“My favorite part about the film was probably filming it because it was funny when we messed up,” said Gretchen Marriott, a Spanish III student of Exendine. 

This is a great opportunity that Exendine provides for her students that lets them explore and interact with Spanish culture. Exendine has participated in the film festival for over 5 years and hopes to continue to do so in the future.