Student filmmakers, teachers and parents packed the Kiva Auditorium in Albuquerque on Sunday, April 6, for the awards ceremony for Film Prize Junior, New Mexico’s 4th annual student short film festival. After a record-breaking 192 student short films were screened at the festival, twenty-nine winning films were announced and over $12,000 in scholarships and media grants were awarded to students, teachers and schools at the ceremony.
Among the schools winning prizes at the event were Organ Mountain High School in Las Cruces, winning Best High School Documentary for “Henry C. Trost: Architect of Arid America”; Deming High School winning Best High School Drama for “Ukiyo”; Red Mountain Middle School, also in Deming, winning both the Middle School Audience Choice and Best Middle School Film Poster for “Coulrophobia”; and Mescalero Apache High School winning High School Emerging Native Filmmaker for “Isdzana Tleesh: White Painted Woman.”
Now in its fourth year in New Mexico, Film Prize Junior is the student version of the award-winning Louisiana Film Prize, a short film competition with the largest cash prize in the world for an independent short film. The Film Prize Junior program supports middle and high school classrooms to experience the entire process of creating a short film, from story and script development to production and editing…