Film Festival Workshop

The AALS workshop, Lights, Camera, Action! How to Run a Teen Film Festival in the Library was a real success! The presenter, Susan Conlon, Teen Services Librarian at Princeton Public Library showed some funny films and some serious ones too that teens created themselves. This was a pleasure to see because it showed how the program idea could work for public libraries. It also demonstrated how creative some teens can be when using technology. Several film editing programs could be used for this. Many teens have some type of film editing software at home. One example is Apple's Final Cut. Susan's library has been doing an annual teen film festival for five years now. She and the library staff have provided teens with an official public venue to demonstrate their creative works. This helps give teens confidence and provides inclusion within a meaningful program. It was nice to hear how one teen involved in the film festival program at her library went on after high school to study filmmaking at a university in New York. Great ideas were shared at this event on how to plan and promote this and how to ask for money to budget for this type of programming. Several of the participants said that they would like to start up a teen film festival at their library. Who knows? Maybe we start up a Texas vs. New Jersey film festival contest!