Event

Youth FX Film Festival

Albany's award winning Youth FX teen filmmaking program will host the premiere of their 2012 short films on Thursday May 23rd at the Madison Theater. The film festival will feature world premieres of short documentary and narrative films created by teens from the city of Albany over the past year. Among the topics the teen filmmakers explored were topics of race, violence, bullying, love and community. The festival will feature over a dozen short films, among them several created in collaboration with students at Albany High School. The films include short documentaries about the Lady Falcons record-setting basketball season, the City of Albany's boxing program, an exploration of the "n-word", and a behind the scenes look at the West Side Story production.

This was the 5 year anniversary of the Youth FX program and it was the biggest summer ever with 25 young people from all across the city creating films and gain hands-on digital media training. In addition to producing some amazing short films, this summer youth also producing original music, doing graphic design, making t-shirts, video editing, blogging, designing websites (including a re-design of the Youth FX website: www.youthfx.org), taking photos and recording audio documentaries.

The Grand Street Community Arts based program is celebrating its 5th year of programming and has grown into a full year program with an after-school component at Albany High School, and youth working as pre-professional filmmakers creating independent films and documentaries for local non-profits.

There will be two screenings on May 23rd at 7pm and 9pm and the Youth FX filmmakers will have a Q & A after each screening. Tickets are $8, with all proceeds going towards the 2013 Youth FX summer program.

Youth FX films have been screened at film festivals across the country including: CineYouth Chicago, Woodstock Film Festival, Moving Media Festival (Detroit, MI), Urban Mediamakers Film Festival (Atlanta, GA), Ballston Spa Film Festival, WMHT TV Film, and the Show Me Justice Film Festival (Columbia, MO).