Mount Si High School freshman Claire Livingston won the award of excellence for her film “Young Gods” at the second annual All girls Film Challenge and Networking event on Saturday, March 26. The event brought student filmmakers together with professionals in the industry at the Microsoft campus in Redmond.

Started by Mount Si High School’s digital media academy teacher Joe Dockery, the all girls film event brings 13 schools from around the Puget Sound area to share and discuss their filmmaking and meet with professional women in the film industry. The event was created to address the issues of gender diversity in the film industry and inspire girls who are interested in the field to pursue it.

Livingston’s film, an interpretation of a music video, won due to it being an interesting interpretation that was well cut to the music, visually rich and extremely well edited, Dockery said.

“She is really a very creative person, learns fast and is very intelligent,” he said. “It was really her creative ideas and storytelling that allowed her to win.”

In addition to winning the award of excellence, Livingston’s film will be screened at the Northwest High School Film Festival on May 17 at the Seattle Cinerama.

Dockery said they had a showing of the films entered into the film challenge, held a student panel, a professional panel, and a networking event.

“We showed the films and the girls that made the films go to go up and talk about their work, we had a panel of professional filmmakers that talked and we wrapped it up with networking activities where the girls got to talk to professionals in small groups,” Dockery said.

Kaylee Butler, Mount Si Junior and student in Dockery’s digital media class, attended the event in both 2015 and 2016. She said the chance to speak with professionals doesn’t come up very often so she was very happy to get that opportunity.

“There was more of a chance to talk to the people and get advice from them and there were a lot more girls this time, you got to see how it went for them and get advice from them and learn about how they made their videos,” Butler said.

“I would go next year because it’s a good experience, you learn a lot and there is not a lot of other opportunities to meet people in the field.”

For Butler, the panel of people in the industry was one of the more memorable experiences of the event. They spoke about the lack of diversity and how to break into a mostly male industry.

“They gave a lot of inside info on how things work and they also mentioned that a small percentage of women are in the film making business,” she said. “Everyone on the panel was very open to answering questions.”

With the positive response to the event, Dockery has already begun planning for next year. He has announced the three themes for next year’s film challenge: dreams, differences, and [fill-in-the-blank] like a girl. Dockery said the deadline for the film submission is in December and encourages anybody who is interested to begin planning and working on their films early.

Dockery is also considering some additions to the event for next year, including a photo essay submission in addition to films.