Havre students' films screened at festival

Christian Sorensen's nearly seven-minute black and white film about a high school student who almost kills himself because he's being bullied was one of 12 in its category shown at the Flathead Lake International Cinemafest this past weekend.

"I felt that I wanted to do something that would have a high impact to the community, something that a lot of people can maybe relate to in one way or another, and kind of show people who haven't gone through this experience what it's like for those people and how miserable they might feel," Sorensen said.

The film's screening is a big deal, Sorensen said.

"It went through four panels of judges and made it into the final screening in the junior category," he said. "This was an international cinemafest, so there were people from all over the world entering their submissions and only 12 made it through."

Sorensen's film wasn't the only flick from Havre to be screened at Flathead Lake international Cinemafest this weekend. Foreign exchange student Maria Maranova's documentary "Soup Kitchen: A full plate" was also shown. Maria has since gone back to her native country, Kazakhstan.

Sorensen, 16, shot the film "Priceless," by his film company Shadow Sniper Films, last spring with seven other Havre High School students for his Media Productions I class.

The film starts with Drew, played by Sorensen, being awoken by the alarm clock. Drew opens his eyes and sits up on the side of the bed, revealing a shirt that says "Don't know, don't care."

"Hi, my name is Drew Shaffer. I'm in my junior year of high school, and, honestly, I'm surprised I made it this far. It just seems that everything bad in my life that could happen has happened," the narrator says.

The film's premise is about bullying and depression experienced through Drew.

"He goes through this really tough life, he has all these rough experiences and he gets bullied a lot in school on top of all of it. One day he ends up meeting a transfer student, someone who comes from Nevada, they become best friends and all of the situations that he's in don't matter to him anymore because he's happy with the new friend," Sorensen said.

Although the film is fiction, bullying is a personal issue for Sorensen.

"In middle school, bullying was a very prominent thing. I eventually was able to get over it and have since become friends with a few of the people," he said, "It was horrible at the time, going through all of the bullying experience, felt tormented. Then eventually I started to cope with it, and once high school came around, they realized the error of their ways, that they didn't really mean it. They were just ignorant basically."

Sorensen said bullying still exists in high school, he still sees it sometime, but it's not as rampant.

"There are still a few people that haven't quite grown out of that stage," he said.

"Priceless" didn't place, but that hasn't stopped Sorensen. He said he is glad the storyline came out, and he's already working on some new projects.

"We've actually released a few films since the making of 'Priceless,' and we do have many more for the future," he said. "We even have a feature-length film planned of about an hour."