GA Sophomore's Glimpse into Teen Life Garners Honors
Posted: March 27, 2006
By Keach Hagey
Staff Writer, Greenwich Time

In her recent short film "Reflections of the Third Eye," Greenwich Academy sophomore Diana Snyder shows the inner contours of a teenage world that few adults ever get to see.

Her characters wear pink polo shirts and sullen expressions, are "perfect" but unhappy, shift effortlessly between discussions of the drugs their psychiatrists prescribe for them and the illegal ones they do for fun. They remove their iPod headphones only to pick up their cell phones, which they talk on just about all the time.

As the writer and director of the 10-minute video, which she made with some classmates and friends over the summer, Snyder neither glorifies nor judges her characters' occasionally self-destructive behavior. Instead, she tries to show it within the larger context of their insecurities, secrets and friendships.

"It's really about teenage life, growing up and maturing," she said. "I got the idea from what's going on around me."

Snyder's knack for getting the teenager's-eye view of things, combined with the writing, directing, shooting and editing chops she has learned at Greenwich Academy's film program, has recently earned her a wider role in finding other young filmmakers like herself.

She was recently recruited to be the director of filmmaker outreach of the Westport Youth Film Festival, a nonprofit international film festival founded by two high school students in 2003. She applied and interviewed to become one of the 18 teenage volunteers who run the festival.

"She stood out as somebody who was really organized and really focused," said Chris Casey, 17, the Weston High School senior who co-founded the festival. "It takes being really proactive and persistent, and she's been doing that."

Snyder's job is to enlist high-school-aged filmmakers from the U.S., Canada and Europe to enter their films into the festival, which will take place May 13 at the Fairfield Community Theatre. The festival normally receives about 400 entries, and selects about 70 for screening, Casey said.

This year, the festival has added two new awards, including a Living With AIDS Award, a $500 scholarship given to the film of any genre that deals with the issue of living with the disease, and Facing History and Ourselves Social Justice Award, awarded to the film that deals most effectively with the themes of social justice. Entries are now being accepted.

Snyder said she fell in love with the festival last year, when she attended as an audience member. "The whole festival is youth-oriented," she said. "There are no adults behind it."

This year, Snyder's video production teacher at Greenwich Academy, Kate Howard, encouraged her to apply to become a part of it. Howard's student, Lexie Bishop, had one of her films accepted by the festival last year.

In fact it was the strength of the school's video program that brought Snyder, a Harrison resident, to Greenwich. After taking some summer video courses at Purchase College during her middle school years at Louis M. Klein Middle School in Harrison, she began researching high schools that offered more courses in her field of interest.

"I decided to go to Greenwich Academy, one, to pursue my video career, because Harrison didn't really have the supplies, and two, for a better arts education," she said. "We did a lot of research and found that GA had this great program."

Begun with a matching grant from the Edward E. Ford Foundation four years ago, the school's video program includes an eight-person elective for Upper School students of both GA and Brunswick School, as well as middle school courses and integration with the curricula of other subjects, Howard said.

While the video production elective focuses on the technical details of using a camera, working with light and editing, the larger program promotes media literacy in all students, she said.

"It is the future, which is now," said Howard, a working video artist who lives in New York City. "It's totally ubiquitous in their lives. In my opinion, the more they understand the way something is put together, the better they can take in apart."

Snyder is among a small group of students who have the self-discipline and motivation to work on their films outside the classroom, she said. Snyder said that, while last year she did most of her video work in the classroom, this year, she can do a lot of it on her computer at home.

In addition to making the short film over the summer, she makes a monthly campus news show, called "Dateline with Diana," that explores happenings from sports to arts, Howard said. The three-minute segments are shown during monthly assembly.

Snyder also started a group called Films for a Cause in which students create documentaries on pertinent causes. Their first film is on the subject of autism and will be screened at the school later this month.

She got the idea from tutoring autistic children last year. "I wanted to do something through the mind of an autistic child," she said. "Most people don't realize what it's like."

A few years ago, a film like this may have only been screened once for parents and grandparents, before being stored away on a closet shelf, Casey said. Seeing this fate befall many of the films made in his videography class as Weston High School inspired him to start the film festival.

"I felt that, since technology became affordable, and there are a lot of kids who had access to this technology, I thought it was a good idea to give kids an outlet to the films they were making," he said.

Copyright © 2006, Southern Connecticut Newspapers, Inc.