Schools Film Festival
By students from South Chadderton School, Crompton House CE School and Our Lady’s RC High School.
Pupils gathered by their hundreds at the new film festival to watch the movies they had made at the Printworks in Manchester on Sunday 8 June.
Shot, edited and created by students, the films demonstrated the hard work put in by both primary and secondary schools.
It also gave them an opportunity to showcase to a real cinema audience.
The Greater Manchester Schools Film Festival, run by nine City Learning Centres in the Manchester area (GM9), showed the films in the Odeon cinema.
The festival ran for the first time in 2005 and this year the films were once again premiered one after another on the big screen.
Oldham CLC manager, Dave Barter, said: “It’s tough competition this year. Everyone’s worked so hard.”
Pupils were judged on their use of sound, film, and story-telling by three film critics from the BBC, the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (SSAT) and Workers Film Association Media (WFA Media).
The best primary school movie was created by pupils from Wilbraham Primary School, who produced An Alien’s Guide to School.
White Rabbit, an animation made by students from Chorlton High School, won the secondary school prize.
The best documentary, Metal Detectors in Schools, was created by pupils at South Chadderton School.
A prize of a digital video camera was awarded to the best primary and secondary school, and a tour round the BBC studios to the winners of the best documentary.
Twenty two schools showed a total of 47 films, which took three and a half days to edit together, each film lasting an average of three minutes.
The film festival took place from 10am until 2pm with the screening of primary school films at 10am and secondary school films at 12noon.
The films were also shown the week beginning 14th June on the Big Screen in the Triangle Shopping Centre in Manchester city centre.
In the run up to the event, pupils received training from WFA Media students, learning to became film crews and experiencing many roughs and tumbles along the way.
