Berkshire Student Film Festival at Images Cinema

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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Images Cinema presents the inaugural Berkshire Student Film Festival on Saturday, May 4.

There are two screenings of the same program, at 4:30 and 7:30pm. Jury Prize Winners will be announced at the end of the 4:30pm screening.

Images Cinema is located at 50 Spring Street.

The Berkshire Student Film Festival has been guided by Images Cinema's Student Engagement Committee, consisting of students from Bennington College, Buxton School, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA), and Williams College. A call for film submissions of 10 minutes or less for high school and college students was made in January 2024, with efforts to contact all the relevant schools within a 25 mile radius. 

"A diverse range of young Berkshire residents, enrolled in schools public and private, secondary and collegiate alike, are featured on this wide-ranging, genre-spanning, and highly textural program of eighteen works," said Minnie Lerner, an Images Cinema intern who has helped organize the festival. "Friends, family, and film enthusiasts are invited to come celebrate the next generation of creatives local to our region."

A screening committee consisting of students from Bennington College, Buxton School, MCLA, and Williams College, and the Images Cinema directors reviewed all the submissions. The 18 selected films represent students from Bard College at Simon's Rock, Bennington College, Burr and Burton Academy, Drury High School, Lenox Memorial High School, MCLA, McCann Technical High School, Mount Greylock Regional High School, and Williams College. 

The Berkshire Student Film Festival has six jurors, all working in the film industry either as filmmakers or film programmers. The three jurors reviewing fiction films are Dien Vo, Emily Cohn, and Miguel Rodriguez. The three jurors reviewing nonfiction films are Alexa Green, Catherine Orr, and Phil Wall. An audience award will also be awarded based on responses at the 4:30pm screening. 

Admission for the Berkshire Student Film Festival is on a sliding scale, $0 — 20. Ticket are strongly encouraged in advance, and can be reserved at: https://www.imagescinema.org/movie/berkshire-student-film-festival-2024-2

The event is supported by Adams Community Bank

 


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Williamstown Officials Mull ARPA Funds to Address School Race Issue

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Select Board on Monday will consider dedicating some of the town's remaining ARPA funds to address an emergency situation in the local public schools.
 
Randal Fippinger brought the idea to the board in response to detailed testimony on racist incidents at Williamstown Elementary School and Mount Greylock Regional School that were raised both to the town's diversity committee and the Mount Greylock Regional School Committee.
 
Last week, the School Committee was asked to form a task force to address the issue and to bring in an outside consultant to advise the district on how to properly train its staff and, going forward, create a more inclusive environment in the preK-12 system.
 
On Monday, Fippinger suggested an amount, $27,000, that the town could spend to help pay for the consultant and a source for that money: the remaining American Rescue Plan Act funds that need to be committed by the end of the calendar year.
 
Fippinger raised the idea during a continuation of a discussion from the board's April 22 meeting about a request from Town Manager Robert Menicocci to allocate nearly $80,000 in ARPA funds for a sewer project.
 
With only three Select Board members present at the April 22 meeting, they decided to take no action on the request. But in the April meeting, Fippinger and Menicocci offered differing recollections of the board's intentions for about $166,000 remaining from the nearly $2 million ARPA allocation.
 
Menicocci said it was his understanding that the board was OK with him counting on the remaining funds for infrastructure needs. Fippinger countered that the board had made no such commitment and was still open to addressing other priorities with the federal aid.
 
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