Chargé Presents Awards to Embassy-Funded Youth Film School Project Participants

Chargé d’Affaires Ethan Goldrich awards a certificate of recognition to Elena Aleksane

On August 30, Chargé d'Affaires Ethan Goldrich spoke to participants and presented awards at the concluding event of the “Youth Film School” project that was implemented by the Center of Theater Initiatives and funded by the U.S. Embassy Small Grants Program. About 150 young amateurs, film professionals and guests gathered in the movie theater “Komsomolets” to watch the best short films that were produced by the Film School participants. Chargé Goldrich awarded certificates of recognition to the authors of films that were selected for screening and expressed his hope that the young filmmakers’ creativity, courage and imagination, combined with the knowledge they received during this project, would help launch their future careers.

The film school project attracted more than 600 young film amateurs who took part in open educational sessions. A group of fifty young people were selected to participate in regular workshops and master classes by renowned filmmakers from Belarus and abroad. The school provided tutorial support, assistance of professional filmmakers and equipment for filming the four best short film ideas.  Thus, the feature films “There Sat a Grasshopper” by Elena Aleksane, “A Mechanism” by Aleksandr Shupenko, and “A Fan” by Evgenij Isachenko,  as well as a documentary “A Traveler Will Not Come Back” by Ales Lapo were produced and presented for the experts’ and audience’s review at the event. The board members voted to award the main prize to Elena Aleksane for the film “There Sat a Grasshopper”,  while the audience selected Ales Lapo’ s “Traveler” for the audience prize.  In addition to the film contestants, Olesia Pogorelova and Maksim Bogdanovich presented their films that also resulted from the Film School sessions.