Lights, camera, acción

BY: Elijah Hill, Contributing Writer

​Being able to direct, edit and create a film not in your native language, is one thing most people cannot even fathom.

Mrs. Julie Exedine’s talented Spanish III students, Ava Page, Tyler Hawkins, Josie Hicks, Abby McSparren and Racheal Crowe; and Spanish IV students, Susanna Nix and Joshua Dishman did all of this and more. On April 11, the University of Central Missouri (UCM) hosted their Foreign Film Festival for high school students to showcase their talents. The film has to be G or PG rated, culturally sensitive, be 10 minutes or less and since films are shown in Chinese, German, French, or Spanish, the films have to have English subtitles. 

Susanna Nix and Joshua Dishman, with help from another student, Amy Pendergrast, made their film a dramatic forbidden romance story between two lovers, Jorge and Rosa. Nix states, “Elena (the main character) finds a hidden note in an old book. It leads her to a garden where she finds Rosa who helps her to find out who wrote it. Along the journey she also meets a retired detective named Augustine. Then, at the end of the story it is revealed that Rosa is the one who wrote the note all along, that she is in love with Augustine, who is actually Jorge.” The group won many first place awards consisting of Best Spanish Film and Best Drama and Best Spanish Advanced Film. The group won third place in Video Techniques and won 2nd place overall. 

Ava Page, Tyler Hawkins, Josie Hicks, Abby McSparren and Racheal Crowe, also participated in the festival. Page states, “Our film was under the category of social justice. Set at a high school reunion, it is revealed that it was all a set up to get four high school girl bullies to show up to the school. They get trapped in a room, and have to reminisce on their highschool days of bullying Vladmir (who is the one that set up this fake highschool reunion). In the end, they learn that they need to apologize for the pain that they caused Vladimir in high school.” 

Spanish students were not the only ones able to enjoy the Foreign Film Festival. Mrs. Anita Lumleys Multicultural Literature class was also able to attend. Lumley states, “In my Multicultural Literature class, my students study literature from different cultures, and I thought the film festival would be an excellent opportunity for my students to see language and culture in action through the films submitted by their peers.”

Overall, the UCM Foreign Film Festival was a smashing success for the students able to attend.  Exendine states, “This is a great opportunity for students to get a chance to visit a college campus, attend workshops on creating films, as well as an opportunity to meet students from around Missouri that are also studying foreign languages.”