Film Festival Puts Students’ Creativity in the Spotlight

The audience was treated to popcorn and a free show with lots of artistic variety. *Photo: Mr. James Bruffee*

By TIFFANY DONG and ERIC LAU

with contributions from Brian Chen, Marco Chan, and Mason Moy

The 2025 Midwood Film Festival, which took place on May 8 at 3:45 p.m. in the auditorium, showcased student creativity in a lineup of 28 short works across five categories, with a side of tasty popcorn.

The five categories were “Video Essays,” “Life Stories,” “Silent Films,” “Short Films,” and “Open Submissions.” “Video Essays” highlighted the creators’ viewpoint on a topic of their interest. “Life Stories” showed the students’ day-to-day lives. While most works were produced by students from Mr. James Bruffee and Mr. Henry Mei’s classes, the “Open Submissions” entries came from students working on their own. The films were each about 2-3 minutes long.

“The runtime of the festival can only be an hour or so, to maximize the engagement of the audience,” said Mr. Bruffee, the event’s coordinator. “Choosing only an hour's worth of work out of all the incredible videos made by Midwood students is very challenging. Inevitably, some really great work did not make it in.”

“I didn't really have much of an idea going into making my film,” said Justin Velex ‘26, creator of “The Duel.” “I just wanted to have some fun with my friends and make something cool. Schoolwork can be overbearing at times.”

The film “actually didn’t take very long to make,” Velex said. “Once I came up with the basic premise, I just improved the scenes while filming since I knew what I was going for. It took three to four hours to film and then around six hours to edit. It wasn't very difficult to finish since I was the director and editor, and it was just for fun.”

The show’s variety was one of its strengths. Sharon Li, one of the producers of “Don’t Sleep in Class,” said she was going for “relatability” and an “ominous” tone. Emma Sit ‘25 crafted two films: one about her hate for cyclists and a short film about drinking too much Celsius energy drinks. Abigail Khazan ’25 created a video essay on rock music. Jahvion Flanders ’25 made a film about getting a sponsorship through skateboarding.

Khazan explained how finding B-roll (secondary footage) and pictures to use for her video was challenging. “I used a lot of archival footage from more than 30 years ago from different artists,” she said.

Flanders used a fisheye lens effect on his video, which creates a distortion in the image, allowing it to look wider. “Doing all the [skateboard] tricks and getting the right shot was challenging," he said.

Mr. Bruffee said he was particularly impressed by the open submissions (“The Monolith,” “The Duel,” “Paranoid,” and “The Doppelganger”).

“The students who created those films did so completely independently,” he said. “They made them not because it was an assignment for class, but just because they wanted to create something. That’s really cool.”

Finn Berger ‘25 wrote, directed, and starred in “The Monolith.”

“We had a family trip during the February break to go to the Outer Banks, so I thought, why not just do one of my films here since we have some free time,” he said.

“I worked backward with how I wanted to structure [the movie],” he said. “The gist is that a boy lives with his mom, and they’re moving to a new house. He finds little artifacts from the previous owner, one of which is a drawing of a tower, and he can’t stop thinking about it. He has dreams about it. He finally goes out and tries to find it, and when he does, he gets to the tower and ends up in a desert that’s infinite, and he can’t get out. He’s trapped there forever.”

Shooting took about three days because of the number of locations. Finishing the piece “was pretty tiring,” he said. “This is one of the longer films I’ve ever made. Me and my brother made the music ourselves on GarageBand, which was a whole process.”

Finishing the film took a couple of weeks. “It was very satisfying when I finally got it to a place I liked,” he said. “I made some rough versions, and there were things I didn’t like. But when I got it to where I liked the product, I felt very accomplished.”

Seeing “Monolith” on the screen at the festival was “a lot of fun,” he said. “ It was the final film shown, and there was some reaction during the film and at the end. I heard people call out, and after the festival, some people came up to me and complimented it and said it was cool. Since I put so much work into it, it was nice to get that recognition.”

“There’s nothing quite like having a live audience react in real-time to a film you created,” Mr. Bruffee said. I wanted our filmmakers to have that experience. Also, for audience members, the communal experience of watching student films together in a big room on a big screen is a special thing, since often we experience media alone on small screens.”

The festival, which debuted in 2022 under the initiative of Mr. Jason Richardson, Mr. Kamil Kraszewski, and Principal Robert Quinlan, looks set to grow in future years, perhaps even with the addition of a popcorn machine.

Ms. Emma Peral, a Spanish teacher who attended the event, said, “My experience was good and I was very impressed. I saw lots of creativity. The students that made these films have a lot of potential.”

Reflecting on the creative process, Sit said, “I kind of learned how many ideas are actually good, and if you have an idea, you should just film it because it could be on the big screen. You’ll never know.”