When I was in high school, I was in a two year documentary film program called Academy of Integrated Humanities and New Media (AIM). This was a program for juniors and seniors where we learned English, History/Social Studies, and Documentary Filmmaking techniques, and then split off into groups of four to create short documentary films based on what we’d learned. Generally, we’d make five short films per year.

 

Handprints is a short film about Bolinas Elementary School in Northern California. I was seventeen years old when I made this with Julia Black, Arandelly Mendoza, and Oliver Whitcroft. We were responsible for all the research, story development, interviewing, shooting, and editing. We won an Honorable Mention in the 2007 California Student Emmys.