Founded in 2012, The Archer Film Festival has hosted many young, aspiring filmmakers and professional panels of people in the film industry. Directors from all around the city and greater California debuted their short films at this year’s Archer Film Festival.

Twelve film shorts were chosen as finalists to be shown at the AMC movie theatre in the Century City Mall on Wednesday evening, April 30. It began with the arrivals of filmmakers, cast and crew. They took a walk down a red carpet for photographs and quick interviews. Finalists were from Harvard-Westlake, Brentwood, Providence High School, Santa Monica High School, Crossroads, Polytechnic School, SF Art & Film, Independent, and our very own Archer School for Girls.

Archer finalists included Sam Karny ’14 and Kate Heck ’14 for their short called “The Market,” and Lulu Cerone ’17 and Elizabeth Zinman ’17 for their short called “Treats.”

Karny shared her interest in the Archer Film Festival: “I love being a part of the film festival because of the planning process. Its a great experience and has really prepared me for the future.”

“Its great practice for me to reach out to film industry professionals and tell them about our festival and panel,” Karny added. “I definitely want to be in entertainment when I grow up, but probably the business side more than the creative side.”

The Oracle had the chance to talk to director and organizer Chanel Williams ’14 about the event. When asked about her role in the Archer Film Festival, she responded, “My main job was obtaining sponsorships, working with Westfield in terms of what venues we can use, how can we obtain the venues. With AMC for example, we went through the process of meeting with the mall manager of Westfield, and we talked to her about how we would use the event space and how it would look, working with the design team and meeting with Century City’s team.”

Participants also had the opportunity to connect with one another at the reception before screenings.”My favorite part [of the film festival] is meeting the filmmakers,” Williams commented, smiling. “Purely because it is so nice to put a face to the name.”

Williams had the chance to speak with many finalists. “‘Freedom from Fear’ was my absolute favorite from the films, and being able to meet [the director] was very exciting, her film just spoke so much to me,” she said.

“Freedom from Fear” was about the Westboro Baptist Church’s protests against the LGBTQ club at Santa Monica High School.

“The film industry is such a difficult industry to break into,” Williams commented, “For women it is almost impossible.” Through the film festival, she hopes to show student filmmakers that anything they dream is possible and that no matter how big that dream is, “it is achievable.”

To see a gallery of photos from Archer Communications, follow this link.