Young Filmmakers Rally Together For Inaugural Hayground Festival

The question had caught Madeline Grabb off guard. “What?” she asked.

“Do you want to see our films?” repeated the Hayground School student, pausing inside the Bridgehampton school during a tour. “You know, movies? We make movies!”

“Oh, sure,” Madeline said. “Awesome, fine—yeah, I’ll see your movies!”

She never knew children could make films. Or did make films. Or were even interested in films.

And most of all, she never imagined that, one year later, she would be one of them.

Every day, the 11-year-old girl walks into teacher Liz Bertsch’s classroom with 13 of her peers, ready to work on their latest project—the first-ever Young Filmmakers’ Festival, featuring submissions from Riverhead and Sag Harbor to Shelter Island and East Hampton.

The catch: all of the filmmakers are age 16 and under.

“One of the reasons we created the festival is because before I came to this school, I had no idea kids created anything even remotely close to a film,” Madeline said last week during an interview at Hayground.

“We make films in our classroom,” her friend Myla Dougherty, 9, added. “So it’s nice to see other kids’ films besides the ones we make.”

Even though the application window for live-action and stop-motion films was intentionally small and open for just a month, Ms. Bertsch explained—“We felt that whatever we did out of the gate, we had to do it small and well,” she said—it drew a big response.

As of last week, the class had gathered more than two dozen entries. In just a few days, they were anticipating a batch from East Hampton, the children noted—and then added, shuddering nervously, “from high school students.”

“You’ll probably help us judge those films, right?” 11-year-old Miles Clark asked his teacher.

“I haven’t had to help you up to now,” Ms. Bertsch replied.

“But they’re 16-year-olds,” Madeline breathed out.

“Be confident,” Ms. Bertsch encouraged. “I think you’ve done a really great job. I’ve looked through them all, and your opinions about every film are spot on.”

For each film, the students consult a criteria checklist. One of the biggest questions is, “Does the film tell a good visual story?” to which they answer yes or no. The movies are not judged or ranked, the children emphasized, though some are turned away with constructive criticism and a request for the filmmaker to reapply.

“Kids are very competitive,” Madeline said. “And when their film is not chosen, they feel like, ‘Oh, I’m a loser. I lost.’ And so with the festival, no one wins. We choose the films we want to go in.”

The Hamptons International Film Festival may have some competition, Ms. Bertsch quipped, considering the fact that the 22-year-old not-for-profit event does not have a category for young filmmakers.

At least not yet.

“These are kids who are making movies for everybody. And I think that’s what makes this unique,” Ms. Bertsch, a founding faculty member at Hayground, said. “I think it provides a venue, and therefore a voice, to the young filmmakers—and there are many, many, many young filmmakers.”

One of them is Milla Campomar. She is 7 years old, and her peers are in love with her stop-motion film, “Floating Colors.”

So is a slice of the YouTube-watching community. In two days, the 49-second video had more than 200 views.

Her classmates pulled up the film and gently urged Milla—who was eager to go play outside—to the computer. She clicked play.

The speakers blasted out a cheerful tune as the colors skipped across the screen. The closing credits read, “Animated and Directed by Milla Campomar,” as her friends clapped.

Miles leaned in toward the screen and blinked hard.

“Milla!” he exclaimed, grabbing the young girl’s attention. She was already halfway across the room. “Two hundred and thirty views!”

She smiled shyly and bounced out the door, into the sunlight.

The inaugural Young Filmmakers’ Festival will be held on Saturday, May 10, at noon at the Hayground School in Bridgehampton. For more information, call 537-7068.