Student filmmaker talks about "Hungry For Change" film - "Peace on Earth Film Festival" Feb 28 - Chicago Culture & Events

Whatever else in life I do, what keeps me teaching, is my insatiable hunger for that special connection with the hearts and minds of young people. Every interaction is an opportunity to share with them lessons, insight and dreams. Nick Angotti, the director of the "Peace on Earth Film Festival" shared some of his goals with me. Now read about one of the student filmmakers. Meet Daniel McCurty.This is his story. This is his lesson. Gifted with stories, I share them with you.

The film- The film, Hungry For Change is a short film produced by high school students from Chicago’s West and South sides.The students worked in a six week summer internship program,Community Builders, with Chicago based nonprofict Umoja Student Development Corporation http://www.umojacorporation.org/ The Community Builders internship engaged youth in learning about and making change around the issue of food deserts/food access in the North Lawndale community. Students learned about the issue, designed surveys, conducted surveys, analyzed results, and ultimately, made recommendations to the community about what would increase food access in their neighborhood. During the summer, Umoja’s partner, nonprofit Free Spirit Media http://www.freespiritmedia.org/ also worked with students to develop video production skills and produce a short video documenting the summer work that students were doing.

The filmmaker- "My name is Daniel McCurty and I’m a Senior at Manley Career Academy High School. I heard about this festival because I worked at Community Builders with Umoja Student Development Corporation and Free Spirit Media this summer and we made a short video that was entered in the festival.

In 2008, when I worked for Community Builders, I learned how to use camera equipment to make a documentary about police brutality. I learned about making films from Free Spirit Media. We had to do a lot of recording and interviews in order to get the footage for our videos. I spent most of my time doing the camera operation.

This past summer, in 2009, I learned a lot more about making films and took a leadership role in filming and producing the documentary Hungry for Change which is in the "Peace on Earth Film Festival".

The message- This film was important to make because it talks about an issue in different communities that most people don’t really hear about: food deserts and food access. I feel if people were aware of this problem, then they would be able to take more steps to making a difference. Our message in the film was to inform people and make them aware about food deserts in the North Lawndale community and the work that youth are doing to make a change on them.

I wanted our video to be in the festival because it will help raise awareness of the issue and it is a great opportunity for youth to have their voices heard by a diverse group of adults and other young people. I hope that after this festival, a lot of people will be motivated to work on and support the issue of food access and food deserts. Also, I feel that this is a good chance for people to think of youth as an asset to problems that go on and realize that they can contribute to making problems better rather than just wait on the sidelines for someone else to make change.

In my future, I hope to become a doctor and ultimately, be able to give back to my community. To me, peace is where all people are friends, not enemies and everyone will come together as one and that we are all trying to do something to make the world a better place.

Our film shows peace, because it shows that people can come together in their community to make it better and work on something. Many people label our neighborhood as “bad” but that’s a stereotype, because as our video shows, young people can go out there, do interviews and surveys and work on making their community better…to me, people coming together like that is peace.

When watching our film, I want people to see youth doing something positive with their lives rather than just being passive. I want them to learn about the food desert and our North Lawndale community and that there people out there who do care in their community. I want people to remember that if you put your mind to anything and you have a group of people who are willing to do it, you can make something happen.

To me, being a peacemaker in my neighborhood means talking to individuals to try to influence them to do something different in their lives instead of other choices they may be making. It also means cleaning up, bringing people together (no fighting, block parties, etc.) It’s important to be a peacemaker because that’s what the world needs these days. If we didn’t have peacemakers and everyone was being destructive then nothing would be accomplished."