Windsor International Film Festival executive director Vincent Georgie takes part in an audience Q&A during the 10th anniversary. (Photo by Jason Viau)Windsor International Film Festival executive director Vincent Georgie takes part in an audience Q&A during the 10th anniversary. (Photo by Jason Viau)
Windsor

WIFF Introduces Youth Initiative

Windsor's annual film festival has unveiled a program to get young people excited about the films they show.

The Windsor International Film Festival is introducing a "Junior Programmer" program for its 13th edition this fall. The program is designed to allow school-age film lovers to have input into what films the festival shows, according to WIFF executive director Vincent Georgie.

"Their tastes and different point-of-view in the world is unique, and we got the idea of including the four junior programmers in the selection process of WIFF and also give them the opportunity to see what goes on behind the scenes at WIFF," says Georgie.

Georgie says the program had a "dry run" during last year's film festival and it was decided almost right away to roll it out officially for this year's event. The four young people chosen as programmers will be given very important responsibilities.

"What they will do is meet with our programming team here at WIFF and we will talk to them about how we go about selecting films, what types of films we look for, what makes an interesting film and help them look for a film that pleases an audience even though it's maybe not their personal taste," says Georgie.

WIFF will choose two programmers from the 12-to-14 age group and two from the 15-to-17 group. Once the festival has finalized its slate of films, the programmers will write reviews of the festival films they liked the best. The reviews will be published on the festival's official website as well as in the official WIFF program.

For their service, the programmers will receive two free tickets to the opening night film and festival kickoff party, two free tickets to the closing night film, plus a free pass for themselves and a guest to WIFF's Virtual Reality programming.

Students interested in becoming junior programmers for WIFF are asked to write a review of their favourite film. Georgie says the review should be between 100 and 250 words in length and describe why the film is their favourite. The reviews should be submitted to WIFFjuniorprogrammers@gmail.com no later than August 20.

For complete information on the upcoming WIFF, which runs from October 30 to November 5 at the Capitol Theatre in Windsor, click here.

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