Amongst the panel of Judges were local KINL News Director Stephanie Blackwelder representing radio and R Communications, Melissa Gratkowski the EPISD's Public Information Officer who was a hostess of Good Day SA on KENS-TV in San Antonio, Cristian Gomez, hostess of Channel 24's Mañanas Alegres and Tunemania, former Media Tech Directress extraordinaire Inez Escandon who serves as the Instructional technology Specialist at the Sheldon ISD in Houston who brought her expertise in this process to the panel, Paco Flores Marketing Manager at Mall de las Aguilas and an accomplished actor, director and writer who has appeared in such full-length motion pictures as El Escape De Los Santos and Ash Wednesday along with local news reporter and sportscaster A.D. Ibarra.
Four more awards will be given in the film category which will be for Best Actor and Best Actress. In the non-film they will award Best Presentation and Best Visuals on Saturday, May 17th at 1:00 PM at the CC Winn Auditorium. Admission is free.
When you think of when you were in high school, there may not have ever been the opportunities that our students have to vent creatively, and when we saw the films in the bigger categories, some of the issues dealt with were viable real-life issues that teenagers are aware of and who may be the foremost authorities to address them. It's definitely a manner for students to focus on the success of some of these projects for them to take it to the next level next year.
Jesse Fuentes, Media Tech Instructor at CC Winn High School along with his colleagues Robert Rodriguez, Gustavo Gonzalez and Paulo Valero have organized what has turned out to be a growing event much like Austin's South By Southwest. From South San High School we have Danny Mello, who is from Eagle Pass who also taught in Del Rio for some time. Joyce Flores along with their own Robert Rodriguez are the media tech instructors in Del Rio.
"This is the fifth anniversary of the festival and were excited to have such talented and diversified judges here. I would like to thank the members of our organizing committee who are always there, because it's a monster, but I'll tell you what, it's a labor of love. We enjoy seeing the creativity of our students and the students from around the area. It's something that everybody looks forward to at the end of the curriculum year and we hope that it will continue to grow and stretch across Texas and maybe even into Mexico and become an international film festival," said Fuentes.
"We'd like to invite the community to stop by and see what the students create," stated Rodriguez who has been making significant strides at Eagle Pass High School with programming such as EPSN, "There's a lot of creativity in Eagle Pass. I guess we can call Eagle Pass Eaglewood (Laughs), but there's a lot of interesting stuff going on here and you never know judging from some of the films we saw here today, we may have the next Quentin Tarantino right here in South Texas."