Students in the Bronx completed the second annual filmmaking and poetry program called The Full Circle Project, a six week course in filmmaking technologies and performance poetry. During the last days of the sessions, students finished their personal short films, which will be showcased in an online exhibition in the fall.
Last year’s exhibit can be seen here.
The program was designed by the Drammeh Institute with support from filmmakers Al Santana and Craig Thompson.
The Full Circle Project is a Youth in Education initiative of the Drammeh Institute, Inc. which objectives are to create opportunities for professionals in the media arts to give back to community youth, and to support neighboring schools with resources where ever possible.
In 2008, the project partnered with Al Santana Productions to teach high school youth the fundamentals of filmmaking, story development and the use of film editing technologies. Therein, students developed poetry pieces and learned to use moving images alongside text-based models as a template. With poetry sessions facilitated by Marc Arena of Urban Word, NYC, students were simultaneously immersed in intensive free writing exercises.
Through these processes, The Full Circle Project participants learned about the parallels between language, the moving image, and cultural contexts, how to deconstruct media and think more critically about the power of the voice, language and visual representation, and produce thought provoking messages through film and poetry.
