Monday, October 17, 2016

High Tech’s Halaena Merrill, First Prize Winner at the NJ Young Filmmakers Festival, to Show Her Film at North Bergen Library

(North Bergen, NJ—October 17, 2016) High Tech’s Halaena Merrill, a Weehawken resident, who won first prize in the High School Category at this year’s New Jersey Young Filmmakers Festival, will have her film screened at the North Bergen Public Library, announced Dr. Joseph Giammarella, Principal of High Tech High School.

Merrill won for her three-minute seventeen second, French-spoken short Le Cadeau (“The Gift”), a film noir about a P.I. hired to surveil a wife shopping for her husband’s birthday present, but the detective learns that the wife has cuckolded her husband.   

The New Jersey Young Filmmakers Festival provides young filmmakers, who either live in or attend school in the Garden State, the opportunity to exhibit films and have them evaluated by media arts representatives.  Since its inception, the festival has recognized, celebrated, and encouraged emerging young talent in the state in which Thomas Edison first developed motion pictures.

The 42nd Annual New Jersey Young Filmmakers Festival, originally held at the home of Thomas Edison’s film studio, the Black Maria, on May 21st, comes to the main branch of the North Bergen Library, 8411 Bergenline Avenue, this Thursday evening, October 20th, at 6:30 p.m.  Mayor Nicholas Sacco will be on hand for the screening. 


Additional information about 2016’s New Jersey Young Filmmakers Award Winners may be accessed at www.blackmaria.org.