Opening Night at Indy Shorts Festival | displays

Spotlight Program Started With ] Microwave Time Machine In Which A Young Scientist Discovers How To Transport Objects In Time In A Microwave Oven . How would you feel if it was 1985 and you were about to boil water for your Sanka and you will find almond milk in your microwave. Then a fidget spinner. Then an iPhone. Something like that would probably ruin my breakfast.

The following was Mabingwa which translates from Swahili to English as a champion. The film focuses on four young Kenyans – including two from a Nairobi slum – who have the opportunity to do a Safari. The 37-minute film also focuses on Kenya's daunting environmental problems, resulting from the explosive growth of Kenya's population, which is expected to double in 25 years, and its fragile environment. While keeping a hopeful tone reminiscent of the Lion King, it gives an excellent overview of Kenya's unique environmental diversity, an honest badessment of its environmental challenges, and a brief overview of the daily challenges that slum dwellers face. face the day to day. based.

Momentum is a much shorter film (six minutes) that also aims to keep youth engaged in society, filmed much closer to home, right here in Indianapolis. The subject is the soap box race, where young city dwellers have the chance to apply skills to the race that will eventually help them in their careers, regardless of the career they choose. Fortunately, they will consider the Indy 500!

If you grew up in Indy between the 1980s and 2000s and read The Indianapolis Star, you will have found articles from Y-Press and its forerunner The Children's Express in his pages. Teams of young journalists between the ages of 10 and 18 covered issues ranging from gang violence to immigration policies, and their work frequently ran up against reporters Indy Star . It is clear in interviews with former journalists that the lessons they learned in the program helped them in their next careers.

Unfortunately, the program, hampered by a lack of funding following the Great Recession, closed down. good in 2012. The good news is that the program's archives are being digitized and will be available for future generations of teachers and student reporters.

Former Y Press Director, Lynn Sygiel, was present at the opening "

" It took kids with curiosity, kids who had skills, kids who did not have kids, and kids who did not. had no skills and let them run with their curiosity, but this taught them to form questions. "She says.

The story told by the cartoon A Drawing, in black and white, is powerful. Focusing on a boy's relationship with his mother – who is not there when she dies in her hospital bed – it's a beautifully told tale and beautifully animated. And the score, a stellar piano track by Indianapolis jazz musician Mina Keohane, fits beautifully with the emotionally charged tale.

Speaking of emotionally charged, documentary Grateful on Jenni Berebitsky, an Indianapolis woman diagnosed with ALS five years ago, shows the devastation that the sickness has done to his body. But it also shows how she has managed to keep a sense of humor throughout this time as well as a sense of dignity.

The most powerful moment of the movie is perhaps the one where you see talking about a conversation with her. her son about the worsening of the disease, and how she might not be even longer. While being severely limited in the ability to speak, she manages to make the audience laugh and cry at the same time. The emotion of the screening of the film was accentuated at the opening night of the festival by the presence of Berebitsky and his family, and the presence of Berebtisky in the question-and-answer session.

For the record, there were seven films in the program, but I missed the seven-minute long Chain-Stitched: The Work of Jerry Lee Atwood, about from one of the leading designers and manufacturers of western wear. Let's just say that's what happens during a short film festival when you have to use the bathroom.

Whatever it is, if you think you would like all these movies to see them all together, you still have a chance. On Sunday, July 29, the Indiana Spotlight 2 program will be repeated at the Newfields IMA at 7:45 pm. But look at the other programs here, and the others, a lot of other shorts available and see what you like.