In the limelight: Students haul in annual film awards

HARLINGEN – “The Brotherhood.”

The very name of the short film by Damion Pecino conjures images of mafiosos, angry war veterans, and teenagers sticking together.

“The video was about these guys who are trying to cut ties with a group of older people,” said Damion, 17, a junior at Harlingen High School South.

Damion was basking in the limelight after taking first place Tuesday night in the Action category of the 6th Annual Student Film Awards. The stellar event at the Harlingen Performing Arts Center was modeled after the famed Academy Awards.

It recognized the work of students from throughout the Valley who’d submitted 84 videos in 15 categories.

Teachers and administrators as well as students were enjoying the success of the gala event which was led by the KHGN production class.

“It was an awesome, awesome performance,” said Pat Guajardo, the practicum audio-visual teacher at KHGN.

“The ceremony just went great,” she said. “We had a lot of different judges. I had former students judging. One is at an ad agency in San Antonio, another is at a PBS station at College Station, and another is a student assistant at Texas Tech. These kids were in my class and now they’re going into the industry.”

Students like Tiffany Fullerton, 18, even got a chance to “highlight” interests they care about. She interviewed a local artist named Rachel who uses her work to express her views about Donald Trump.

“At the time that I interviewed her, she had about 52 pieces about Donald Trump,” said Tiffany, 18, a senior at Early College High School.

“She had pictures of Donald Trump along with quotes that he had actually said,” said Tiffany. “What I enjoyed most was getting to meet someone in the Valley who was using their art as their voice.”

The resulting work, “An Artist’s Stand Against Donald Trump” took first place in the “Highlights” category.

“It’s great,” she said. “I worked really hard on it and it has a really great message in my opinion.”

Guajardo gave a shout-out to Colin Goolin, a Harlingen High School South junior who took home four awards. He shocked everyone last year when he won six categories.

“He’s really, really awesome,” Guajardo said. “He’s very talented in having an eye for angles and story telling.”

Colin, 17, was pretty jazzed about his success, too.

“It’s fantastic!” Colin said. “Winning is such a tremendous honor. There were so many amazing people.”

Colin’s work “10-54” won the “Drama” category.

“It’s about a business executive who is losing part of his company,” Colin said. “The CEO’s nephew comes in and offers to buy it from him. When he refuses, the nephew tries to blackmail the business executive.”

The action intensifies with the executive murdering the nephew and, what has become Colin’s trademark style, the audience is handed a twist at the end.

The executive never does anything to the nephew. He’s just thinking about it.

Such high achievements certainly required both thought and action. Colin’s audio-visual production teacher Andres Torres expressed his admiration for their accomplishments.

“The kids have been working so hard,” Andres said. “They’re doing a lot of innovative things with composition.”

He gave a hats off to Damion’s creativity.

“He’s been working really hard, just the variety of shoots the different angles and light he used,” Torres said.

He gave a congratulatory nod to all the kids.

“They worked really hard on these videos,” he said. “The quality of the product is above and beyond what you’d expect for this age.”