TESSERACT STUDENTS WIN AWARDS AT THE
2009 ARIZONA STUDENT FILM FESTIVAL
PARADISE VALLEY, ARIZONA—January 27, 2009—Tesseract School, a non-profit,
independent private school—preschool through ninth grade, with its inaugural 10th-grade
class starting fall 2009—announced today that three of its sixth-grade students won awards
at the 2009 Arizona Student Film Festival. In the grades six-through-eight short category,
Remi Harazim won second place for his film, “Cathy May and the Invisible Tablet” and
Elizabeth Knapp, won third place for her film, “Realization.” In the grades six-through-eight
microshort category Noah Brodie, won third place for his film, “The Secret of the Truth.”
The Arizona Student Film Festival contest is open to students enrolled in third grade through
college who have produced public service announcements (PSAs), films, videos or
documentaries. Tesseract students in fifth grade through ninth grade submitted films to this
year’s contest, with 18 of those films being selected to run the night of the festival.
Tesseract students in fifth through ninth grade wrote, directed, edited and acted in a variety
of PSAs, short and micro-short films. Tesseract’s ninth-grade students developed their films
in their dramatic film class, one of Tesseract’s high school electives. The story lines for the
fifth and sixth-grade students’ films were written in their language arts classes and then
adapted for film. Harazim’s film, “Cathy May and the Invisible Tablet,” is about a girl who is
picked on and gets back at the bully by making him become invisible; Knapp’s film,
“Realization,” is about a brother and sister whose parents abandon them, and how they cope
with this situation; Brodie’s film, “The Secret of the Truth,” is about a boy who gets caught
stealing, and is then sent to live with his grandparents for the summer. While there, he learns
they are not as they seem.
“I am very proud of all our students’ work,” said Ted Strickland, Tesseract middle school
educator. “The process of creating these films included a great deal of teamwork, planning
and execution on their part, not to mention the writing process and the decision-making that
went into choosing storylines and actors, and going through the editing process.” In addition
to working with students on the filmmaking process in class, Strickland also guides
Tesseract’s after-school movie club, which culminates with a showing of the club’s featurelength
film on the big screen at a local movie theater, and teaches the popular digital
filmmaking class for Tesseract’s summer program.
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