April 2, 2008  

Foothills Film Festival staged at Pellissippi State

Pellissippi State Technical Community College will host the Foothills Film Festival, a video production competition for middle and high school students, at 6 p.m. this Thursday. The event takes place in the Performing Arts Center at the Pellissippi Campus on Hardin Valley Road.

Teams from Maryville, Alcoa and Greeneville City schools are competing in the event, and the students have entered feature and documentary films that run two to five minutes in length.

To help them prepare for the competition, the students participated in a workshop on Feb. 16 at ProMedia in Louisville.

Eight films have been submitted, and the winners will be announced after the viewings on Thursday. The judges of the films are five local members of the media industry. The winning film from last year’s festival, “Skateboarding in Knoxville,” a documentary by five Central High School students focusing on the need for a skateboarding park in Knoxville, also will be shown.

The “Best of the Fest” will go on to the Nashville Film Festival on April 19.

Documentary filmmaker Keith McDaniel of Oak Ridge will emcee the event. McDaniel has seen recent success with his films “Secret City: The Oak Ridge Story” and “The Clinton 12.”

“He’s an outstanding filmmaker,” said Michael Barnes, executive director of the East Tennessee Television and Film Commission.

“The Secret City” focuses on the role that Oak Ridge played in the creation of the atomic bomb during World War II. “The Clinton 12” tells the story of the 12 African-American students who integrated Clinton High School in 1956, the first public high school in the South to be integrated.

Pellissippi State will award a scholarship covering full tuition and fees for two years to each member of the “Best of the Fest” team. The scholarship must be applied to pursuing a degree in the Media Technologies program at Pellissippi State. Students in the program will make use of the recently completed Bagwell Center for Media and Art, which houses the only high-definition video and audio studio in the state.

For more information on the Foothills Film Festival, contact Maelea Galyon of Maryville High School at (865) 982-1132. For more information on Pellissippi State, visit www.pstcc.edu or call (865) 539-7155.

Search Pellissippi State News Releases.

Pellissippi State Technical Community College
2000 - 2007©