The 90-Second Newbery Film Festival is an annual video contest in which young filmmakers create weird short movies that tell the entire stories of Newbery-winning books in about a minute and a half.
Every year, they show the best movies we receive at special-event screenings in Rochester New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, Boston, Tacoma, and other cities—co-hosted by festival founder James Kennedy (author of the young-adult fantasy The Order of Odd-Fish) and other award-winning children’s authors. This year, James will be co-hosting with Bruce Coville.
The national deadline for the 8th Annual 90-Second Newbery is January 11.
Who can make movies for this film festival?
It’s a big range: elementary schoolers, junior high kids, high schoolers, even college students. Adult help OK!
This is a fun project that will get your students reading Newbery winners, give students an excuse to mess around with video equipment, and learn and/or practice everything from close reading to scriptwriting, storyboarding to directing, and cinematography to video editing!
If you can’t get a project done in time, start reading now for next year, and attend this year’s festival to see what it’s all about. The festival will be held in Rochester on March 17th at 2pm in the theater Eisenhart Auditorium of the Rochester Museum & Science Center (657 East Ave).
More information can be found under the reading tab of our SLS LibGuide, or at the 90-Second Newbery festival web site.
