Suede Sowby watched in awe as a film she made played on the big screen.
The 18-year-old senior at Arthur and Polly Mays Conservatory of the Arts premiered her film “Flowers” at the After School Film Institute’s Future in Film student festival at Florida International Unversity in January. Now, another young South Florida filmmaker will get a similar opportunity — this time in Broward County.
Riley Walsh, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, will screen three of his films at the first ASFI Broward Student Film Festival on Thursday, June 12, at Savor Cinema in Fort Lauderdale.
“There’s a lot of talent in Broward County when it comes to filmmaking,” says Walsh, who will study film at the Savannah (Ga.) College of Art and Design in the fall. “There hasn’t been one place where it can all just be Broward students — until now.”
ASFI artistic director Kevin Ondarza says the film festival was created to showcase young voices and strengthen ties within Broward’s emerging film scene.
“We want to give students an opportunity to tell their stories, to validate their voice, and to create a community of young artists that know each other and know how to work together,” he says.
The free public event will feature 13 short films created by Broward high school students and selected from more than 40 submissions received during an open call in April. Feature films include Walsh’s “Afterglow” and “Sisyphus vs. Narcissus,” as well as “What Happened to Us” by Anisa Olivieri and “The Pad Hustle” by Kyla Holmes.
While this is the first year of the Broward student film festival, it’s the latest milestone for the ASFI program, a nonprofit co-founded in 2018 by teacher and musician Devin Marsh and Miami filmmaker Ronald Baez. ASFI runs afterschool programs at the Arthur and Polly Mays Conservatory and the Miami Arts Studio, both magnet schools in Miami, as well as the Florida Children’s Theatre in Davie. Marsh, executive director, says the ASFI program introduces middle and high school students to filmmaking as both a creative outlet and as a professional path. It also teaches life skills through filmmaking, says ASFI mentor and local filmmaker Eddy Moon.
“It’s not about making a movie. It’s about learning to think outside the box. It’s about learning to troubleshoot quickly,” he says. “It’s about learning to work as a team. It also helps with public speaking and being creative. There are so many life skills that you can learn through an arts program in a fun way — in a way that you don’t even realize that you’re actually learning something as you’re doing it.”
The institute’s free afterschool program offers students hands-on experience in every aspect of film production — from screenwriting and storyboarding to lighting, directing and editing. The 16-week curriculum is taught by working filmmakers who mentor students in specific departments, allowing them to develop both technical and leadership skills.
Ondarza says the program is structured like a real production environment where students can choose a role, such as director, screenwriter, or cinematographer, and then learn from professionals in that field.
“If they want to be on camera, they can be on camera. If they want to be in the art department, they can be in the art department. If they want to edit, if they want to do sound, if they want to direct, they can do all those things,” says Ondarza.
While none of the Florida Children’s Theatre ASFI students have films featured in the film festival, they’ll be in the audience. The program, made up of middle and high school students, is in its first year and is the only ASFI site not tied to a magnet school for the arts.
“These students are total beginners,” says Ondarza. “They’ve spent the semester learning the basics — how to use a camera, how to plan a shot, how to work together.”
Rather than submitting full short films, the Broward students created one-minute videos. Ondarza says their presence at the festival is just as important as the films themselves.
“They’re going to see what’s possible. They’re going to watch these stories on the big screen and realize they can do that too,” he says.
Sowby, who will study business and film this fall at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, joined ASFI in sixth grade and continued through high school, discovering a passion for directing.
“Little 12-year-old me wouldn’t have said I want to be a filmmaker,” she says. “But the more I got into it, the more I realized this is something I genuinely enjoy and want to pursue.”
Her story is not unique, says Ondarza, who notes that several students who started in the program have gone on to attend film school and return as mentors.
“Some of our students have graduated, gone to film school, and then come back to be mentors,” says Ondarza. “Some of them we run into on professional sets. We’re on set and we’re like, ‘Oh, that’s one of our old students — now they’re here working with us.’”
Moon has also seen former students go on to work in the industry.
“There are people that we’ve taught who are now our coworkers, and that’s crazy,” he says. “They’re working on professional sets. We’ll show up and it’s like, ‘Oh my God, we taught you in middle school and now we’re peers.’”
IF YOU GO
WHAT: ASFI Broward Student Film Festival
WHERE: Savor Cinema, 503 SE 6th Street, Fort Lauderdale
WHEN: 6 p.m., Thursday, June 12
TICKETS: Free
INFORMATION: https://asfimiami.org/broward-student-film-festival/
