Terra recently began its European film festival run and has already picked up its first award at one of Europe’s largest and most acclaimed children’s film festivals: Giffoni.Every year the Italian festival invites thousands of children from all over Europe to participate in an extensive set of screenings and activities. A unique twist to this festival is that all the children attending act as jurors, voting for their favorite films and even explaining why. Past guests include Oliver Stone, ...

Graduates of Facets Multi-Media's Young Chicago Critics program are jazzed to share their movie critiquing skills with fellow film jurors in Europe. On July 15, four alums of the Young Chicago Critics program traveled to Giffoni, Italy, to serve as youth jury members for Europe's largest film festival for children, the Giffoni Children's Film Festival. Beginning July 18, Ishara Emerson, 13, and Noelle Savin, 13, of Evanston and Nelson Ogbuagu, 14, and June Helen Murphy, 14, of Chicago will be cr...

Nelson Ogbuagu is a typical Chicago middle-school student who has had some atypical experiences. A student at the Walt Disney Magnet School in Chicago, Nelson’s passion for filmmaking has been nurtured for years by the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival’s Young Chicago Critics (YCC) camp, the premier film criticism and production summer camp for kids in Chicago. But this year, after serving on YCC for three years, Nelson will do something he has never dreamed of doing: travelin...

Five Grads from Young Chicago Critics Fly to Giffoni Festival for Fun, Sun, & FilmFive Chicago teenagers will get the chance of a lifetime from July 15th through July 25th, 2005 when they become jury members for the acclaimed Giffoni Film Festival in Italy. Now in its 39th year, Giffoni has long distinguished itself as a place where kids – and their opinions about movies – really count.Young Chicago Critics graduates Charlie Schmidlin, Michael Cunningham, Raven Evans, Dane Shubert, and Abbey...