Giving NYC middle schoolers the tools and guidance to realize their creative ambitions through filmmaking about soccer culture and community in the five boroughs.

Through the flagship industry tournament each April and a growing list of activities throughout the year, NYFEST, a 501(c)(3), endeavors to elevate and enrich the unique relationship between the creative community and the game of soccer. In fall 2016, it launches a program, with the City of New York Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD), Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME) and Tribeca Film Festival, to give middle-schoolers throughout NYC the tools and guidance to help realize their creative ambitions through making stories about the beautiful game in the Big Apple — a city with a rich soccer tradition, and a burgeoning global capital for the sport.

Production for the first Young Filmmakers Initiative
kicks off in October with the start of the 2016-17 school year. It challenges teams of students from all five boroughs — participants in DYCD’s SONYC citywide after-school film program — to create documentary shorts, 2 minutes in length, that explore and examine the people, places and things, contemporary and historic, that are emblematic of NYC soccer culture. Under the technical and creative guidance of accredited SONYC instructors and volunteer YFI ‘mentors’ — practicing professional filmmakers (and footballers) selected by NYFEST — the assignment unfolds over fall and winter, and culminates with a screening of the finished films in April, eve of 2017 Tribeca Film Festival and the NYFEST industry tournament.

YFI program guidelines take from the Blueprint for the Moving Image, a curriculum devised for City schools by MOME to encourage lifelong learning and development in film, with application across the whole of a student’s academic experience. Following the blueprint’s ‘Careers and Lifelong Learning’ strand (one of 5 strands, or pillars, of the curriculum), YFI accounts for time with mentors and instructors for students to discuss their continuing-education and professional interests.

PROGRAM SITES:

Brooklyn
IS 318 Eugenio Maria de
Hostos Intermediate School

Manhattan
MS 260 Clinton School
Writers & Artists

Bronx
PS 212

Queens
IS 192 The Linden

Staten Island
PS 18 John Greenleaf
Whittier School