Moondance Film Fest!

The Sundance Film Festival went incredibly well this year. Lots of famous guests arrived, the films were fantastic, the ... Wait, Sundance? No, I meant Moondance. Yeah, that went well, too. So what was the Moondance Film Festival? Well, my silly, ignorant friends, HCHS had its annual film festival several weeks ago. And since then, the winners have been fending off the paparazzi and the enjoying the finer things of fame. The VIP who planned this event have also been living the high life, and I suppose that you readers would love to hear all about. I'm Danielle Hernandez for School News, and this is what went down.

For those of you who don't know what exactly the Film Festival entails, here's the jist of it. Students submit videos, whether they be class assignments or done in the students' free time, and a panel of judges reviewed them and gave out the awards. In previous years, the judge panel consisted of only teachers. But this year two guest judges, Chelsey Havick and Mark Langenfeld, also gave the student perspective on the videos. Judging this year happened after school on Wednesday, and on Saturday the awards night was held. The awards night consisted of musical numbers, costume changes, and of course, well... awards.

Months ago, Student Council began planning for this event. Joe Schmitz was the deputy in charge of well, just about everything. Kelsey and I wrote the script and took care of the announcing and costume changes. Erin Markham, Bri Nelson, Seth Lansman, and others were in charge of the prestigious Barbie Awards. Wait, Barbie Awards? Are you slightly confused? Well, similar to the Oscars, HCHS's film festival also gives away small, metallic, and creepy people. In the case of the Best Canine Cameo, however, the award was a small golden Barbie dolphin.

So what sort of awards were given out? Well, some of the honors included Best Foreign Film, Best Supporting Actor, Best Music Coordinator, and Best Actor. This year the highest number of films were entered, and Miss Gray, the Student Council advisor, was very pleased. According to the Facebook event page, over forty guests were in attendance.

The big winner of the night was the smash-hit Parody-normal Activity, directed by David Siebert and starring David, Jordan Siebert, Mason Fah, and Mitch Anderson. It won six awards, including Best Supporting Actor (Mitch), Best Canine Cameo (The Sieberts' dog Ginger), and Best Picture.

All of the entries to the Film Festival have been posted on the Newsblog, and if you haven't seen them, I would very much recommend doing so. Please comment and let us all know what you though of the festival and/or the films. Also, if you have any thoughts about what we could differently next year, we'd love to hear about those as well. This has been Danielle Hernandez for Harlan Community High School News.