Insider staff
Everybody loves movies, but in today’s world, so few people have the attention span to sit through a whole feature-length film.
Luckily, Red River Theatres is hosting a festival Saturday at noon that is perfect for today’s film fans: It’s called the New Hampshire High School Short Film Festival, and as the name suggests, it’s a display of a bunch of short films created by New Hampshire students.
This will be the ninth year of the festival, and it figures to be a good one, what with 27 short films on the docket. (For a full list of films, go to nhstudentfilm.com/films/.)
Those 27 were chosen from a pool of about 60 submissions, said Matt Newton, director of the State of N.H. Film & Television office and the festival’s director and co-founder.
The festival takes submissions from high school students from the whole state, and those chosen will be screened at Red River.
Films can be no longer than 7 minutes, but Newton said most tend to come in well under that threshold. This year’s festival will feature several PSA-type films about a minute long or shorter. “I think schools have become wiser to the fact that if the films are a little shorter, there’s a better chance of making it in,” Newton said.
The genres can be anything – comedy, drama, documentary, PSA – whatever.
The films judged to be the best will win one of the following awards:
One Jury Award (or Best Film of the Festival)
One Jury Award Runner-Up (2nd Place)
Three Jury Award Finalists
One PSA Award
Plus, additional “special merit” awards may also be given.
And these are legit awards.
“We gave away over $18,000 in prizes last year,” Newton said. “It was actually all donated, all sponsored.”
The submission deadline has passed, so all you need to do now is go watch. Tickets are $7 and will be available at the door and at redrivertheatres.org.
