Red Echo Group Launches Diversity Film Project and will Host Youth FilmFest KC!

Kansas City, Mo. – Nov. 6, 2008 – The Red Echo Group and its partners have launched the Diversity Film Project and Youth FilmFest KC! to allow many of the Kansas City-area’s at-risk youth to explore important issues surrounding human rights and equality, while teaching them valuable lessons in literacy, story development, video production, decision making and artistic inspiration.

Through the Diversity Film Project, participating students will have the once in a lifetime opportunity to use the art of film making to express their feelings about equality and human rights. At the end of the project, the students will unveil their finished work December 13 and 14 at Youth FilmFest KC!, a two-day multi-cultural youth film festival held at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City.

With its partners, The Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City, Operation Breakthrough, ReStart Inc., Olathe Public Schools and Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools, the Red Echo Group developed the educational and experimental filmmaking program for area youths (ages 10-18), many of whom have been identified at-risk due to socio-economic factors or by parents or teachers.

Designed to inspire students to utilize their imagination to further their educational experience, the Diversity Film Project fuses creativity and technology with the opportunity to express feelings related to equality and human rights. The five topics of inspiration for this year’s film project are: The Civil Rights Movement, The Crisis in Darfur, The Holocaust, the Women’s Movement and the Latino Movement.

Once the students have been assigned a topic, they will then study the history of that topic and create a film to demonstrate their reaction to what has occurred in the past and still happens in the world today. The students will attend project-based classes and special focus classes to learn the technical and creative process from start to finish as they evolve the film from script to screen. Their final products will premiere at Youth FilmFest KC!, which will be held at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City.

In the past three years, Red Echo Group has served more than 1,400 youths, ages 10-18. These students emerged from previous programs with increased skills in story development, creative writing, acting, public speaking and technologies. The students have also shown an increased knowledge of careers that consists of film, media, and entertainment.

This project was made possible in part by The Kansas Arts Commission, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance Program, and Executive Producers: KC Dog Guard, KVC Behavioral Healthcare, Adell and Associates, and Mathnasium Learning Center.
For more information please visit: www.filmsforyouth.org

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