Seattle Times
The Seattle Times recently spoke with Jess Harris about the upcoming National Film Festival for Talented Youth. The ever-growing NFFTY, now in its fourth annual edition, has expanded this year from three days to four, and from 113 films to 190. All are made by young filmmakers, ranging in age from 8 to 22 (the festival’s upper limit). “The quality of what we saw was so much higher than last year, across the board,” said executive director Jesse Harris of the 2010 submissions. “We were really happy. There were 250 or so films we would have shown if we had room for them.” Of the 190 films in the festival this year, all but two are short films, with an average length of perhaps 8 to 10 minutes. Though a handful are documentaries, Harris says, “This is definitely the year of the narrative short film.” They will show in themed packages throughout the weekend. “Even if these people don’t end up being directors,” he says, “we’re letting them show something they created to an audience, they’re getting recognition and they’re getting confidence to do something, whether it’s filmmaking or whatever. Obviously film festivals are great for audiences, but ours has the extra thing that it’s really an important thing to be doing for the next generation of filmmakers.” Read the full article at the above link and check out NFFTY (http://www.nffty.org/) at film venues around the city starting Thursday, April 29 through Sunday, May 2.