Liana Sanchez, 17, of Española holds the marker at the beginning of a take of Have You Seen Zoe?, a short film that the participants in Girls Film School 2000 were filming Thursday at the College of Santa Fe. In the background are actors Hayley Kidd, 16, of Santa Fe, center, and Deniz Hüsrev, 18, an exchange student from Turkey.

After years of seeing mostly male graduates in The College of Santa Fe's Moving Image Arts Department, Wendy Chapin and Deborah Fort decided to get more girls involved in making films. Out of the 25 student who graduated from the film department this spring, only five of them were women. So this summer, the college is hosting Girls Film School 2000, a program designed to introduce high-school girls to media technology.

Fort, assistant chairwoman of the Moving Image Arts Department is directing the two week long program that began Monday in the Greer Garson Communications center at the College of Santa Fe. The program runs through next week. Chapin, one of the instructors in the Performing Arts Department, is also involved, along with other professional women in the field. The 12 girls participating this summer are learning skills in filming, writing, editing, acting and interviewing.

A self-portrait project required each girl to find ways of expressing herself metaphorically and symbolically in front of the camera. They were divided into groups of three, and each group produced a 3- to 5-minute film, with each girl using a segment for her own theme. Some of the girls included images of their hands and feet, but they were encouraged to use other images, such as flowers or cars.

Haley Kidd, 16, a junior at Capital High School, used an apple in all of her shots. "You know how some people say their bark is louder than their bite or they're tough on the outside and soft on the inside?" she asks. "Well, I think I'm kind of soft on the outside and hard on the inside. An apple is hard all the way through. I just like that."

The teens not only learned how to think of themselves in new ways, but they also learned important camera skills. "This exercise is mainly to get them using the camera," Fort says. "They have to think about how one image then moves into the next image and be more thoughtful about the shooting than people sometimes are when they know they are going to edit outside of the camera."

The girls have also learned some of the different ways films can be made -- not all films require actors, sound or even cameras. Film "is a wonderful mode of expression that incorporates every single aspect of you, of the world," Fort says. "There's sound, there's images. You can work in in an abstract way, you can work in a very literal, realist way. You can do documentary, you can do fiction. You can do a film without a camera. We did a film with just leader and ink and scratching on it and punching holes in it. It was great. It has endless possibilities for creative expression."

Recent College of Santa Fe graduate Liza Bambenek, left, assists Kristin Olson, 18, of Santa Cruz CA, right, with the camera as Shawn Lott, 16, of Ruidoso, NM watches on.

Jasmine Tarasova, 16, a student at Pojaque High School, also is discovering the joy a creator has when viewing her final creation. She says of the leader and ink project, "It was kind of like animation. We got to scratch on it and then we got to see the little movies we made. And we got to see all kinds of color and little flashing things and stars going by, and it's so neat to know that you're the one who made it."

Tarasova and several other girls live outside Santa Fe and must drive into town every day for the program. This is one drawback that Fort hopes to amend next summer when Girls Film School springboards into a larger program, which will include dormitories. This would allow for more evening screenings of films and more opportunities to bring in visiting artists. It would also allow out-of-state girls to be part of the program. This year, most of the girls are from New Mexico.

Melissa Koshlaychek, 18, just graduated from Santa Cruz High School in Santa Cruz, CA. She had not been considering the College of Santa Fe before her involvement in the program but is thinking about applying. She sees Girls Film School 2000 as one of many crucial ways in which girls can become in the world around them. "It's important for girls to do everything, be active, have your own voice," Koshlaychek says.

Each group has a mentor, an older woman who has either graduated from the college's film department or is currently enrolled. Adrianne McCurrach, one of the mentors and a CSF student, says not a lot of women have had the opportunity to explore the film industry. "This school and this camp are really going to open the doors for a lot of young women coming out of high school," she says.

The girls not only are learning how to work with each other, but they are also discovering the necessity of intergenerational collaboration, something both Fort and Chapin struggled with when they graduated from college. The two are helping the girls get a footing in an industry that they had to fight to break into. "When I was starting out in the '70s, I couldn't get a job as a director because there were no women [directors] -- they were just hiring men," Chapin says. "So I stage-managed and that was also a field that was predominantly male, but for some reason they were more accepting, and now it's predominantly female. But when I started, it was really hard. Nobody wanted to hear from me."

On Thursday afternoon, the girls had the opportunity to try their hands at filming scenes using the big camera. Monique Anair, who runs the technical facilities at the Garson Communication Center, showed the girls how to use lights, microphones and the dolly-mounted camera. The girls then shot their own scenes. The results will be presented to the public at a free screening at 8:00 pm Friday at The Screen in the Greer Garson Communications Center. On July 6 at 6:30 pm there will be an additional screening offered at Borders bookstore.

Tuition for the two week film program is $1,250, but many students pay less depending on family income. Girls film School wants to make the program accessible for all girls and will do all they can to provide adequate scholarships. For more information about next summer's program, call 473-6409.
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