The Filmmaking Club returned to the library on May 29th, 2024 to put on its second annual Film Festival. The festival highlights young talent and encourages students to participate in making movies to be screened at the event. The intimate festival screened a mix of documentaries, commercials for the 2024 Virtual Enterprise Company and JROTC, animations, live performances, and student films.
Senior Ronnie Hailoo, a student in Mr. Giunta’s English class, created an animated adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The film, “English Classics in Lego,” is a creative use of stop motion to tell the story of both Frankenstein and Gatsby, with clever sound effects and laugh-out-loud visual gags. The Gatsby animation Mr. Giunta’s senior English class created is remarkably entertaining; it uses celebrity cutouts to reenact the classic novel, with a fantastic alternative rock soundtrack consisting of “Vaseline” by Stone Temple Pilots and “Bitter Sweet Symphony” by The Verve.
The other two competing narrative films were “Watch the Watch” and “Murder By a High School Psycho.” The latter was directed by sophomore Lauren Spoto, who pulls together a compelling short with a brief runtime. It is promising and bears a striking resemblance to a Hitchcock film, with its shifty characters and shocking end. The former was written and directed by Aayan Ibrahim. It is similarly thrilling, with most of its tension sustained through dialogue and a simple plot. Its industrial soundtrack and claustrophobic cinematography elevate the performances of freshmen Wallace Berman and Dmitrii Evdokimou.
The festival also featured documentaries about Earth Week at Fort Hamilton and an interview with the 2023-2024 Student Government. Both films provided insight into the events and helped recognize the students who put in the work for the school. A short from the club president herself, junior Joanna Ascher, was screened along with the other projects. “Pretty Girl” is an uncomfortable look into sexual harassment and is unrelenting in its depiction. The production was comparable to the 1995 film Kids and had an authentic performance from the lead, it was able to connect with the audience on a personal level.
Selena Dong closed out the event with a reading of a Percy Jackson alternate reality fanfiction.
Awards were given out during the event’s conclusion, with “Watch the Watch” sweeping the categories. It won Best Film, Best Director (Aayan Ibrahim), Best Actor (Wallace Berman), and Best Sound Design (Ayden Rios). “Murder By a High School Psycho” was the runner-up, receiving Up & Coming Director (Lauren Spoto) and Best Production Design. The Gatsby animation Mr. Giunta’s class created was awarded Best Editing.
“The Fort Film Festival is truly a labor of love, a culmination of months of hard work and preparation by our school’s very own aspiring student filmmakers,” said Ascher. “From pre-production to post-production, the time and effort these students put into making a film in addition to their school and personal responsibilities reflects their lust for the visual media art form that so many, including myself, so strongly identify with.”
Ascher plans to put on one more festival for her senior year. She believes in supporting growing filmmakers through the club and events like the festival. “It’s now become an annual tradition within our Filmmaking Club, open to submissions by student filmmakers across the Student Body and welcoming all,” she said. “It’s a chance for them to screen their work and receive acknowledgement for their creative endeavors.”
