Digital Filmmaking students from Kelowna’s Centre for Arts and Technology (CAT) have received a $10,000 grant from the STORYHIVE & Reel Youth Community Stories project. Grant winners were announced in Dec 2019 and this month (Feb 22-23) the winning students will be attending a weekend-long Reel Screen winner’s workshop in Kelowna, taking place on CAT’s campus.
Digital Filmmaking students Jared White, Morgan Thomas , Nash Madrigga, Georgia Spalding and Anibal (Mo) Blandon Chavarria (supported by other students from their cohort) will create a short documentary film exploring the topic of ‘digital citizenship’ – and how today’s ongoing on-line interaction impacts young people’s lives in the digital age.
The February workshop will consist of team building, skills development, and will be an opportunity for them to pitch their film idea to the rest of the participants and receive constructive feedback and help. Finished projects will be featured on select Telus platforms later in 2020.
“Having organizations like Reel Youth and Storyhive engage with our students pre and post-graduation is a real win-win situation. These grants offer our grads opportunity to apply their freshly minted filmmaking skills to real-world productions, which enables them to add valuable experience to their resumes.” Victor Poirier, Department Head, CAT Digital Filmmaking.
Previously, CAT Digital Film student Hayley Morin (assisted by members of her graduating cohort Courtenay Louie, Matthias MacLeod and Vince Eger) won a $50,000 grant in the Storyhives’ 2018 Indigenous Edition’ competition, using the grant for production and completion of her documentary ‘The Crying Fields’, which was released in July 2019. (The finished documentary can be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpzIsVezY7w )
