Kids with Cameras

Last year, 10- to 18-year-old participants in the Red Echo Group's "Let's Make a Movie" after-school program created short films about such topics as peer pressure, mean-girl cliques and top-secret efforts to pilfer a cold cure from a government lab. Important subjects, to be sure, and the filmmakers presented them well: Participants from Olathe's Indian Trail Junior High, competing against high schools, won a metropolitan-area public service announcement award for their anti-drug spots. For 2008's Diversity Film Project, however, the students will address larger-scale issues such as civil rights, Darfur, the Holocaust, the Latino movement and women's rights. They'll screen the results at the "creative black tie" Youth FilmFest KC awards event at 7 p.m. in the Lewis and Shirley White Theatre at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City (5801 West 115th Street in Overland Park, 913-327-8054). Seating is limited, but an encore presentation screens at 5 p.m. Sunday. Tickets cost $7 for students and $10 for adults. See filmsforyouth.org for more information.
Sat., Dec. 13, 7:30 p.m.; Sun., Dec. 14, 5 p.m., 2008