Young girl filming
Education

Reel Youth’s ‘Partners in Education’ course launches January 10th

Fifteen youth, aged 8 to 14, signed up for the Reel Youth Partners in Education (PIE) film program, which starts on Monday January 10th. 

This online program is run by the Powell River School Board but, as might be expected, considering Reel Youth’s strong connection to Cortes Island, seven of the fifteen students are Cortesians.  (Five students come from the Comox Valley and three from Powell River.)

“We have an office on Cortes, which is the office that  you’re most likely to find us in. Then we’ve got one in Vancouver and Toronto and Yellowknife. We have addresses in all those places,” said Erica Køhn, Artistic Director of Reel Youth.

Mark Vonesch, Director of Reel Youth, added, “We’ve made 2,500 films since we started [in 2003] and we have a tutoring film festival that tours across Canada. I have made it my livelihood. I just feel lucky to be able  to have an office here on Cortes and run it from here, but most of our work happens off Cortes . We do a lot of work in Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Ontario and Saskatchewan. We’ve worked in every province and we’ve also done projects in Nepal, Morocco, India, and Vietnam.” 

Students taking the PIE course will be trained to plan, write, shoot, and edit a short film.

There is an online classroom component two hours a day, for six days, ending on January 21st. 

“Each film is so unique and has such a different flavour. There’s something immersive and deep and personal about the resulting films that draws us to doing them again and again, because they are so illuminating and the young people are so proud of what they do,” said Køhn,

She and Mariam Barry will be the facilitators for this course.

It will conclude with a virtual gala of all their films. After which the films will be submitted to the real youth film festival and distributed on YouTube and the real youth website.  

 “I’d say probably 10% to 15% of youth that do our programs end up pursuing film as a career, or are going in that direction. We always tell the youth, to use this program as a reference. Use my name and I’m happy to  help you get into a school and/or get you a job,” said Vonesch.  

“We want all the youth who come to our programs to walk away with skills that are going to serve them. No matter what career they end up choosing, if you’re somebody who has storytelling skills – that’s useful.”

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