(Jersey City, NJ—May 16, 2016) High Tech’s Halaena Merrill, a Weehawken resident, has won first prize in the High School Category at this year’s New Jersey Young Filmmakers Festival, a project of the Thomas A. Edison Media Arts Consortium, announced Dr. Joseph Giammarella, Principal of High Tech High School.
Merrill won for her three-minute seventeen second, French-spoken short Le Cadeau (“The Gift”), a film noir about a P.I. hired to surveil a wife shopping for her husband’s birthday present, but the detective learns that the wife has cuckolded her husband.
The New Jersey Young Filmmakers Festival provides young filmmakers, who either live in or attend school in the Garden State, the opportunity to exhibit films and have them evaluated by media arts representatives. Since its inception, the festival has recognized, celebrated, and encouraged emerging young talent in the state in which Thomas Edison first developed motion pictures.
The 42nd Annual New Jersey Young Filmmakers Festival holds its premiere event, including a screening and awards ceremony, at the home of Thomas Edison’s film studio, the Black Maria, at 7:00 p.m. on Saturday, May 21st, at the Thomas Edison National Historical Park in West Orange. Founded in 1981, the New Jersey Young Filmmakers Festival, a project of the Thomas A. Edison Media Arts Consortium, an independent nonprofit organization associated with New Jersey City University’s Department of Media Arts, honors Edison’s development of the motion picture.
For more info, please contact Jane Steuerwald, professor of media arts and executive director of the Thomas A. Edison Media Arts Consortium, at (201) 200-2043 or jane@blackmariafilmfestival.org. Additional information about this year’s New Jersey Young Filmmakers Award Winners may be accessed at www.blackmaria.org.
